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Happy 150th birthday, John Spreckels!

By Kris Grant

If California can celebrate a “sesquicentennial” honoring its 150 years of statehood, which it did in a big way back in 1999, then Coronadans ought to be able to celebrate the 150th birthday of our city father, John Diedrich Spreckels, don’t you think?

John D’s 150th birthday is August 16. Will anyone mark the date? Or note the contributions made by this gentleman from San Francisco who sailed into San Diego Bay in the late 1800s and saved the little village of Coronado from near bankruptcy?

Not only did this descendant of Norway’s Von Spreckelsen family finish construction of the city’s namesake hotel, he also begat the area’s regional transportation from trolleys to trains, secured the region’s water rights and put San Diego on the Map of the World by insisting the region host an exposition to mark the opening of the Panama Canal. Even San Diego’s genesis as a Navy town can be traced to none other than John Spreckels.

What made John tick? What hot buttons did San Diego’s city fathers hit when they lured him off his yacht Lurline and into investing in this southern outpost?

John D. Spreckels was the oldest of 12 children, only five of whom lived past childhood, born to Claus and Anna Spreckels, both of whom migrated to America from their native Norway in the early 1800s, then met and married in Charleston, South Carolina. Claus shortened his name to Spreckels from “Von Spreckelsen” and settled in as a Charleston grocer.

When John came along in 1853, it was a wild and woolly time, and Claus’ business dealings were surrounded by a city filled with rum- running, carpet-bagging and deal- making. It was also the era of the California Gold Rush and soon Claus, Anna and three-year-old John rushed west to the boomtown of San Francisco to further their fortunes; not from gold mining but from continuing their lucrative grocery trade, procuring goods for those who found their fortunes in the gold fields.

Perhaps it was his Teutonic background with its stern work ethic that spurred on Claus, and later John, to earn their fortunes. In San Francisco, the entrepreneurial Claus began a beer-brewing business, and, in the process, discovered how sweet the sugar-refining business could be.

John was shipped off to college in Europe at age 14, where he majored in engineering and chemistry, and furthered his love of music, particularly organ music. But it was the voyage across the Atlantic where John became immersed in his true passion: ships and the sea.

John returned home, became engrossed in the sugar business, and traveled to Hawaii where he negotiated permits with King Kalakaua to set up his own sugar refinery, allowing Spreckels Sugar to be the only company to export refined, rather than raw, sugar, making the company an immediate and profitable world leader in sugar exportation. He spent several years living in Hawaii, managing the sugar refinery on the island of Maui, where he immersed himself in the minutiae of the business.

Concurrently, John saw the money to be made in operating his own shipping company and built a fleet of nine cargo ships, to which he later added two steamships, three passenger ships and nine tugboats. Soon, in addition to transporting sugar, he was importing building materials form Europe and keeping his eye on the French who were attempting to build the Panama Canal.

These were the circumstances that surrounded the sugar-and-shipping magnate when he pulled into San Diego Harbor in 1887 on his 47-ton, 84-foot-long schooner, the Lurline. Spreckels’ stop here was not originally planned; he needed to replenish his ice chest and food supplies as he cruised the California coast.

It didn’t take long for San Diego’s founding fathers, including Alonzo Horton, retailer George Marston and Hotel Del Coronado partners Elisha Babcock and Frank Story to get wind of the fact that rich John Spreckels was sitting pretty in the Bay. The Depression had caused their speculative land sales to dry up, and the local developers were pinning their future sales opportunities on the coming of a transcontinental railroad that would bring prospective buyers west. But the Santa Fe Railroad and the city fathers were at loggerheads over who would pay for the dredging of San Diego Bay, necessary to allow coal-laden freighters to dock. The railroad didn’t want to pay for it and the city fathers were broke.

And so a San Diego delegation invited Mr. Spreckels to come ashore where they extolled their venue as the “City of Promise.” John Spreckels listened attentively; he knew he was the man who could supply the capital to make that promise come true.

Although he didn’t tip his hand to the delegation, Spreckels didn’t pin his hopes on the railroad; he got dollar signs in his eyes when he looked west to the Pacific and south to the global trade possibilities that would come with the Panama Canal. Being in the shipping business, John, more than his land-bound counterparts, who were raised with the railroad, readily understood the implications this direct route to the west would hold. John D. bought in on “the promise,” by extending a $500,000 loan to Babcock and Story and investing in the construction of a wharf and coal bunkers at the foot of Broadway in downtown San Diego. Two years later when the Del founders didn’t have the funds to repay him, John took over their entire Coronado Beach Company operation, and everything that came with it: the hotel, all the property on North and South islands, the Coronado Water System — complete with its 3,000 feet of water pipe laid under the bay — the ferry boat operation and the railroad that ran from the ferry to the hotel.

Then, in 1890, he bought The San Diego Union morning newspaper and two years later, The Evening Tribune.

Meanwhile, back up in San Francisco, the rest of the Spreckels family were scratching their heads about John’s San Diego interests. Brother Adolph went along for the ride without notable comment, but wondered what motivated his brother to spend so much time and energy in this dry barren area. Perhaps, suggests local historian Nancy Cobb who also leads Coronado Walking Tours, it was because this was the first enterprise that John was responsible for, not part of his inherited family business.

