The Albert H Beach House

Bought the House in 1909 as a Wedding Present for his Daughter Amelia and her Husband Appleton Shaw Bridges

Perhaps the most prominent residents of the house from 1909 until 1914, were Appleton Shaw and Amelia Timken Bridges. In fact, the house was known for years as the Timken Mansion after Mrs. Bridges family. It is part of the folklore of Escondido since most people seem to think Henry Timken lived in the house and some think the Bridges lived there longer than they did. The Bridges had lived in San Diego and Redlands until the death of their daughter in 1907. Mabel Shaw Bridges, a student at Pomona College in Claremont, died before she graduated from the school. Subsequently her family donated in her memory both Bridges Hall of Music (Myron Hunt, 1915) to Pomona College and Bridges Auditorium (William Templeton Johnson, 1930) to the joint Claremont Colleges. Mrs. Bridges, Amelia Timken Bridges was the daughter of Henry and Fredericka Timken. Henry, a native of Germany who came to this country in 1841 at the age of eleven, owned a carriage factory in St. Louis, Mo., and patented a buggy spring and the tapered roller bearing for horse-drawn carriages. The bearing was later applied to automobiles and became the basis for the family fortune through The Timken Roller Bearing Co., which was moved from St. Louis to Canton, Ohio. It is now The Timken Co.
Timken spent the winters in San Diego and Escondido starting about 1893, and by 1894 owned part of The Thomas Show Ranch in the East End of the Valley. Even though he remained in the Escondido business for some time, he moved to San Diego, where he became a large landowner. An unostentatious philanthropist, he helped finance the construction in 1908 of Fredericka House for the Aged in Chula Vista (now Fredericka Manor), one of the first such homes in California. Named for his wife, it has grown into a large retirement center.
The Timken and Bridges family enriched the cultural and economic life of Escondido, Claremont and San Diego and Mrs. Bridges contributed to many causes around the county. Locally, she paid for construction of the Fine Arts Gallery (architect, William Templeton Johnson) in Balboa Park and donated it to the City of San Diego. For about ten years after it opened in 1926, she also paid the salaries of the director and a guard and contributed $100,000 a year for its operation. Other family members gave the gallery Rubens' "Holy Family" and Muriellos's "The Repentant Magdalene," and through theTimken Foundation of Canton gave generously toward building and endowing the Timken Art Gallery, which opened in 1965 near the Fine Arts Gallery.
Appleton Shaw Bridges is listed in The San Diego city directories as manager of The Timken Investment
Company. He was in Escondido as early as 1901 as a member of the library board but there is no record
of residential property ownership until 1909.
After moving from Escondido in 1914 the Bridges lived on Point Loma, where the Timken and Bridges
families owned large landholdings.
Both the Putnam and Bridges families were instrumental in enriching many lives in San Diego County.
They and George Marston were very prominent in San Diego social circles, active in creating Balboa Park and in donating needed structures and art work to make that park a center for Southern California.