The Ford Building, a

Streamline Moderne Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design ...

structure in Balboa Park,

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, serves as the home of the

San Diego Air & Space Museum San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM, formerly the San Diego Aerospace Museum) is an aviation and space exploration museum in San Diego, California, United States. The museum is located in Balboa Park and is housed in the former Ford Building, ...

. The building was built by the

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

for the

California Pacific International Exposition The California Pacific International Exposition was an exposition held in San Diego, California during May 29, 1935–November 11, 1935 and February 12, 1936–September 9, 1936. The exposition was held in Balboa Park, San Diego's large c ...

, which was held in 1935 and 1936. The Ford Motor Company built a total of five exposition buildings for the world's fairs. This is the last remaining structure.

Design and construction

The building's architect was noted American industrial designer

Walter Dorwin Teague Walter Dorwin Teague (December 18, 1883 – December 5, 1960) was an American industrial designer, architect, illustrator, graphic designer, writer, and entrepreneur. Often referred to as the "Dean of Industrial Design", Teague pioneered in the ...

. The building was styled to resemble a

V8 engine A V8 engine is an eight-cylinder piston engine in which two banks of four cylinders share a common crankshaft and are arranged in a V configuration. The first V8 engine was produced by the French Antoinette company in 1904, developed and us ...

. Overall, it consists of two different-sized circles in the shape of an "8", and in the courtyard of the larger circle, a large fountain is shaped like the Ford V8 logo. The lights in the courtyard ("Pavilion of Flight") are shaped like valves. Along the interior wall of the outer ring is a mural depicting the history of transportation from the times of

hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

s to 1935. The last panel of the mural was left open for the artist to depict his vision of the future of transportation after 1935, which is still visible today. Initially, Ford wanted the building to be a 200-foot tower, but with the building near the flight path of arriving planes at

San Diego International Airport San Diego International Airport , formerly known as Lindbergh Field, is an international airport northwest of Downtown San Diego, California, United States. It is owned and operated by the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.. US Federa ...

, it was lowered to 90 feet.Pescador (2010), p. 12 The size of the building was also decreased to 60,000 square feet from the initially proposed 113,000 square feet. The site for the building was initially going to be near the

Spreckels Organ Pavilion Spreckels Organ Pavilion houses the open-air Spreckels Organ in Balboa Park, San Diego, California. The Spreckels Organ is the world's largest pipe organ in a fully outdoor venue. Constructed for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, it is loc ...

, but was later decided to be built in the Palisades area of the park.Pescador (2010), p. 10 Construction took 11 months to complete. The main exhibit hall was a concrete plaster structure framed by steel.

History

Ford was the exposition's principal exhibitor and invested $2 million in the , diameter building to showcase its vehicles and other forms of transportation. Throughout the exposition, Ford was assembling autos along the outer rings and used the courtyard area to display the latest-model automobiles. The newly assembled vehicles were rolled out the large doors on the west side. Also, a test track was set up down the hill behind the building where visitors could take one of the model autos for a test drive.Pescador (2010), p. 18 By the end of the exhibition, 2.5 million people had toured the building and its exhibits.Pescador (2010), p. 21 Ford donated the building to the city of San Diego at the exhibition's completion in November 1935. The city decided to extend the exhibition into 1936 and renamed the building "The Palace of Transportation" to showcase exhibits related to transportation.Pescador (2010), p. 22 When the 1936 exhibition concluded, the building was closed and was not available to the public until 1980, when the San Diego Air & Space Museum opened.Pescador (2010), p. 26 With the building empty, the

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

temporarily stored in it antiaircraft artillery, trucks, and searchlights.Pescador (2010), p. 27 During World War II, Balboa Park was renamed to Camp Kidd, to be used for U.S. Navy training, barracks, and hospital wards. The Ford Building was used for training mechanics in aircraft repair and welding from 1941 to 1946.

Convair Convair, previously Consolidated Vultee, was an American aircraft manufacturing company that later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. The company was formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. In 1953, i ...

considered using the building for construction of B-24 Liberators until they realized the building was too small to fit the plane's extensive wingspan.Pescador (2010), pp. 28-29 From the late 1940s to the 1960s, the building was used for storage for both the Starlight Civic Opera and San Diego's Park and Recreation department. By this point the building was in poor shape and was recommended by a 1960 commission to be demolished. In the late 1960s, the building was used a temporary studio space for the Chicano artist group Los Toltecas en Azatlán. In 1973, several San Diego groups worked to get the building listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

, saving it from being destroyed.

The Studio of Los Toltecas en Aztlán

In 1968, the San Diego Parks and Recreation Department gave

Chicano Chicano or Chicana is a chosen identity for many Mexican Americans in the United States. The label ''Chicano'' is sometimes used interchangeably with ''Mexican American'', although the terms have different meanings. While Mexican-American ident ...

artist Salvador Roberto Torres permission to use the then-abandoned Ford Building as a studio for six months. Torres eventually invited other Chicano artists to the building and they eventually formed

Los Toltecas en Azatlán LOS, or Los, or LoS may refer to: Science and technology * Length of stay, the duration of a single episode of hospitalisation * Level of service, a measure used by traffic engineers * Level of significance, a measure of statistical significan ...

. In 1970, Los Toltecas en Azatlán created a proposal to create El Centro Cultural de la Raza in an effort to keep the building as a space for cultural production. The proposal was eventually denied by the San Diego city government, but Los Toltecas en Azatlán decided to remain and occupy the building until 1971, when the city agreed on another space for the proposed Chicano cultural center within Balboa Park.

San Diego Air & Space Museum

During the process of adding the building to the National Register, the San Diego City Council recommended it be used for a new home to the San Diego Aerospace Museum, now known as the San Diego Air & Space Museum. After its earlier location in the former Electric Building was burned down in a fire in 1978, the Ford Building was remodeled to house the museum at a cost of $8 million and opened on June 28, 1980. The museum uses the Ford-themed courtyard for weddings, balls, parties, and other occasions.

References

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External links