The front facade of the House of Hospitality in Balboa Park in San Diego, California.
Originally known as the Foreign Arts Building, the building was constructed as a temporary structure for the Panama-California Exposition. This "world's fair" was held between March 9, 1915, and January 1, 1917, to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal.
The building was designed by architect Carleton M. Winslow in the building in the Neo-Plateresque style. Plateresque means "in the manner of a silversmith", and is a syncretic (blend of) style which uses the spatial relationships of the Gothic style but the decorative ornamentaion of Mudéjar, Flamboyant Gothic, Lombard, and Tuscan styles. In Mexico and the southwestern United States, the Plateresque began importing Native American decorative features as well. This came to be known as Neo-Plateresque. (It is often inaccurately called "Spanish Revival", but it is not really that at all.)
The building was designed to mimic the Hospital of Santa Cruz in Toledo, Spain. The exterior was decorated with the real and imagined coats of arms of
Latin American countries (in the hopes that they would exhibit at the expo; they never did). The pergola to the left of the entrance (visible here) supported a hanging garden. The pergola to the right of the entrance had pinnacles, which were designed to meld the building with the gardens to the south. The entire building was designed to provide a counterpoint to the Home Economy Building, directly across from it on the Plaza de Panama (and also designed by Winslow). A squat tower on the northeast end of the building was designed to off-set a tower covered in pinnacles and grotesques on the Commerce and Industries Building to the east.
A rectangular arcade known as "The Prado" formed the rear of the building. The ground floor arcade faced a covered courtyard. The courtyard-facing facade of the second floor of The Prade was designed to look like three stories. Once more, the interior facade used the "shield and emblem" motif of the exterior.
The Foreign Arts Building cost $54,682 to construct, and was built by the expo construction team. The H.R. Schmohl company executed the plaster ornaments.
The sculpture above the main entrance, the Adoration of the Cross, was not part of the original building.
The U.S. Navy took over Balboa Park during World War I and used the Foreign Arts Building as a barracks. The San Diego Museum of Natural History occupied the building from 1920 to 1922.
Unoccupied after that and repeatedly threatened with demolition, the structure was renamed the House of Hospitality and used as a reception center for the California-Pacific International Exposition of 1935-1936. San Diego architect Richard Requa had the collapsing southern section demolished and replaced with a garden based on the Garden of the Casa del Rey Moro in Ronda, Spain. The wood foundations were replaced with concrete, the roof fixed, the exterior waterproofed, and the exterior plaster decorations renovated or replaced.
The roof over the interior courtyard was also removed, and an outdoor patio built. Sculptor Donal Hord added the sculpture known as "The Woman of Tehuantepec" (which was placed in the center of the patio).
The first floor contained a 600-set auditorium, the Cafe del Rey Moro, the Sala de Oro, and a loggia. The second floor contained a smaller auditorium, a reception loggia, the Flamingo Room, a men’s lounge, studios, and offices.
A women's group, the Balboa Auditorium Association, maintained the building after the 1935-36 expo. The States Navy occupied the House of Hospitality and used it as a nurses' barracks during World War II. The Navy converted the auditorium into space for bunk-beds and a lounge; closed the archways on the upper loggia (for use as a beauty shop); put partitions in the Sala de Oro to create offices; and added pipes for water and electricity throughout the building.
In 1947, the city of San Diego renovated the structure to cover up the pipes (using $75,000 in war conversion money). In the mid-1950's, the Cafe del Rey Moro was extended, and exits created leading to the patio and south.
The Junior League took over the building in the 1960s, and engaged in a major renovation in 1967. The owner of the Cafe del Rey Moro also made a major renovation of that space in 1975.
By 1983, the building was in deep distress. The city hired Architectural Ornamentation Association to strip the paint off the building, repair the plaster decorations, and to replace termite-ridden wood. These only postponed the inevitable. In the late 19980s, a marquee was constructed around the building so that plaster ornaments dropping from the facade would not injure pedestrians.
In 1991, the city of San Diego decided to permanently restore the entire quadrangle around the Plaza de Panama -- including the House of Hospitality. A penny of a new nine-cent hotel-motel room tax was used to pay for the $15 million salvation effort.
Most of the interior was demolished, and replaced with a concrete and steel structure. (This revealed hidden stencils on the interior walls and beams.) A full basement was added, and the exterior deocration replaced with fiberglass-concrete ornaments. The use of this material for the facade left the building much lighter in color than the original plaster.
The renovation won awards from the California Council of the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
