Old Escondido, Escondido, CA

Deep front porches and Victorian gables set Old Escondido apart from the rest of Escondido, a historic district of roughly 900 homes laid out on a grid below Grand Avenue. Downtown's restaurants and the arts center are close enough that many errands start on foot. Houses here cover more than a century of building. Larger Victorians from the late 1800s share blocks with small Craftsman bungalows, and later houses fill the gaps, from midcentury houses to the occasional adobe. Restoration happens one house at a time, and every May the Old Escondido group opens five homes for a self-guided Mother's Day weekend tour, now in its 27th year. Escondido Boulevard, the district's western edge, is lined with small Mexican kitchens and markets. Lourdes Mexican Food is known for a chicken soup people crave on rainy days. Peterson's Donut Corner, farther down the boulevard, turns out oversized, inexpensive donuts from a case of dozens of varieties, and the maple ones get the most praise. For coffee, neighbors walk up to Grand Avenue, where Manzanita Roasting Company roasts its own beans inside The Grand and Kettle On Grand pours horchata lattes on its patio. Green space mostly sits north of the district. Grape Day Park, the city's oldest, hosts community events next to the California Center for the Arts, and on Tuesday afternoons growers sell their own produce at the certified farmers market on Juniper Street beside Heritage Garden. Day to day, though, the old streets themselves are the walk, and plenty of people come just for the houses. Sprouts sits just past the southern edge on West 13th Avenue for groceries. The Escondido Transit Center on West Valley Parkway is the end of the Sprinter line and a stop for the MTS Rapid 235 bus, which runs to downtown San Diego, and the Route 350 bus runs down Escondido Boulevard. Interstate 15 and Highway 78 are close by car. Old houses ask a lot of their owners. Plaster, original windows and century-old framing take steady work, and the commercial strip along Escondido Boulevard carries traffic past the quieter blocks behind it. What the neighborhood offers is a walk to dinner downtown and a house that someone, at some point, spent years putting back together.