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Heritage Park, San Diego: The House That Saved The Hill
Heritage County Park sits on a hill above Old Town and holds a cluster of Victorian-era buildings, each one moved here to save it from demolition. The Sherman-Gilbert House was the first to make the trip, in the spring of 1971, and its own rescue is the reason there is a park on this hill at all. Our Old Town walking tour has exclusive after-hours access to the grounds.
What You’re Looking At
Walk up this hill today and you will pass seven Victorian-era buildings, none of which were originally built here. Each one was lifted off its own lot somewhere else in San Diego and moved to this hillside specifically to save it from demolition. The most photographed front in the park belongs to the Sherman-Gilbert House, the Victorian with the tower near the top of the hill; a few doors down sits the plainer, boxier Burton House. Our Old Town walking tour has exclusive after-hours access to these grounds. We do not go inside.
The Save That Created Heritage Park
By 1969, the Sherman-Gilbert House is still standing on its original lot elsewhere in the city, and the city has it scheduled for demolition. A group of local residents forms specifically to stop that from happening, and they win. That fight becomes the founding moment of San Diego’s leading historic preservation organization, and this house is their first save.
Two years later, in the spring of 1971, the Sherman-Gilbert House becomes the first building moved up this hill to what is now Heritage Park. Every other Victorian on this hillside, including the Burton House next door, follows for the same reason: something was standing in the way of a bulldozer somewhere else in the city, and somebody decided to move the something instead of losing it.
Before any of that, this house belonged to two sisters. Bess and Gertrude Gilbert lived here for seventy-three years, from 1892 onward, and turned their front room into something close to a private concert hall. World-famous musicians came through that door in their day. The pianist Arthur Rubinstein is the one name every account of this house agrees on; the rest of the guest list changes depending on which institution tells the story, and we are not going to pretend otherwise by picking one.
One of the people connected to this house is the reason it matters beyond the music. The celebrated contralto Marian Anderson performed in San Diego and was turned away from a hotel room in this city because she was Black, a well-documented pattern for Black performers touring America at the time regardless of their fame. Exactly which hotel refused her is disputed between two respected local institutions, and rather than repeat one name and risk repeating the wrong one, we are leaving that specific hotel unnamed here. What is not disputed, in either telling, is that she was refused a room, and that this house is where she stayed instead.
Next Door: The Burton House Mix-Up
The plainest front in the park is carrying the biggest mix-up in it. The organization that moved these houses here has told visitors for years that the man who built the Burton House married a woman named María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, the first Mexican American woman to publish novels in English, whose books gave voice to Californio families losing their land and status after the American takeover. It is a wonderful detail to attach to a house.
It is also almost certainly wrong, and the dates make the case by themselves. María Amparo Ruiz married an Army captain named Henry Stanton Burton; multiple independent biographies agree they met in 1847, married in 1849, and that he died in 1869. This house was not built until 1893, twenty-four years after that Captain Burton was already gone.
So who actually built it? The county that now owns this park answers the question directly, on its own page for the property: the builder was Henry Guild Burton, a retired Army physician. Same last name. A different man entirely, separated from the novelist’s husband by decades. We are naming the mix-up rather than quietly swapping one telling for the other, because a guest who has read the novelist’s biography will correct a guide who simply repeats the wrong name with confidence, and they would be right to.
What People Say Happens Here
No historical figure’s ghost story is attached to the Sherman-Gilbert House by name, and we are not going to invent one to fill this space. What we can tell you is how our own tour actually works this stop. Along with El Campo Santo Cemetery down the hill, this is one of two places on our Old Town route where we spend real time rather than walking through, and where we hand out our own equipment. We get activity here, by our own account, and we let guests read that activity for themselves rather than telling them what to feel. The house also carries a quieter kind of pull: it is the most photographed front in the park, and the story of who lived here and why it is still standing tends to stop people in a way a ghost story alone would not.
The Skeptic's Corner
Two details here stay open rather than settled. The guest list for Bess and Gertrude Gilbert's front-room concerts is disputed: three institutional sources name three different combinations of performers, and Arthur Rubinstein is the only name all three agree on. A name dropping in or out of a private 1890s guest list does not mean that musician was not really there.
The bigger gap is which San Diego hotel refused Marian Anderson a room. Two respected local institutions name two different hotels, and no contemporary newspaper account has turned up to settle it. Rather than risk naming the wrong one, we name neither. Both institutions agree she was turned away and stayed in this house instead.
This stop is part of our full Old Town walking tour, which also visits the Whaley House and El Campo Santo Cemetery downhill, and passes the historic Adobe Chapel along the same walk.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why were the houses in Heritage Park moved there?
They were saved from demolition. The Sherman-Gilbert House was the first, moved in the spring of 1971 after a 1969 preservation fight that became the founding moment of San Diego’s leading historic preservation organization.
Who lived in the Sherman-Gilbert House?
Sisters Bess and Gertrude Gilbert, for seventy-three years starting in 1892. They used their front room as a private concert space and hosted the pianist Arthur Rubinstein, among other performers whose full guest list is disputed across sources.
Did Marian Anderson stay at Heritage Park?
She stayed in the Sherman-Gilbert House after being refused a hotel room in San Diego. Which hotel refused her is disputed between two institutional sources, so we do not name one.
Who really built the Burton House?
Henry Guild Burton, a retired Army physician, according to the County of San Diego’s own record for the property. He is not related to the more famous Captain Henry Stanton Burton, husband of author María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, a mix-up long repeated about this house.
Can you go inside the Heritage Park houses on the tour?
No. This stop is exterior only on our Old Town walking tour, which has exclusive after-hours access to the grounds.
Is Heritage Park haunted?
No historical figure’s ghost story is attached to the Sherman-Gilbert House specifically. It is one of two stops on our Old Town route where our own tour reports the most activity, and we let guests decide what that means for themselves.
Sources
This page draws on Save Our Heritage Organisation’s own 2021 self-guided walking tour booklet for Heritage County Park (the organization that moved these buildings and consults on the park today), the County of San Diego Parks and Recreation’s own page for the property, the Old Town San Diego Chamber of Commerce’s building history, and independent biographical sources on María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, including EBSCO, Annenberg Learner, the New-York Historical Society and the American Battlefield Trust. We looked for a contemporary newspaper account of the Marian Anderson hotel refusal and did not find one; that gap is noted above rather than papered over.
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