City of La Mesa - Historical Notes

© La Mesa Historical Society 2004

Downtown La Mesa, Circa 1925

• The largest (and still existent) commercial building in early La Mesa was the La Mesa Lemon Company Store (the earliest section was built in 1894). A large citrus packing house was to the south and the La Mesa Railroad Depot is immediately to the east; at the southwest corner of Nebo Drive and La Mesa Boulevard. The structure was used as the first post office, telegraph office, for church and fraternal organization meetings and a school.
• It was in 1912, that La Mesa was incorporated as a city, with Dr. Chares Sampson appointed to serve as its first chief executive. His title was Chairman, rather than Mayor, since the governing body was actually a Board of Trustees. The offices of Mayor and Council came into use in 1927. The Mayor was appointed to the office by fellow council members, until it became an elected position in 1962, with the term of office extended from two to four years. Since the incorporation of La Mesa in 1912, 22 citizens have served as Mayor.
• As early as 1908, a livery stable stood on part of the site at 8211-8219 La Mesa Blvd. The building later became the first home of the La Mesa Fire Department until 1927, when it was torn down to make way for the Grable Building in 1928. It sits on three city lots, with the right half (8211 and 8215) modernized in the 1950’s style, and the left half (8217 and 8219) retaining more of the Mission Revival appearance. An early tenant of 8211 and 8215 was a 36-hole miniature golf course, with 18 under the roof and 18 outside to the rear.
• La Mesa Boulevard was first called Lookout Avenue. The road from San Diego into La Mesa Springs, as the town was called before 1912, connected with El Cajon Boulevard at its northern end and led east to Lookout Ranch located near the top of Boulder Heights - the hill above 4th Street and Lemon Avenue. The street’s name was officially changed to La Mesa Boulevard in 1940.
• The La Mesa Railroad Depot is a stick Victorian structure built in 1894 and enlarged about 1908, moved east across the tracks in 1915 and enlarged again. The Depot served as a station on the San Diego and Arizona RR from 1894 to the late 1940’s and, by the early 1950’s was no longer used because only freight trains were passing through La Mesa by that time. It was purchased by the San Diego Railroad Museum in 1980, returned to La Mesa, and placed just about where the original little 1894 depot had stood. It was restored to its 1915 appearance in 1980-81 by the Railroad Museum, with the assistance of the La Mesa Historical Society. Paint colors have remained the same.
• The two-story building on the northwest corner of Palm and La Mesa Blvd. appeared quite different when it was completed in 1907 and was called the Hotel Dorothy. The wooden-sided building with its front veranda is prominent in many early street scenes of La Mesa, and has been altered considerably over the years. By 1921, the veranda had been enclosed when the building was remodeled and became a dry goods store and Flax Department Store. The store was modernized in 1949 and was the site of Sexton’s Pharmacy for several years

Hotel Dorothy (On Right) Built 1907

• The Volk Building at 8201 La Mesa Blvd. may be the only surviving commercial building constructed with brick, other than the two-story Lemon Company Store further east up the street. It was designed and built about 1928 for small shops and stands on the site of an earlier Chinese laundry. The building served as a Greyhound Bus Depot from the 1940’s until the late 1960’s. 8201 has the original angled entrance and windows; 8207 is essentially original; but 8209 has seen the replacement of the windows and entrance door.
• Richard Davis, then sitting as a City Council member, ordered this simple Spanish-style building at 8127 La Mesa Blvd. as the first constructed in La Mesa as a motion picture theater. Built in 1926, it opened with Rudolf Valentino starring in “The Son of the Sheik” in October, 1926. It had 525 seats, an arched ceiling and a $3,000 pipe organ. The spaces on either side of the entrance originally housed a photo shop and a soda fountain. It became the La Mesa Theater in 1930 and movies were shown there until it closed in 1948 when the Helix Theater (now also gone) was completed on the north side of La Mesa Boulevard near University Avenue.
• That La Mesa’s film industry used an open air stage (built for filming “outdoor” scenes) occupying a lot on which the Gidley Building now stands (8342 to 8350 La Mesa Blvd.). In 1911 and 1912, the Chicago-based American Film Manufacturing Company - Flying A Studio - with later-to-be-famous-in-Hollywood director Allan Dwan, produced more than 100 one-reel westerns. The current structure, built in the early 1920’s, retains much of its original architecture, having housed barbershops, taverns, photographers, cleaners and others.

The Gidley Building in the 1930's

• La Mesa once had its own opera house, a wood construction called the Baldridge Opera House, built in 1908. It was later razed, and a bank was constructed on the site at the northeast corner of La Mesa Boulevard and Palm Avenue. It is now occupied by a restaurant. The opera house was used by traveling companies and for local theatrical productions, and served as Las Mesa’s first moving picture theater until the Davis Movie Theater (at 8127 La Mesa Boulevard) was completed in the 1920’s.

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