Before coffee chains and fast-casual counters defined everyday routines, soda fountains were part of the social fabric of downtown San Diego. Behind marble counters and rows of chrome stools, soda jerks worked quickly and precisely, mixing flavored syrups, carbonated water, and ice cream into drinks that were as much about experience as refreshment.

The work was part craft, part performance. Glasses clinked, syrup bottles lined mirrored shelves, and conversations unfolded across counters that served as informal gathering places for neighbors, students, and workers alike.

From the 1920s through the 1950s, soda fountains were woven into the rhythm of downtown life — stops between errands, after-school meeting spots, and casual places where people lingered over malts, sodas, and sundaes.

From pharmacy counters to social spaces

Soda fountains originated in late 19th-century pharmacies, where carbonated water and flavored syrups were first offered as refreshing tonics. Over time, these counters evolved beyond retail service and became informal social spaces embedded in everyday urban life.

By the early 20th century, soda fountains were common fixtures in downtown commercial corridors. They attracted families shopping in nearby stores, office workers on breaks, and teenagers gathering after school.

Historical references indicate that downtown San Diego included a range of soda fountain counters during this period, often operating inside drugstores, lunch counters, and small independent shops.

Downtown favorites and neighborhood counters

Among the establishments documented in historical references and city directory listings was United Soda Fountain, which opened in 1939 and became a steady downtown gathering place known for classic counter service, ice cream sodas, and milkshakes.

Wimer’s Soda Fountain is also referenced in historical accounts as part of the downtown dining landscape, reflecting the broader popularity of small, independently run soda counters that served regular customers by name.

Soda fountains were also commonly integrated into drugstores and neighborhood markets. The Ace Drug Store in Mission Hills, for example, is cited in historical references as a location where malts, egg creams, and simple lunch fare were served alongside pharmacy goods.

On Market Street, Gadson’s Store appears in 1920s and 1930s-era commercial records as part of the downtown retail corridor, combining general merchandise with a soda fountain counter typical of the era.

These establishments reflected a broader pattern in which food service and retail were closely intertwined, and where soda fountains functioned as informal neighborhood anchors.

The sights and sounds of the counter

What defined soda fountains was not just the menu, but the sensory experience.

There was the hiss of carbonation hitting flavored syrup, the rhythmic clink of glassware, and the visual display of colored bottles lined behind mirrored counters. Customers often sat shoulder to shoulder, watching drinks prepared in real time.

Menus typically included chocolate malts, root beer floats, phosphates, and ice cream sundaes topped with whipped cream and cherries. Many soda fountains also served simple food items such as sandwiches, chili, and light lunch plates.

Archival photographs from the San Diego History Center and other historical collections depict these spaces as active social environments, with soda jerks behind counters and customers gathered in close conversation.

The end of an era

By the late 1950s and into the 1960s, soda fountains began to decline as suburban expansion, automobile culture, and national fast-food chains reshaped dining habits across the country.

As retail patterns shifted, many independent drugstores and small lunch counters closed or removed their fountain service entirely. The social role once played by soda fountains gradually moved to diners, drive-ins, and later, chain restaurants.

What remains today are photographs, directory listings, and oral histories that preserve the memory of a downtown culture built around shared counters and informal gathering spaces.

Legacy

Though soda fountains have largely disappeared from the urban landscape, their influence remains visible in the continued popularity of ice cream shops, retro diners, and nostalgic soda-style beverages.

They represent a period in San Diego’s history when a simple drink was not just a transaction, but an invitation to pause, gather, and connect.

Read more history stories here; send an email to Debbiesklar@cox.net

Sources:

San Diego History Center Archives — photographic collections and historical materials documenting soda fountains and early downtown retail environments.
San Diego City Directories (1920s–1950s), San Diego Public Library Special Collections — business listings for drugstores, soda fountains, and lunch counters.
San Diego Union and Evening Tribune Archives (via Newspapers.com and California Digital Newspaper Collection) — advertisements, listings, and commercial references to soda fountains and drugstores.
Library of Congress — historic imagery and documentation of American soda fountains and pharmacy counters.
Smithsonian Institution — historical research on American soda fountains and early 20th-century consumer culture.
City of San Diego Planning Department historic context reports — retail and commercial development patterns in early and mid-century San Diego.

