AQUATIC PARK HALS CA-113 San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park HALS CA-113 Area bounded by Hyde Street and Van Ness Avenue on the East and West and the Aquatic Cove and Beach Street on the North and South San Francisco San Francisco County California

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WRITTEN HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE DATA

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HISTORIC AMERICAN LANDSCAPES SURVEY National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior 1849 C Street NW Washington, DC 20240-0001 HISTORIC AMERICAN LANDSCAPES SURVEY

AQUATIC PARK

HALS No. CA-113

Location: Area bounded by Hyde Street on the east and Van Ness Avenue on the west and the Aquatic Cove and Beach Street on the north and south San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, San Francisco, San Francisco County, California

Aquatic Park is located at latitude: 37.806415, longitude: -122.423978. The point represents the center of the bathhouse and was obtained in December 2015 using Google Earth. The datum is WGS84. There is no restriction on its release to the public.

Present Owner: National Park Service

Present Occupant: National Park Service

Present Use: Recreation

Significance: Aquatic Park is located on a sheltered cove of San Francisco Bay, flanked on the west by Fort Mason and on the east by Hyde Street Pier where the historic ships administered by the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park are anchored. The current site is comprised of the original Aquatic Park (largely built by the Works Progress Administration), Municipal Pier, the Bocce Ball Courts at the southwest corner, Victorian Park to the east, and the cable car turnaround at the southeast corner.

The story of the creation, development, and construction of San Francisco’s Aquatic Park is characterized by persistent advocacy by citizens groups, lack of funding, and tensions between public and private interests. Ultimately, citizen’s groups championing Progressive Era ideas of preserving outdoor space for public recreational use triumphed over private industrial development and military use. In the early twentieth century, groups of private citizens, like the Recreation League of San Francisco, and women’s groups, such as the Women’s Auxiliary of the Recreation League and the North Beach Vittoria Colonna Club, lobbied the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and effectively pushed several bond issues for funding the creation of an aquatic park at the site to public vote, although none were successfully passed. When the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club, the Ariel Rowing Club (later the San Francisco Rowing Club before its 1977 closure), and the South End Boat Club (now the South End Rowing Club) were forced from their locations elsewhere in the city and established their boathouses at the site, they too AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 2)

joined the efforts to create a park. The advocacy of these groups in preserving the cove for recreation provided a significant counterpoint to the private industries already established in the area, the dumping activities taking place after the 1906 earthquake and fire, and the activity of the State Belt Railroad, who erected a trestle across the cove in 1914, among other development pressures.

By the late 1910s, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors had begun acquiring the necessary land for a park in response to public demands. The board contracted with John Punnett to develop a general design of the park that would serve as the basis for a design competition in 1920. Architects John Bakewell, Arthur Brown, and John Bauer collaborated on the 1923 plan commissioned by the Board of Park Commissioners. Actual construction was delayed until the Works Progress Administration supplied the necessary $2 million in funding to make the park a reality. John Punnett was again retained to create the final plan of the park, while William Mooser III, descended from a long line of well-known San Francisco architects, designed the buildings in a Streamline Moderne style that complemented the waterfront location. The interior of the bathhouse, the centerpiece of the site, was finished as a Federal Art Project by a number of significant artists, including Hilaire Hiler, Sargent Johnson, and Beniamino Bufano. The landscaping complemented the modernity of Mooser’s designs for the bathhouse, bleachers, convenience stations, and loudspeakers, characterized by lawn with plantings defining the foundations of structures and curving pathways traversing the park.

Yet even with federal funds, the project incurred delays and cost overruns, and it was eventually turned over incomplete to the city of San Francisco in 1939. World War II further delayed decisions about what to do with the park, but by 1950, Karl Kortum and the San Francisco Maritime Museum Association had identified the park and bathhouse as the ideal site for the museum. Although Kortum’s ambitious plans for a park dedicated to all forms of transportation were not fully realized, the San Francisco Maritime State Historical Park was established on Hyde Street Pier in 1956. Kortum also guided the development of the lots east of the original Aquatic Park at the Powell-Hyde-Street cable car turnaround into Victorian Park in the 1960s. In contrast to the modernism of the original Aquatic Park landscape, Victorian Park was inspired by the city’s Victorian architecture, reflected in the use of decorative iron work, cobblestone paving, and gardens.

