China Beach, a small cove in between Baker Beach and Lands End, was named for Chinese fishermen who camped at the beach since gold rush times. It was previously known as James D. Phelan State Beach Park.
Tags: China Beach Park China Beach seacliff James D. Phelan State Beach Park Phelan State Beach Park Golden Gate National Recreation Area GGNRA NPS National Park Service SF San Francisco sfist San Francisco-Bay Area Bay Area California
Lands End Park, a rocky and windswept shoreline park at the mouth of the Golden Gate, is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. A memorial to the USS San Francisco stands in the park. Numerous hiking trails follow the former railbeds of the Ferries and Cliff House Railway along the cliffs and also down to the shore.
The Golden Gate Bridge spans 8,981 feet across the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay onto the Pacific Ocean, connecting San Francisco on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County. Designed by engineer Joseph Strauss and architect Irving Morrow, it was the longest suspension bridge span in the world when it opened on May 27, 1937. It has since been surpassed by eight other bridges, but still has the second longest suspension bridge main span in the United States after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York.
Before the bridge was built, the only practical route across the Golden Gate was by boat, which held San Francisco's growth rate below the national average. However, many experts believed that the 6,700-foot strait could not be bridged. It had strong swirling tides, strong winds, and reached depths of 500-feet at its center.
In 1916, former engineering student James Wilkins wrote an article with a proposed design for a crossing in the San Francisco Bulletin. The City Engineer estimated the cost at an impractical $100 million and challenged bridge engineers to reduce costs. Joseph Strauss, an ambitious but modestly accomplished engineer, responded with a plan for bookend cantilevers connected by a central suspension segment, which he promised could be built for $17 million. Strauss spent the better part of the next decade drumming up support and construction began on January 5, 1933.
As chief engineer in charge, Strauss, with an eye towards self promotion downplayed the contributions of his collaborators who were largely responsible for the bridge's final form Architect Irving Morrow designed the overall shape of the bridge towers, the lighting scheme and Art Deco elements, and used the International Orange color as a sealant. And Charles Alton Ellis, collaborating remotely with Leon Moisseiff, was the principal engineer, producing the basic structural design, introducing Moisseiff's "deflection theory" by which a thin, flexible roadway would flex in the wind, greatly reducing stress by transmitting forces via suspension cables to the bridge towers
In 2007, the Golden Gate Bridge was ranked #5 on the AIA 150 America's Favorite Architecture list.
California Historical Landmark No. 974, San Francisco Landmark No. 222 (5/21/1999)
Tags: Golden Gate Lands End Lands End Trail Golden Gate Bridge bridge San Francisco SF San Francisco-Bay Area Bay Area California CA AIA150 suspension bridge Golden Gate National Recreation Area GGNRA National Park Service NPS National Recreation Area NRA California Historical Landmark CHL landmark San Francisco Landmark sfist
Beethoven, a heroic bronze sculptural bust of Ludwig van Beethoven, was designed by Henry Baerer in 1914 and dedicated on the southern end of the Band Shell in Golden Gate Park on August 6, 1915. The monument was a gift of the Beethoven Maennerchor (men's choir) of New York City. The bust is a replica of the original 1884 bust which stands in New York's Central Park.
The Music Concourse is a sunken, oval-shaped open-air plaza originally excavated for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894.
Golden Gate Park was carved out of sand and shore dunes known as the "outside lands" in an unincorporated area west of then-San Francisco's borders in the 1870's. Running 3 miles east to west and about a half mile north to south, it covers a rectangular plot of 1,017 acres--20% larger than New York's Central Park. With 13 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the third most visited city park in the United States after Central Park and Lincoln Park in Chicago.
Tags: Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven Henry Baerer sculpture statue band shell Golden Gate Park park SF San Francisco sfist San Francisco-Bay Area Bay Area California Music Concourse
The Camera Obscura, located at 1096 Point Lobos Ave perched on the headlands on the cliffs behind the Cliff House, is a large-scale camera obscura currently owned by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The current San Francisco Camera Obscura, which produces 360 degree live images of the Seal Rock Area, has been in continuous operation since it was installed on the site in 1946 by businessman Floyd Jennings. Light enters the building via an angled mirror in the metal hood, passes through a lens with a 381 cm focal length and is projected onto a parabolic white "table" in a black room. The origin of the lens is uncertain but it appears to have been part of a telescope, likely manufactured by the Clark Lens Company of Cambridge, Massachusetts. A previous incarnation of the Cliff House was noted to have had a camera obscura on its fourth floor in 1896, which was destroyed when the restaurant burned down in 1907.
National Register #01000522 (2001)
Tags: Camera Obscura San Franciso Camera Obscura Golden Gate National Recreation Area GGNRA NPS National Park Service SF San Francisco sfist San Francisco-Bay Area Bay Area California National Register of Historic Places NRHP U.S. National Register of Historic Places landmark Sutro District
Ocean Beach, running along the west coast of San Francisco, is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and administered by the National Park Service. Noteworthy for its strong current and waves, Ocean Beach is popular with surfers and parasailers. During the late spring and summer, the beach is frequently covered with San Francisco's characteristic fog, limiting temperatures to 50 - 55 °F. Typical beach weather is more likely in the late fall or early spring.
Seal Rocks is a rock formation island found offshore at the north end of the Ocean Beach. Its name is derived from the population of Steller's sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus) and California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) who used to haul out on the rock. This formation, once part of a coastline that extended between eight and twenty miles westward of its current position, but filled in following the last ice age, were formed over the years by waves, wind, and the movement of sand.
The Cliff House is a restaurant perched on the headlands on the cliffs just north of Ocean Beach at 1090 Point Lobos Avenue. Its current and fifth incarnation features two restaurants, the casual dining Bistro Restaurant and the more formal Sutro's; and its Terrace Room serves a Sunday Brunch buffet. Now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, operated by the National Park Service, the Cliff House features a gift shop and the Camera Obscura on a deck overlooking the ocean. During its most recent renovation, the Musée Mécanique was moved to Fisherman's Wharf.
The first Cliff House was built in 1858 by Samuel Brannan, a prosperous ex-Mormon elder from Maine, using lumber salvaged from a shop that foundered on the basalt cliffs below. The second Cliff house, built for Captain Junius G. Foster, catered mostly to horseback riders and day trippers until the opening of the Point Lobos toll road and eventually Golden Gate Park opened it up. In 1883, the Cliff House was bought by Adolph Sutro, who rebuilt it after it was first damaged by an explosion from an abandoned schooner loaded with dynamite in 1883 and then completely destroyed by a chimney fire in 1894. The replacement, a seven-story Victorian Cheateau opened the same year as his Sutro Baths, pulling in throngs of visitors.
The Cliff House survived the 1906 earthquake with little damage but burned to the ground in 1907. Dr. Emma Merritt, Sutro's daughter, commissioned a new neo-classical style building which was completed by 1909. In 1937, George and Leo Whitney purchased the Cliff House, complementing their Playland-at-the-Beach, and extensively remodeled it into an American roadhouse. When the NPS acquired the building in 1977, many of Whitney's additions were removed and it was restored to its 1909 appearance. In 2003, an extensive further renovation added a new two-story wing overlooking the Sutro Bath ruins.
Tags: Seal rocks cliff house ocean beach beach coast restaurant SF San Francisco sfist San Francisco-Bay Area Bay Area California Golden Gate National Recreation Area GGNRA NPS National Park Service Sutro District