The Yuma Building rose in 1888 on Fifth Avenue, a Victorian commercial block completed at the very end of San Diego's late-1880s boom, as the speculative collapse arrived. Built in brick with cast iron and pressed metal ornament, it was among the first masonry structures in New Town, marking the district's shift from wood frame construction to the more substantial commercial architecture that would define the Gaslamp Quarter.
The building employs the standard commercial vocabulary of its era: brick construction with segmental arched openings and a bracketed cornice. Cast iron and pressed metal ornament provide detail within a utilitarian framework designed for ground-floor retail and upper-floor rooms.
