San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, sometimes called the Gaslamp District or just the Gaslamp, is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods and one of its best-known. But what is it exactly? It's an area with a lot of architectural charm.
Its streets are lined with 19th-century buildings restored to their original exuberant appearance. Today's Gaslamp District is also full of restaurants, shops, and clubs that occupy former brothels and saloons. The San Diego Gaslamp Quarter got a slow start. The city's earliest residents moved away from the waterfront, choosing instead to build at the elevated location of today's Old Town.
An early development project near the waterfront failed so utterly that the area came to be called Rabbitville in honor of its only inhabitants. In , entrepreneur Alonzo Horton built a new downtown near the water, and soon the area was booming.
Gamblers and prostitutes moved in. Over the years, stores moved toward Market Street, and all that remained was a red-light district known as the Stingaree. The Gaslamp languished for many years before its current renaissance. A random walk will give you a sense of the Gaslamp. It's only a few blocks in each direction, making it easy to enjoy the lovely buildings, do a little shopping and have a meal. It's an excellent way to visit, but you can get much more out of it if you take your time.
The Gaslamp gets much more interesting if you stop to look at the buildings and learn about their history. You might see a house built on the East Coast and shipped around Cape Horn to San Diego in the s, walk past former brothels and drug dens, or see electric versions of the old gas lamps that give the area its name.
