The Royal Pie Bakery, and the date on its own wall

What the plaque says

The building at 554 Fourth Avenue carries an aging bronze marker you can read from the sidewalk. It says the structure went up in 1884, that it began life as the San Diego Steam Cracker Factory, and that it has remained a bakery ever since its construction. It goes on to say that during the first part of the twentieth century, as the quarter declined into a red-light district, the upper floor housed the notorious Empire Hotel and later the Anchor Hotel. It gives 1920 for the purchase by Alois Kuhnel and F. A. Smith, has them as partners until 1939, and has the building sold to Kuhnel in 1950.

That is a great many specific dates for one small piece of bronze, and every walking tour in this quarter has read them out loud at some point. The continuity claim is the astonishing part and it broadly holds: somebody baked on this spot, without a break, for a hundred and twenty-seven years.

The run actually starts earlier

The San Diego Union of 20 July 1871 reported Charles Westphal putting up a one-story frame building on this half-lot with a large double oven, for bread, pies and fancy cakes. He opened it as the Star Bakery, the first bakery in the region. Westphal sold to Leopold Winter, who had learned the trade in Baden, and Winter opened at 554 Fourth on 29 April 1873 with his brother Joseph. Five Winter brothers eventually held both lots.

In 1884 the Winters put up a two-story building, seventy-five feet by twenty-five, salesroom at the front, ovens behind, and a steam-powered elevator to carry goods upstairs for packing. They renamed it the San Diego Steam Cracker Factory and turned out forty boxes of crackers a day. Crackers were ship's rations and San Diego was becoming a port, so the timing was not an accident.

Then it went badly for the Winters. Several of Leopold's children fell ill and died, and he handed the business to Joseph. Joseph, in trouble, sold the whole property in 1896, buildings and fixtures and equipment and machinery together, for two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars.

1884 or 1911

Here is the disagreement. J. Millender bought the property in 1899. In 1911, on the account given by the Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation's staff historian, Millender contracted A. L. Morgan to tear out the worn-out cracker factory and put up a new two-story red brick building in its place.

If that is right, the building a visitor is looking at today dates from 1911, and the plaque screwed to its front is twenty-seven years out of date about the thing it is attached to.

The plaque says 1884. Wikipedia's list of Gaslamp landmarks says 1884. The foundation historian has the 1884 structure demolished and replaced. Two authorities standing about four feet apart, and one of them is bolted to the wall.

We are not going to pick a side, because the document that would settle it outright is the 1911 City of San Diego building permit for Morgan's replacement structure. That permit exists. We have not pulled it. When we do, this section gets rewritten with an answer in it rather than a question, and we will say which way it went.

Upstairs

What is not in dispute is what sat above the ovens. The plaque and the foundation agree independently that the upper floor held the Empire Hotel and later the Anchor, and that the Anchor was a brothel. So the arrangement neighbourhood memory has always insisted on is real: a working bakery downstairs and rented rooms upstairs, running at the same time, separated by a floor. Pies coming out of the oven in the morning while the rooms above did whatever the rooms above were doing.

The part everybody repeats with obvious pleasure is the ending. It was Alois Kuhnel's mother who stopped it. Martha Kuhnel found out what was operating over her son's pie shop, and by 1933 the Anchor Hotel was finished. One woman, one flight of stairs, one decision.

Miyako Sukiyaki

There is a third layer here and it is not folklore at all, it is somebody's family. Jon Obayashi, who volunteered for years at the Davis-Horton House, told the foundation that his father Al leased part of the downstairs after the family came home from the Poston internment camp, and ran a Japanese and Chinese restaurant on this floor called Miyako Sukiyaki.

A sukiyaki dinner with tempura or sashimi, rice, a pickle, tea and a fortune cookie ran three dollars and twenty-five cents. The tempura dinner was two and a quarter. He remembered the prices, decades later, and that is largely what the history of this block is made of.

The bakery itself ran on. The Kuhnels bought the real property in 1946 by the foundation's account, and the Royal Pie Bakery kept going until 1998, when Alex Kuhnel, the last of them, died. That year, for the first time since 1871, nobody baked at 554 Fourth Avenue.

Sources

Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation, "From Crackers to Cakes and More, Royal Pie Bakery," by Sandee Wilhoit, GQHF staff historian. Source for the Westphal and Winter chain, the 1871 Union report, the 29 April 1873 opening at 554 Fourth, the cracker factory description and output, the 1896 sale price, the Millender purchase and the 1911 Morgan rebuild, Martha Kuhnel closing the Anchor by 1933, the 1946 property purchase, and the Obayashi account. Read via the Internet Archive capture of 13 May 2025.

Cool San Diego Sights, "A cracker factory, bakery, and den of immorality," by Richard Schulte, 15 September 2023. Carries a full transcription of the building plaque, which is the source for every date attributed to the plaque above, and for the 1998 closure.

Wikipedia, List of Gaslamp Quarter historic buildings, for the 1884 construction date as it is published there.

Jon Obayashi, named, recounted to the foundation historian and published by them. The restaurant, the internment at Poston and the menu prices are family history from a named descendant rather than documentary record, and are presented that way.

Not yet pulled, and each would move something above from disputed to settled: the 1911 City of San Diego building permit, the San Diego Union of 20 July 1871, the 1884 Union description of the cracker factory, and Sanborn fire insurance maps for 1888, 1906 and 1920, where a change in the building footprint would show a rebuild on its own.