By William Lobdell
Photo Credit: Newport Beach Historical Society

What’s the most photographed and painted landmark in Newport Beach? That’s easy, right? It’s the Balboa Pavilion. The Victorian architectural wonder is simply irresistible for anyone with an eye for beauty and history. It’s the oldest building in Newport Beach and one of California's last surviving examples of the stunning waterfront pavilions built around the turn of the 20th Century. It’s Newport Beach’s version of the Eiffel Tower.

But for being so famous, much of the 100-plus-year history of the Balboa Pavilion has been long forgotten. Until now! We’re about to reveal eight secrets of the pavilion’s long run as the queen of Newport Beach.

But first, let’s go over some basic facts about the pavilion (and by the way, you can get its entire history at balboapavilion.com, where I gleaned some of this information).

The pavilion is on the Balboa Penisula’s bayfront and serves as the elegant centerpiece of Balboa Village. The ageless two-story building was completed in 1906, has 16,000 square feet of space, and features a distinctive cupola that rises 65 feet in the air. Because it was built largely on sand, the majority of the pavilion is supported by eight massive concrete pilings that extend into the harbor.

Over the years, the pavilion has had many uses, but today it’s branded itself as a marine recreation facility, featuring sport fishing and whale watching boats, sightseeing cruises, boat rentals, the aptly named Harborside Restaurant, a grand ballroom for special events, and the Catalina Flyer ferry.

With that background, let’s get to the more juicy stuff.

Secret No. 1: The opening of the Balboa Pavilion in 1906 was a huge financial gamble. Why? First, Newport Beach’s population at the time was a whopping 206, and most of those residents lived two roadless miles from the site of the pavilion. The area was a barren, sandy wasteland.

Second, the construction of the pavilion itself was extremely difficult. Building materials and workers had just two ways to get to the site, neither of them very practical: 1) by barges, which were loaded up from the mainland and pushed by poles across the harbor to the peninsula; or 2) by traveling down the sandy peninsula by horse/ox and wagon.

And finally, the developers had bought large swaths of land around the pavilion site and subdivided the property in hopes that visitors would fall in love with the area and buy lots for summer homes.

But despite all these challenges, pavilion developers bet on the fact that the Balboa section of Newport Beach would come alive with the completion in 1906 of the electric Red Car Trolley line from Los Angeles. And sure enough, the pavilion opened on July 1, 1906, and three days later on the Fourth of July, more than 1,000 visitors from Los Angeles poured out of the 80 trolleys that descented in Balboa. And many newcomers liked Balboa enough to buy those speculative lots. Miraculously, the developers recouped their high-stakes investment in the pavilion within the first year.

Secret No.2: The Balboa Pavilion offered Newport Harbor’s first ferry service. A few years before the Balboa Island ferry got up and running, a pavilion boat made regular runs across the bay to Corona del Mar, landing at a pier built below what’s now Irvine Terrace. The ferry primarily carried two things: the mail and prospective buyers of Corona del Mar home lots.

Secret No. 3: In its early days, the Balboa Pavilion housed a popular barbershop owned by a colorful character named Jack Fredicks, who went by the nickname “Lucky Tiger Jack.” He earned his name during Prohibition when the barber would drink large quantities of an alcohol-based hair tonic called “Lucky Tiger.”

Secret No. 4. In the 1920s, the pavilion offered speed boat rides INSIDE the harbor. At the time, the pavilion was home to two 35-foot boats, named the “Queen” and “Miss California,” that carried up to 10 passengers each. They would take off full throttle from Pavilion’s dock with sirens blaring and race around the harbor. The five-knot speed limit would come later.

Secret No. 5: Starting in the 1910s, the pavilion hosted the city’s most popular events: bathing beauty parades/contests that drew up to 25,000 spectators. These were insanely popular and covered extensively in the local press with huge front-page headlines and photographs. Here’s a headline from 1920 that appeared in the Santa Ana Register: “Bathing Beauties to Parade at Balboa on Sunday.” The subhead provided more details: “Dazzling Mermaid Damzels booked to take part in weekend festivities at popular resort on Newport Bay.”

Secret No. 6: A national dance craze called the Balboa Hop started at the Pavilion. The pavilion’s heyday was in the 1930s when on weekends, the biggest names of the big band era–Count Basis, Benny Goodman, the Dorseys–would perform and draw crowds of thousands. Admission was free, but if you wanted to dance, it would cost you a nickel a song (about a buck a dance in today’s money). From these dances emerged the Balboa Hop, which, as the name suggests, consisted of some kind of hopping to the beat of the music. I would have called it the Balboa Bounce, but in any case, the dance quickly spread across the nation.

Secret No. 7: The pavilion’s second floor has been home to an eclectic bunch of tenants. These included a 10-lane bowling alley, a bingo parlor (to get around local laws, winners would receive merchandise that then was redeemed for cash at a nearby store), an art museum and a shell museum that allegedly had 2.5 million shells in its collection.

No. 8: The pavilion’s signature white outdoor lights that runs along its roofline and copula were installed in 1963 at the suggestion of a restaurateur leasing the bottom floor of the pavilion. There’s some dispute over the number of lights. The pavilion’s website says 1,500, but a contemporaneous account puts the number at 2,500. Whatever the number, the lights make the pavilion a beacon of beauty on the bay.

William Lobdell is an award-winning journalist and host of the local history podcast, “Newport Beach in the Rearview Mirror.” Subscribe to follow along as he shares some of the most fascinating stories about our beloved town.