The Wailers opened it, George Clinton played night two, and the Blues Brothers themselves - Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi - headlined the grand-opening weekend. House of Blues San Diego, at 1055 Fifth Avenue in the old Woolworth building between Broadway and C Street downtown, opened on 11 May 2005 as the ninth club in the chain. The 31,000-square-foot conversion turned the department store into a multi-level concert hall of roughly 1,500 capacity with box seats and a dance floor, plus a 215-seat Southern-kitchen restaurant, multiple bars and the chain's signature folk-art skin: murals and paintings by self-taught Southern artists cover nearly every surface, and a wall of Mardi Gras beads from New Orleans greets arrivals. The room slotted into the city's concert ladder immediately: positioned between the small clubs and the theatres, it became the standard San Diego stop for touring acts at the 1,000-to-1,500 draw - SoCal punk royalty like Social Distortion, Bad Religion and Black Flag, hip-hop headliners like Snoop Dogg, and every genre between - while the side-stage Voodoo Room handles bills around 250. The formula extends beyond show nights: the restaurant's Gospel Brunch runs Sundays, private-event business fills the complex's four rentable spaces, and the Gaslamp Quarter's restaurant-and-bar density makes the venue an anchor of downtown's night economy. Practical notes: the venue sits two blocks from the Fifth Avenue trolley station with garages along Sixth; most shows are general admission, box seats sell as premium reserved, and all-ages policies vary by show - check the listing. The bead wall photographs better than it has any right to. The opening reshaped the city's concert economics: House of Blues arrived already booking Coors Amphitheatre, San Diego State's Cox Arena and the Open Air Theatre, so the downtown club completed a ladder that let the company route an act through San Diego at every stage of its career. The Foundation Room concept followed within a year of opening, adding the chain's members-lounge layer, and the venue's 240-odd jobs made it one of the Gaslamp's larger single employers from day one.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 1055 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, CA, United States, 92101

Website: https://www.houseofblues.com/sandiego

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 1500

Opening Date: 11/05/2005

Serves Food

Accessible