SOHO Receives Prestigious Governor’s Historic Preservation Award
The preservation group Save Our Heritage Organisation, SOHO, has received a prestigious 2023 Governor’s Historic Preservation Award.
The awards, announced on December 29, recognize SOHO and five other organizations and projects for outstanding achievements in preserving and celebrating California’s richly diverse heritage.
The Governor’s Historic Preservation Awards are California’s only state-sponsored awards program of its kind. It recognizes both major and community-centered, often grass-roots historic and cultural preservation efforts throughout California.
The Governor’s award to SOHO honors its more than half a century of diverse, ground-breaking and successful advocacy since its founding in an artist’s living room on January 1, 1969 to save one Victorian house. The countywide group is now nationally renowned for saving and ensuring the restoration or revitalization of dozens of prominent historic buildings and places, and the protection of hundreds of homes that embody San Diego’s authentic character and multicultural history. These iconic historic resources include the Santa Fe Depot, Hotel del Coronado, Ballpark District, Warehouse Thematic Historic District, Gaslamp Quarter, Balboa Park’s historic core, Temple Beth Israel, Santa Ysabel Store, North Park and South Park historic districts, and many more.
SOHO actively engages and educates the public in the work and mission of historic preservation. SOHO’s annual People in Preservation Awards, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023, has honored exceptional preservation efforts by over 400 individuals, businesses and groups throughout San Diego County. Its campaign to establish neighborhood preservation organizations has led to the formation of five active groups.
SOHO’s Sherlock Homes Historic Homeowners Consultation Program, Old House Resource Directory, and Adobe University all promote awareness and skills regarding the region’s historic architecture and cultural heritage and inspire the public to engage in preservation efforts. Current preservation news and advocacy updates reach nearly 4,000 subscribers via the bimonthly Our Heritage eNews, a part of SOHO’s publishing arm that has released more than two dozen architecture and history guides and several books.
“We are deeply honored to receive this prestigious recognition,” said SOHO president David Goldberg. “For 55 years, SOHO has been dedicated to serving the community, enriching the lives of all San Diegans through the preservation of our invaluable and irreplaceable historic places, and making San Diego a better place to live and work.”
Bruce Coons, SOHO’s executive director, added, “This award holds great significance for us. It symbolizes the collective efforts of our board of directors and staff, and the countless devoted individuals who have generously contributed their knowledge, energy, and personal resources to safeguard our region’s historic treasures for both current and future generations.”
SOHO has received four previous Governor’s Awards for specific achievements. In 1995, a dual recognition for the repair and restoration of Saint Francis Chapel in Warner Springs and for special efforts to protect our state’s heritage and projects demonstrating an outstanding commitment to excellence; in 2007, a special commendation for the outstanding around-the-clock response monitoring during that year’s massive Witch Creek Fire that resulted in saving multiple historic sites by helping to inform the public and first responders. In 2010, a Governor’s Award recognized SOHO’s documentary film, Four Decades of Historic Preservation in San Diego; and in 2016, a fourth award lauded the period restoration of the 19th-century Santa Ysabel Store and adjacent Hoover Barn.
In addition to SOHO, the 2023 honorees include the Ah-Ha Mut-ta-ti’ e Traditional Cultural Landscape Evaluation Report, which SOHO saluted in May with a 2023 People in Preservation Award; California Garden and Landscape History Society; Historic Shipyard at Pier 70, San Francisco; Palm Springs Preservation Foundation; and Rooted in Richmond Tour App.
The awards will be presented at a date to be announced in Sacramento under the sponsorship of the California Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) and California State Parks.
For more information, visit SOHOsandiego.org and The Governor’s Historic Preservation Awards Program.
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