“Great Lost Buildings of San Diego”
David Marshall, AIA, NCARB, has made a name for himself as an architect, historian, preservationist, author, and lecturer. He is president of Heritage Architecture & Planning, a San Diego firm that specializes in the restoration and adaptive reuse of historic buildings. He was a board member of the San Diego Architectural Foundation and currently serves on Balboa Park Central and is a Trustee of the California Preservation Foundation (CPF). He has served as president of the Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO), as a member of the San Diego Historical Resources Board, and as chairman of its Design Assistance Subcommittee. In 2007 Marshall wrote “San Diego’s Balboa Park,” a book that features 220 historic postcards from his private collection of 5,000.
Mr. Marshall joined Heritage Architecture in 1990, after graduation from Cal Poly Pomona. In 2004, he became a co-owner and assumed the presidency from Wayne Donaldson, who founded the firm in 1978.
Mr. Marshall has been involved in the restoration and reconstruction of many of Balboa Park’s exposition buildings, including the Organ Pavilion and Museum of Man. He received a SOHO People in Preservation Award for his work in the restoration of the Museum of Art and California Tower, a nine-year effort deemed the largest “deferred maintenance” restoration project in San Diego history. And as project architect for the House of Hospitality, he spent thousands of hours documenting the building and supervising its 15-million-dollar dismantling and reconstruction. It is the only structure in our city to have earned a National Trust for Historic Preservation Honor Award.
Mr. Marshall was also the preservation architect for downtown’s Petco Park, and helped with the successful restoration of the Western Metal Supply Building, Showley Brothers Candy Factory, and other warehouse-district structures.
Mr. Marshall has spoken at several California Preservation Foundation and City of San Diego conferences and seminars on historic-building codes, the restoration of historic features, the replication of ornamentation, and appropriate additions to historic buildings, as well as on Spanish Colonial architecture and Balboa Park. He has been quoted as saying, “There’s nothing more satisfying than taking an abandoned, forgotten, and mistreated building and restoring it back to something people can use and appreciate” and “The thing about preservation architecture is that if we do our jobs right, it doesn’t look like we did anything at all. We are the invisible architects … there to maintain the legacy of the work of architects who came before us.”
A San Diego County resident since 1967, he lives in La Mesa with his wife and son.
At the Friends of San Diego Architecture’s October meeting, David Marshall will discuss many of the great historic buildings that no longer grace San Diego’s landscape.