Aquatic Park is nationally significant, therefore, as a representative example of Progressive Era ideals about the importance of publicly- available recreational spaces within cities. In addition, Aquatic Park has been designated a National Historic Landmark due to its masterful AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 3)

architectural and landscape design, the integrity of the Streamline Moderne buildings, the rareness of a complex of buildings designed in this style, and the bathhouse art work.

Historian: Justine Christianson, Heritage Documentation Programs, 2015

PART I. HISTORICAL INFORMATION

A. Physical History

1. Dates of establishment: 1919-39, Aquatic Park; 1960-61, bocce ball courts; 1962, Victorian Park

2. Landscape architect, designer, shaper, creator: San Francisco’s Bureau of Engineers retained John M. Punnett, principal with Punnett, Parez, and Hutchison, as consulting engineer on the concept for the proposed Aquatic Park in 1920. Punnett designed a site plan that served as the basis for a design competition for the park that same year. Architects John Bakewell, Jr., Arthur Brown, Jr., and John Bauer developed another plan for the park in 1923 at the request of the Board of Park Commissioners. Punnett later revised the Bakewell, Brown, and Bauer plan and created the final plan for the Aquatic Park.1

San Francisco architects Edward Frick, George Cantrell, Horace Cotton, Ernest Weihe, and Lawrence Kruse all designed early plans for the proposed park. Frick and Weihe both attended the École des Beaux Arts and worked for Bakewell & Brown until the company dissolved in 1927. Brown then partnered with Frick while Bakewell partnered with Weihe. In 1941, Weihe, Frick & Kruse was established. Their work includes the San Francisco Hall of Justice and the National Memorial of the Pacific in Hawaii.2

Three area architects, John Bakewell, Jr., Arthur Brown, Jr., and John Bauer, collaborated on the 1923 concept, although their work undoubtedly drew upon earlier plans. John Bakewell, Jr. and Arthur Brown, Jr. were partners, forming Bakewell & Brown from 1906 to 1927. Both were University of California graduates who had studied under Bernard Maybeck and attended the École des Beaux Arts, where Brown had been awarded the “highest prize open to foreign students.” In 1912, a San Francisco newspaper remarked that the two had “forged steadily to a commanding position among western architects.”3 Bakewell and Brown designed several buildings for the Panama Pacific International Exposition, Berkeley City Hall, the San Francisco Savings Union, and buildings at Stanford University. They also won the design competition for San

1 James P. Delgado, “A Dream of Seven Decades: San Francisco’s Aquatic Park,” reprinted from California History, The Magazine of the California History Society, 64, no. 4 (Fall 1985): 8, 10; “Cultural Landscape Report, Aquatic Park, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park” (National Park Service, Pacific West Region, 2010), 15, 18. 2 Weihe, Frick & Kruse Collection, 1917-1976, Online Archive of California, www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf8j49p0h0/entire_text/, accessed December 2015. 3 Both quotes from “Plans for New City Hall Decided Upon,” San Francisco Call, June 21, 1912. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 4)

Francisco’s City Hall (now a National Historic Landmark). Arthur Brown served as the associate architect for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition from 1912-15 and later was a professor of architecture at the University of California and lecturer at Harvard. Brown later formed Arthur Brown, Jr. and Associates, responsible for Coit Tower, Federal Triangle in Washington, DC, and several buildings at the University of California-Berkeley, where he was chief architect and planner from 1936-50. Bakewell’s later work with his firm Bakewell & Weihe included two federal buildings in San Francisco and the Potrero Terrace Housing Development in San Francisco.4

The Punnett and Bakewell, Brown, and Bauer plans served as the basis for the layout of the park, but the actual structures were designed by others. Engineer Frank G. White prepared the plans and specifications for the new Municipal Pier. Punnett, Parez and Hutchison designed the pier’s concrete parapet walls, curbs, and seats. The plans for the buildings within the park (bathhouse, bleachers, convenience stations, and speaker towers) were drafted by William Mooser III and civil engineer Elmore Hutchison, who was also a principle of Punnett, Parez and Hutchison along with John Punnett. Mooser III hired his father, William Mooser II, as consulting architect to oversee the construction of the park buildings through Punnett, Parez and Hutchison.

