City and county directories were predecessors of telephone directories. Financed by ad sales, these privately published volumes profiled individual communities and listed the names of prominent residents and businesses. Those directories that have survived are important tools for researchers. They also provide a sort of real-time narrative peek at everyday life in a place at a given time.  Here’s a verbal snapshot of Carlsbad from an 1893 San Diego County directory:

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A century ago in San Diego County, mobility didn’t just mean people moving from one place to another. It often meant whole buildings moving from one place to another. Check out this ad from a 1914 San Diego City Directory:

An item in the San Diego Union of January 11, 1914 noted that “the latest evidence of things moving and times changing is had in the old Pauly residence at Eleventh and Broadway. The Owl House Moving Company is now preparing the underplaning for moving this old home from its present site to Eighteenth and G streets. The present site is to be cleared for the erection of a handsome new structure, which is to have storerooms below and offices above.”

The house was being moved “to meet the demands of more accomodations in the business district,” according to the article. “When the house now there was erected [in 1889], “San Diego was barely out of the village class….”

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