First San Diego Courthouse
4.6 (21)museum
4.6 (21)Reconstructed in Old Town, this 1850s courthouse was originally erected as San Diego’s first fired-brick building.
Description
Soldiers from the Mormon Battalion raised the original structure while garrisoned in the pueblo, laying whitewashed brick for a 16-by-27-foot town hall facing San Diego Avenue. Before becoming the municipal and county court in 1850, it served as headquarters for the Boundary Commission in 1849. Over the next two decades, the hall doubled as a church, school, meeting space, and polling station until an 1872 fire destroyed it. The First San Diego Courthouse Association reconstructed the building in 1992 and oversees its operation.