On July 17, 1769, the Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá, thus opening the first chapter in California’s modern history. On a commanding bluff a few hundred yards from that spot stands the Junipero Serra Museum, constructed in 1929 as a gift to the City of San Diego from George Marston, a local department store magnate. Marston had a profound influence upon the city of San Diego, and indirectly upon the Spanish Revival as well: he had not only chaired the building committee for the Panama-California Exposition, but in 1910 had personally underwritten the cost of an early plan for the Exposition park by the renowned landscape architects Olmsted and Olmsted. However, the Serra Museum was perhaps Marston’s most enduring legacy. With its simple domed tower and stout ranges of arcades, the building is designed in a very late if appropriate version of the Mission Revival that makes capital use of its dramatic site. The extensive park surrounding the museum was also the gift of Marston, who purchased the land to spare it from development and ensure its availability to future scholars of San Diego’s Spanish Colonial era.