Walk along the north side of the Oceanside Civic Center and you might spy the door of the Oceanside Historical Society. The unobtrusive glass door is a portal to Oceanside's past!
Inside Oceanside's small history center you'll find dozens of old photographs on several walls. A glass display case contains historical artifacts. One corner of the room is occupied by a model of Oceanside's famous Top Gun House. Just inside the front door, stairs wind upward and end mysteriously at a wall.
The space occupied by the history center was originally the home of Oceanside's police department. Those stairs that end in a wall once climbed to a jail on the second floor. Where the jail was located is now part of Fire Station 1, which occupies the same building. The building was designed by famed architect Irving Gill, who apparently didn't take into account that drunks and belligerents headed for jail would be ascending those steep, winding stairs! And there was a skylight in the jail, too, very convenient for escape!
During my visit earlier this week, I learned the nearby Oceanside Museum of Art will be expanding into both the fire station and history center, and the latter two will be relocated to Civic Center Drive.
Kristi Hawthorne, Director of the Oceanside Historical Society, also told me a little about the police and firefighter artifacts in the display case, including material confiscated from bootleggers during Prohibition. She maintains a great blog called Histories and Mysteries, where you'll discover all sort of fascinating photos and little known stories from Oceanside's history.
She explained that the society maintains a huge archive of historical photographs, and is presently digitizing tens of thousands of documents.
I also learned the Oceanside Historical Society leads downtown history walks!
The free walks are held the second Saturday of each month, April through September. If you'd like to participate, check out this web page. (You can also download a guide for a self-guided tour.)
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