The old Scripps Aquarium. Some meditation on All Things Retro and other beloved lost treasures. When I first came to live here in San Diego, CA in 1990, the old aquarium building of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography was still open. I was not aware at that time that this relic of a by-gone era, still appreciated by many visitors, was soon destined to become buried in time as an historical site. I was always fascinated with marine life, and marine creatures were one of my very favorite drawing subjects. When I moved to San Diego, I immediately fell in love with the unique and utterly ethereal Southern California marine world. I visited the old aquarium on the Scripps Campus often, spending time after time studying the aquatic creatures in the aquarium tanks that are found in the ocean waters here. The old aquarium looked and smelled like a very old library, planked with smooth, worn woods and filled with old-fashioned tanks that housed the marine life I came to cherish. I remember retro colors of faux green marble and worn, pitted brass, and an ancient art-deco look reminiscent of old ships and buildings. My favorite tank was the one that housed my favorite sea creature, the mollusk, and the only cowrie shell found in Southern California, the chestnut cowrie. I would watch them with great intent. I remember seeing other beauties in the art deco rotunda, neutral-colored fish and another favorite, the leopard shark, accented by the bright orange garibaldi. I thought the “neutral color/accent color” scheme of this exquisite underwater world was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. I dearly loved the old Scripps Aquarium. A history of the Scripps Aquarium in La Jolla, California: The Marine Biological Association of San Diego formed the aquarium in 1903, intended for the research of the unique Southern California marine life in San Diego. It was later called the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (after Ellen Browning Scripps and E.W. Scripps, entrepreneurs of the time who eventually established many well-known aspects of La Jolla and San Diego). The small aquarium and museum was open to the public. Then the laboratory was moved from the boathouse of the Hotel del Coronado to La Jolla Cove in 1905. A new building was set up at this site in 1910. Later the first actual aquarium building was created on the Scripps campus in 1915 (with the oceanographic museum nearby). It was a small, wooden structure with 19 large and small tanks. The campus began to grow, and in 1925 the name was changed to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 1951 the official Scripps Aquarium-Museum opened, named after the former institution director T. Wayland Vaughan, and remained at the Scripps campus for more than 40 years. It featured a rotunda of 18 tanks and a museum of displays in the center presenting the current marine research being done at the institution. This was the old, beloved art-deco structure I came to love, with the beautiful, weathered, ultra - smooth woods and old-fashioned aquarium tanks, which I had frequently visited after moving to San Diego in 1990. Like all things old and retro, the old art-deco era Scripps Aquarium was slated for closure and phase out, eventually to be forgotten in both location and time. Already a brand new, very modern and much larger version of the Aquarium was being considered shortly after I had moved to San Diego. About a year after I had moved here, construction of a large, modern building began on a hill overlooking the old Scripps campus. Then in 1992 the old Aquarium building closed its doors, eventually to be marked as an historical site, and the brand new, larger Scripps Aquarium opened on Exhibition Way in La Jolla. It is known as the Stephen Birch Aquarium, and today it is one of San Diego’s most divine, premiere attractions. Well, I love the new Stephen Birch Aquarium, to. There is certainly much more to see. I found myself buying a year’s pass shortly after it opened. It presents an exceptional number of diverse tanks arranged into the major sections of the Pacific Coast, from the Northern Pacific to the coast of Mexico. It’s most elaborate feature is, of course, devoted to our own Southern California ocean world, with some incredible exhibits like the gargantuan kelp forest tank, the outdoor tide pool exhibit (on the deck), and a mass array of displays of each type of environment in the Southern California waters. I am happy to see they still have the chestnut cowrie, now in a larger tank, but with one disappointment - the old Aquarium had several chestnut cowries in its tank, of different sizes. The new tank only has one or two. Well, as they say, sometimes the old is better than the new. One of the most superb things about the new building is the deck. You can stand out and look over the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the ocean itself, and view various areas of La Jolla in all their splendor. And if you look carefully enough, you can see the little building buried like a time capsule amidst the many structures of the Scripps Campus, that once housed the now-forgotten old Scripps Aquarium. (The Old Scripps Aquarium building is now considered an historical landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.) The old Scripps Aquarium, in the Thomas Wayland Vaughan Aquarium Museum Building (1950) was named after T. Wayland Vaughan, oceanographer.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 17:21:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015