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Gaslamp Quarter Historic District

Historic site · San Diego, California

A historic district in downtown San Diego, designated a San Diego Historic Landmark on June 2, 1978 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 23, 1980. It contains over 90 historic buildings, primarily Victorian-era structures now in use as restaurants, shops and entertainment venues, and Petco Park sits in the adjacent East Village neighborhood. The address above is a boundary description rather than a mailing address: this is a multi-block district and no single street address applies to it.

History

Intensive development began in 1867, when Alonzo Horton bought land to create a new city center on San Diego Bay and chose Fifth Avenue as its main street. From the 1880s through 1916 the district was known as the Stingaree and housed saloons, gambling halls and bordellos; the encyclopedia also records it as San Diego's first Chinatown. It was demolished and renamed by anti-vice campaigners in 1916. The Gaslamp Quarter Association's own history page corroborates the 1980 National Register listing and states that the Association was chartered in 1982 by the City of San Diego, under state law, as a Business Improvement District.

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Roughly bounded by Broadway and Harbor Drive, and Fourth and Sixth Avenues, San Diego, California 92101

Official website

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