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Building History

Shopping mall builder Ernest W. Hahn (1919–1992), of Ernest W. Hahn, Incorporated, was involved in the design of this center-city mall in San Diego. John Jerde served as the Architect for Horton Plaza. It embodied "experience architecture," a concept developed by Jerde, to encourage shoppers to patronize malls that had strong architectural character. Since the 1960s, mall developers chose to make their complexes as predictable, comfortable and safe as possible; this formula had grown stale by the 1980s, however, and Hahn's firm was looking for something distinctive for this important, Downtown San Diego site.

Building Notes

In 2008, Horton Plaza contained over 130 shops and cafes, with Nordstrom and Macy's Department Stores as anchor tenants. Tel: 619-238-1596 (2008). The English architectural historian and theorist, Charles Jencks once called Horton Plaza a "Caesar's Salad of cliches."

Horton Plaza was also the name of a small park located nearby that became a designated San Diego City Landmark on 03/19/1971.

PCAD id: 11036