Here is a quote from the following website that gives some architectural information about Casa De balboa, built in 1915.
https://www.sandiegohistory.org/bpbuildings/casabalb.htm" Allen's hermes were naked muscular women who appear as busts beginning at the waist over the pilasters and as kneeling whole figures over the windows between the pilasters. In each case, the women hold their arms horizontally above their heads. It is the arms clasping one another that presumably hold up the eaves. This task is, however, really done by concealed beams that project from the walls. Some people have called the hermes men, but their breasts which hang down like gourds belie this assertion. Unlike the wooden figures at Palma, the nude women in Balboa Park are made of chalk and lime. Dark wood paneling under the eaves of Casa Consistorial was painted in bright blue, red, green and gold. Allen used the same colors on the plaster-covered Commerce and Industries Building, but they have long since disappeared. They were not reused when the building was reconstructed in 1981-82.
The naked women have been described as caryatids, atlantes, hermes and consoles. The term that seems most accurate is hermes, which is defined by Michael Kitson in The Age of Baroque (McGraw Hill Book Co., New York, 1966) as "the technical name for a statue representing the upper part of the body which ends in a pedestal or plinth out of which the body appears to spring." Hermes are consoles as they do the work of brackets. They have an interesting ancestry. The name comes from the Greek god Hermes (Roman, Mercury). Statues of hermes were originally set up as mile posts. Subsequently, they were so modified that they became a generic name for male, female and hermaphroditic supports for cornices and balconies, choir and organ lofts, and arches and domes, inside and outside buildings. Atlantes, which do the same work, are men. The name is derived from Atlas, the Titan in Greek mythology condemned by Zeus to hold the world on his shoulders for all eternity.
H. R. Schmohl was the plasterer in change of creating ornament for the Panama-California Exposition. While he made ornament behind his back for the benefit of reporters, 26 workers from Central Europe, France and Italy did most of the work. It is likely that figurative consoles on Baroque and Rococo buildings in Central Europe and Italy inspired the creation of the hermes on the Commerce and Industries Building.
While guides taking people through El Prado like to point out the nude women, this does not mean they are viable artistic or architectural creations. The Schmohl team created the naked ladies to amuse themselves and visitors. They were not created for artistic effect or with an awareness of their mythological, historical and architectural significance. The San Diego Union, May 31, 1914, claimed the Schmohl team used a woman as a model, but, considering the posture of the nudes and their prominent breasts, it is doubtful that they used a model, unless it was to create facial features. The Union went on to describe the nude women as "typifying the woman of toil, a patient powerful mother of men, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water."