No one expected a high scoring game when the San Diego Padres hosted the Seattle Mariners for the first game of a three-game series at Petco Park on Thursday. Michael King was on the mound for the Padres and Bryan Woo was pitching for the Mariners so both offenses knew opportunities to score would be limited. In the end, it was the San Diego lineup that made the most of the success it had against Woo, which resulted in a 4-1 win over Seattle.

King and Woo battled back-and-forth through the sixth inning, but it was the Mariners who would allow their starter to pitch into the seventh inning. The Padres had a 3-1 lead after six innings and the bullpen was set and ready to follow the winning blueprint with Adrian Morejon handling the seventh inning, Jason Adam taking the eighth inning and Mason Miller closing in the ninth to take earn their sixth win in as many games.

San Diego’s most iconic architectural tower sat closed and vacant for over 80 years until the invisible architects came in.

A century ago, the dramatic structure we now know as the California Building greeted visitors to the 1915–16 Panama–California Exposition in Balboa Park. It was covered in ornate pilasters, colorful tiles shone on its domed roof, and an attached eight-story tower surveyed the expo below. The building resembled a church, yet attendees who stepped inside expecting a sermon instead encountered an exhibit called The Story of Man Through the Ages. The showcase would inspire the building’s longtime-permanent use as the Museum of Us (formerly the Museum of Man).

Its tower became famous but furtive. Shut to the public in 1935, it spent decades as an instantly recognizable but inaccessible landmark. Finally, the museum decided that the California Tower would reopen for tours by 2015 and be outfitted for earthquake safety by 2020.

The challenge was significant. In order to keep it secure during seismic shifts, the whole structure needed steel braces, concrete walls, and tension rods—major infrastructure that had to remain a secret; hidden so that it didn’t alter the tower’s legendary look.

The people who completed the work were secret, too. Sort of.

“We call ourselves ‘invisible architects,’” says David Marshall, principal architect at Heritage Architecture & Planning, the firm tasked with restoring the California Tower. “Most architects going through school, their dream is to create something that’s never been created before. That’s not what preservation architects do. We are following the footsteps of great designers, and we don’t want to leave our fingerprints on everything we work on.”

Marshall has spent the last 35 years returning iconic San Diego structures to their original shine: Balboa Theatre, the Top Gun house, Hotel del Coronado, and the Western Metal Supply Co. building, to name a few. And those are just the well-known ones. San Diego has more than 1,000 buildings—from modest homes to multi-story civic structures—that qualify as historic for various reasons.

“Number one is age: It has to be over 30 years old,” says Cathy Herrick, who founded the development company San Diego Historic Properties with her father Leon in 1984. (Though that’s not a hard-and-fast rule—Marshall’s team was able to help top local architect Jonathan Segal designate three of his buildings constructed after 2000, since any structure proven to be architecturally significant is up for consideration.)

“Second, it has to have enough of its original fabric—like 90 percent,” Herrick continues. The preservationist’s ultimate goal is to gently repair and, if absolutely necessary, replace weakened or damaged portions of the building while making modern safety and accessibility upgrades.

Marshall and his team completed a $160 million renovation at the Hotel del Coronado last year, and even seemingly minor details required some creative problem-solving.

“We were trying to bring back the historic handrails around the front porch,” he explains. “They were built in 1888, so they didn’t meet the current code—they were only 29 inches tall instead of 42 inches tall.” On top of their diminutive stature, the handrails had seven-inch gaps between their pickets, more than twice the current safety requirement of less than four inches. The Heritage Architecture team’s solution: build exact replicas of the original handrails, but add a frameless glass rail behind them that’s only visible up close.

At The Beau—Herrick’s $5 million restoration of an 1886 Gaslamp Quarter hotel said to have been a favorite haunt of Al Capone—“there was a section of redwood staircase banisters and posts that were deteriorated,” Herrick says. “We took the pieces that remained and sent them to Northern California to a guy who specializes in hand-tilling [creating a distressed appearance on the redwood]. He made new pieces to match the historic.”

