In 1894, a German immigrant named Anna Held Heinrich established a small colony of cottages above La Jolla Cove. Held had worked for the family of Ulysses S. Grant Jr. and came to La Jolla with an unusual combination of social connections and vision. She recognized the dramatic potential of the site: the cliffs, the cove below, the clear Pacific light that drew artists from the first moment they saw it.

The colony she built was named after a novel by Beatrice Harraden — a cluster of Arts and Crafts cottages that fit the California bungalow tradition while offering an unusually sophisticated cultural environment. Held brought in Irving J. Gill as her architect. Gill was then at the beginning of a career that would make him one of the most significant figures in California's architectural history — his clean geometric forms anticipating the modernism that would define the twentieth century.

The Green Dragon Colony became a place where artists, performers, and intellectuals gathered. Ellen Terry, the great Victorian actress, visited. Helena Modjeska, the Polish-American stage star, came. The pianist and statesman Ignacy Paderewski was a guest. The colony had a genuine cultural life in a place that was, in the 1890s, still quite remote.

Held had purchased the land for $165. In 1912, she sold the property — the land, the cottages, the architectural work of Irving Gill, the views over the cove — for $30,000. At the time this seemed like an enormous profit on a modest investment. In retrospect, given what La Jolla oceanfront would become worth, it was among the greatest undervalues in San Diego real estate history.

After the sale, the property passed through various hands. The cottages sat increasingly vacant. The architectural work of Gill, who had gone on to design significant buildings across Southern California, deteriorated without maintenance. The historic character of the site eroded with each passing decade.

By 1991, the Green Dragon Colony site was being eyed for development. La Jolla oceanfront property is among the most valuable real estate in California, and the historic cottages — even the ones designed by Irving Gill — represented, to a developer, an obstacle rather than an asset.

When historic preservation advocates sought to save the cottages, a restraining order was obtained to prevent demolition pending review. The building was knocked down anyway, before the restraining order could be served. The act was legal in the sense that the demolition had been done before the order arrived — but it was the kind of legal technicality that demonstrated how inadequate existing protections were for threatened historic structures.

The demolition of the Green Dragon Colony site prompted California Governor Pete Wilson to sign stronger landmark protection legislation — a direct response to what had happened at La Jolla Cove.

The site above La Jolla Cove is now part of the upscale commercial development that characterizes the neighborhood. One artifact of the Green Dragon Colony was salvaged from the demolition: a fireplace from one of the Gill-designed cottages was preserved and installed in the Eddie V's restaurant on Prospect Street in La Jolla, where it remains.

It is an unusual kind of memorial — a fireplace in a restaurant as the last physical trace of a colony that hosted Paderewski and Helena Modjeska, designed by a proto-modernist architect, bought for $165, sold for $30,000, demolished in defiance of a court order, and then transformed into a law.

The cliffs above La Jolla Cove are as beautiful as they have always been. The light is the same. The cove below is the same. What was built above them is gone.