Normal Heights, San Diego

Normal Heights, San Diego
Community of San Diego
Normal Heights
Normal Heights sign
Normal Heights, San Diego Location within Central San Diego
Coordinates: 32°45′48.09″N 117°07′08″W / 32.7633583°N 117.11889°W / 32.7633583; -117.11889
Country	United States of America
State	California
County	San Diego
City	San Diego

Normal Heights is a neighborhood of the mid-city region of San Diego, California.

The "Normal" part of "Normal Heights" refers to the State Normal School (teachers college), the predecessor to San Diego State University; the normal school was located in the adjacent University Heights neighborhood and founded in 1899. The former State Normal School building now serves as the Eugene Brucker Education Center, the central office for the San Diego Unified School District.

At the time of the founding of San Diego, the area that is now Normal Heights was largely covered with brush and populated only by rabbits. Later it had a few farms, but development was limited by lack of water. Speculators became interested in the area during the San Diego land boom of the 1880s, and several land development companies were actively working in the area by the 1900s. Around 1905 a reservoir was built in University Heights; partly as a result, the number of buildings in Normal Heights increased from one in January 1906 to 43 in December of the same year. The community was officially founded in 1906, when a syndicate led by D. C. Collier and George M. Hawley filed a subdivision map with the county. At that time it was an independent community, not part of the city of San Diego. It became one of San Diego's first "streetcar suburbs" with the development of an electric trolley route along Adams Avenue, part of the San Diego Electric Railway system. A trolley barn was built in Normal Heights in 1913; the Adams Avenue Operating Division was established in 1915.

A group of residents organized the Normal Heights Improvement Association in 1911, establishing a county public library and other improvements. Normal Heights Central School was established in 1912. The county began paving the roads and establishing gutters and sidewalks in 1913. A commercial business district developed in the 1920s, centered on Adams Avenue between 37th Street (now Felton Road) and 38th Street (now 34th Street); the area is now considered a potential historic district, referred to as the Carteri Center after local resident Benjamin J. Carteri, who spurred business and residential development in the 1920s. The community was annexed to the city of San Diego in 1925.