“From birth, he’s instilled with this work ethic — his dad’s favorite expression was ‘anything worth having is worth working for’ — and this is the first time he can be his own man,” Cobb said. “San Diego is a blank piece of paper; it’s a place he can make his own mark.”

Spreckels continued to operate his Coronado holdings from San Francisco; no small feat, considering there were no faxes or emails in those days, and telephone was in its infancy.

He bought San Diego’s horse-drawn trolley system in 1892 and converted them to electric operation. And, then he devised amusement centers that would encourage people to venture out to distant points via his trolleys; these included “Tent City” just south of the Hotel del with its amusement park, “Ramona’s Marriage Place” in Old Town and “Belmont Park” on Mission Bay, featuring a huge oceanfront roller coaster, still in operation today.

If it weren’t for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the future of Coronado and San Diego might have been quite different. In an odd twist of fate, the earthquake might be credited with saving John D’s life. Earlier that year, he developed a rare intestinal illness that reduced him to skeletal proportions; when the quake hit on April 18, John was bedridden. Maybe it was the shot of adrenalin his body needed, i.e., when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

John witnessed the temblor’s initial destruction to the City by the Bay, and in the following three days, devastation by fire.

John hustled his family and friends onto his yacht and vowed he would leave San Francisco for the safety of southern waters. He immediately decided he would move to Coronado, and rather than living at his hotel, build a proper home. But where, on the bay or on the ocean?

John couldn’t decide, so he built two matching houses, one on the bay, one on the ocean.

And, just to be certain his walls didn’t crumble down around him, John engaged the services of architect Harrison Albright, a pioneer in steel-reinforced concrete that came with the added benefit of fireproof construction on his homes.

John decided he would live in the bayfront house, and therefore he outfitted that home in far grander style than the oceanfront home, with much of the grandeur still evident throughout the mansion today.

Today, his bayfront home has been completely restored; “The Mansion at Glorietta Bay” is the focal point of the 100-room Glorietta Bay Inn, and still features the central marble staircase with brass handrails and leather insets with leaded glass at its apex. All the Mansion’s light fixtures were imported from Germany and many remain in the 11 bedrooms and common areas today.

The Mansion’s “Music Room” was outfitted with state-of-the-art engineering; equivalent to today’s “surround-sound stereo system.” John D’s Music Room featured a pipe organ, with a basement to house its 20,000 separate components, and the oval room was designed withnear-perfect acoustics. Overhead, he installed electric incandescent lights which could be dimmed, another novelty of the time.

Spreckels, his wife Lillie and their five children spent many happy years at Glorietta Bay, and in the lobby there’s a photo of the happy family sitting on the verandah in their porch swing. Look up, and you’ll see the steel pegs that held that swing.

His home at 1043 Ocean Blvd. was the San Diego Designer Showcase home of 1982.

In 1909 Spreckels again used Albright to construct the Coronado Library, which he bestowed upon the city, and in 1917, he also turned to the architect to construct the curvilinear Spreckels Building, occupying the 1100 block of Orange Ave.

With Spreckels’ San Diego and Coronado empires nicely in place, he turned his attention to the upcoming Panama Canal opening, and led the City of Promise to hold the 1915 Pan-American Exposition to shine light on the burgeoning city. The focal point would be Balboa Park, and Spreckels donated an Organ Pavilion (along with a matching Organ Pavilion in San Francisco) for the opening of the exposition. He then invited the nation’s luminaries to attend the exposition, including a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then undersecretary of the Navy.

Subsequently, Roosevelt was so taken with San Diego, Coronado and the natural bay, that he decided this was the ideal place to base the nation’s Navy. The U.S. Army and Navy bought 1,232 acres of Coronado from John Spreckels for a joint base; in 1925, the army vacated its portion and the entire base became naval. Spreckels earlier gave aviation pioneer Glenn Curtis rights to use North Island; Roosevelt felt that San Diego’s near-perfect weather made it an ideal venue for the birth of naval aviation.

And in 1919, culminating a 13-year project beset by engineering nightmares, flu epidemics and the worst flood in San Diego history, Spreckels realized one last San Diego project — he constructed a railway between San Diego and Yuma, Ariz., achieving a dream for San Diego by connecting the city to a transcontinental railroad line. He drove the “Golden Spike” himself (missing on his first two swings) announcing, “If we could have seen all the obstacles we had to surmount before we reached the completion of the enterprise then surely there would be many undertakings that would never be begun. But the road is built to fulfill the
purpose for which it was built — the upbuilding of San Diego.”

When John Spreckels died at age 72 on June 7, 1926, the family sold off most of his San Diego holdings, including the newspapers, his Glorietta Bay home, the trolley and railroads. They weren’t able to sell the Hotel del Coronado for several years — the Great Depression got in their way — and, truth be told, none of his San Diego investments paid off for the family.

But for the cities of San Diego and Coronado, they paid off handsomely. One hundred and fifty years after his birth, two world-class hotels, amusements from Balboa Park to Belmont Park, newspapers, a Navy, a bustling “Big Bay,” and an entire economy sparkle as a result of John Spreckels.


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Reprinted with permission from Coronado Lifestyle, "the little magazine with the BIG impact."
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