Restoring an old building for a new purpose—which preservation architects call adaptive reuse—can become even trickier. “Standard number one is to find a new use that’s compatible with the historic use,” like turning an old hotel into apartments, Marshall says.

His team transformed the Western Metal Supply Co. building at Petco Park into suites and a team store for Padres fans. “Warehouses like that are the easiest to convert because they’re usually large, open spaces with very few columns and partitions,” he explains. Any additions can be torn out by future preservationists, returning the building to its original state.

All these efforts to preserve the past don’t come cheap. “At The Beau Hotel, we wanted to put back the original 140-year-old bay windows. There were only eight of them, but it would have cost me $750,000,” Herrick says. “You sometimes have to make the economic decision to go with something that looks like the original but really is new.”

Another challenge is that skilled artisans capable of restoring and replicating historical designs and materials are becoming increasingly rare. Over her four-decade career, Herrick utilized craftspeople—some in their 80s—who specialize in unique skills like repointing historic brick or reworking century-old window sashes. “Those guys aren’t around anymore,” she says. “It’s a lost art.”

Historical preservation may also be under threat from a policy perspective. As of now, the City of San Diego automatically reviews any building that’s over 45 years old before it’s demolished or its exterior is altered. But with the city’s current focus on densification and increased housing, Marshall says, “there seems to be a lot of push for fewer restrictions on new construction in historic neighborhoods.”

A proposed amendment to the current Heritage Preservation program would alter that automatic review process because it is “a reactive and, overall, less efficient approach to historic preservation,” says Kelley Stanco, deputy director of Climate, Preservation & Public Spaces for the City Planning Department. “Of the roughly 3,500 properties reviewed every year, 85 to 90 percent are found to have no potential historic significance. In addition to creating unnecessary delays for project applicants, it is an ineffective use of city resources that could be more effectively spent proactively surveying and identifying what is significant and bringing those properties forward for designation.”

Another suggested amendment would give the Historical Resources Board new recourse for overturning historical designations. “If a building owner wants to tear down these newly designated historic houses, they’re gonna go to the council and appeal and, depending if they have any leverage—financially or otherwise—the council could say, ‘It’s not historic anymore,’” Marshall says. He fears that the change would “open the door to nothing being able to stay designated historic and nothing being safe from demolition.”

Stanco argues that changes to the city’s Heritage Preservation program are intended “not to eliminate historic preservation, but rather to incorporate…other important factors” like housing, equity, and sustainability.

The Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO), a nonprofit dedicated to preserving historical architecture in San Diego, recently sent a letter, signed by former members and staff of the San Diego Historical Resources Board, to Mayor Todd Gloria and the city council decrying delays in historic designation reviews and nominations, among other concerns.

Ultimately, “growth and preservation are compatible,” believes SOHO Executive Director Bruce Coons. “The fact of the matter is that even if all the eligible houses and buildings were designated, it would be one percent or less of the city’s entire housing stock.”

Coons considers many historic properties “naturally occurring affordable housing”: They already exist, for one, giving them a financial leg-up on costly new builds. They’re also typically smaller than contemporary homes, and San Diego’s Mills Act financially incentivizes homeowners to maintain their historic houses through property tax relief. A number of structures in older San Diego neighborhoods also added ADUs during the first and second World Wars, contributing to density.

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And beyond the practical, these structures contribute an inimitable texture to the local landscape. San Diego is unique for its mix of architectural styles—the famous Spanish Revival buildings, of course, but also Victorian, Pueblo-style, Art Deco, Craftsman, ranch-style, and midcentury-modern structures, spread across popular neighborhoods like Hillcrest, Bankers Hill, North Park, Point Loma, La Jolla, Logan Heights, and more.

“Our built environment is really what makes San Diego what it is,” Coons says. “It’s difficult to get meaning from a stucco box. I think San Diegans want to feel like San Diegans, and [historical buildings] provide that context, meaning, depth, and character to our lives. We realize that when they’re gone.”