Dr. John P. Backesto commissioned the first structure on this Fifth and Market corner in 1873, a modest brick building that would become the core of something unusual. Rather than demolishing that original structure during the 1880s boom, developers wrapped it with a larger Italianate commercial block in 1884, then added to it again between 1887 and 1888. The result is a building whose oldest fabric is hidden inside rather than displayed on its face, a construction strategy that preserved the 1873 core while expanding the property's commercial footprint. From 1879 to 1887, the corner store housed the operations of Abraham Klauber, the Bohemian Jewish immigrant who arrived in San Diego in 1869 and built Klauber and Levi into Southern California's largest wholesale grocery business.
The exterior presents the standard vocabulary of Victorian commercial architecture: brick walls punctuated by segmental arched windows, pressed metal ornament, bracketed cornice, and a strongly articulated corner treatment that anchors the intersection. Cast iron details supplement the pressed metal work, creating the layered ornamental system typical of 1880s urban commercial blocks. The two-story massing and rhythmic fenestration follow the pattern established along Fifth Avenue during the railroad boom, when nearly every surviving Victorian commercial structure in the Gaslamp was constructed within a four-year window.
