Downtown San Diego’s Broadway was shaped less by daily city life than by the rhythms of shore leave and return.
For decades, one of San Diego’s busiest transportation corridors was also one of its most transient. Before downtown became a center for conventions, tourism, and redevelopment, Broadway functioned as the city’s unofficial gateway between the waterfront and shore leave.
For much of the 20th century, Broadway in downtown San Diego functioned less as a civic main street and more as a pressure point for a military city at full intensity.
With naval installations expanding across the region and ships constantly rotating through San Diego Bay, downtown became an extension of the waterfront experience. Broadway, running east from the waterfront, formed one of the primary corridors where sailors moved during shore leave…