Whaley House

Thomas Whaley wanted his new house to make an impression.

In a letter written while it was nearing completion in 1857, he described a home and store that he expected to be among the finest and most convenient in the region. The building would serve his family and his business together. Its brick walls represented investment in a town whose future was still being made.

For the Whaleys, this was a place to begin another part of their lives. For San Diego's later storytellers, the site already had a past.

In September 1852, before the house existed, James Robinson—remembered as Yankee Jim—was hanged on the ground where it would stand. The San Diego History Center's account describes a scaffold erected there and an execution witnessed by local people. The event belongs to the town's history. The suggestion that Robinson stayed after death belongs to the haunting tradition that followed.