The Mooser family had long been architects in San Francisco and worked together as William Mooser & Sons and later William Mooser & Company. Born in 1834 in Geneva, Switzerland, where he studied architecture, William Mooser I moved to California in 1854 and spent four years mining. By 1858, he had evidently tired of this and returned to San Francisco to work as an architect. Mooser I is credited with drawing the first complete map of San Francisco and Alameda County in 1860. He also drew the plans for the State Capitol Building in Sacramento and designed the Western Hotel, located at Kearny and Washington streets in San Francisco. The four-story brick and iron Western Hotel was distinguished by its open central courtyard. He is also credited with the former Pioneer Woolen Mill (1864), which is still part of the complex of buildings at Ghirardelli Square to the south of Aquatic Park. Other surviving buildings he designed include Queen Anne houses at 2811-2821 Buchanan Street and the John Dupuy Home at 2702 California Street. Mooser I died at age 62 in 1896 of kidney failure.

In addition to joining his father in private practice in 1890, William Mooser II (1868- 1962) served as the first City Architect for San Francisco, a position to which he was appointed by the Board of Public Works in 1900 and for which he was paid $100/month or $1000/year.5 He is also credited with establishing the Bureau of Buildings and writing the city’s first building codes in his capacity as City Architect. The Board of Supervisors,

4 Anne Coxe Toogood, “A Civil History of Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore, California,” Historic Resource Study (Historic Preservation Branch, Pacific Northwest/Western Team, Denver Service Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1980), 131-132; “Bakewell and Brown, Architects,” “John Bakewell, Jr.,” and “Arthur Brown, Jr.,” entries in Pacific Coast Architecture Database (PCAD), available online at http://pcad.lib.washington.edu, accessed July 2015. 5 “City Architect Ready to Resign,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 3, 1902, 5, reported his salary as $1000/year and then increased to $3000/year while “Public Official Who Can’t Resign,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 1902, 8, stated it was $100/month and then increased to $250/month. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 5)

however, did not think Mooser spent enough time on his work for the city, to which he responded by requesting a larger salary. The board increased his salary to $250/month or $3000/year, but they were still unhappy with the amount of time he was devoting to the position and that he required several assistants. Evidently, the board expected the higher salary would cause Mooser to devote all his time to the city rather than splitting time with his private practice. As tensions increased, Mooser decided to resign from his city architect position in April 1902, but the Board of Public Works asked him to stay pending a decision on his replacement. On August 31, 1902, W. J. Cuthbertson, whose work included the Los Angeles Courthouse, the California State Bank in Sacramento, the Hobart Mansion in San Francisco, and the Sutter County building in Yuba City, replaced Mooser.

The same year he resigned, Mooser II won the design competition for a pavilion plan hospital to be built in the eastern part of Los Angeles. The hospital complex contained over twenty-five buildings of stone and pressed brick. During the project, Mooser II made headlines after learning that the advisory architect had been asked to design a barn for the site instead of him.6 Angered by this revelation, Mooser II demanded that his name also be put on the plans. A member of the Board of Supervisors sniped, “We’re going to dig a well out at the hospital. Do you want your name on that?” Additional problems with the project occurred when it was discovered that Mooser’s plans for the stairwells, which were only 3'-6" wide and had very sharp turns, could not accommodate a man on a stretcher. There were also questions about why the walls were 28" thick when the buildings were only two stories and had a 9' basement. Another of his projects was a semi-fireproof, seven-story hotel on Taylor Street in San Francisco. The hotel had 146 rooms, fifty-seven private marble bathrooms, a store at ground level, passenger elevator, and telephone service throughout. The granite, pressed brick and terra cotta structure cost $150,000. Mooser II’s work still extant near Aquatic Park includes several buildings forming the Ghirardelli Company complex as well as the California Fruit Canners Association Warehouse (now housing San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park’s visitor center and the Argonaut Hotel). Mooser II also served as president of the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects in the early 1900s.

William Mooser III (1893-1969) studied at the École des Beaux Arts and later joined the family practice. Also referred to as Mooser, Jr., he designed the convenience stations, speaker towers, bleachers, and bathhouse at Aquatic Park, as well as the Santa Barbara Courthouse, now a National Historic Landmark.7

6 One of the Moosers (it was probably Mooser I as he is not referred to as Mooser Jr. in the article) made headlines in 1895 as the result of an altercation with a man named Frank Dunn outside the courthouse. Dunn had filed suit against Mooser for $6, claiming that he had helped complete drawings for Mooser, to which Mooser rebutted that Dunn was “simply a student whom he had tolerated in his office to learn the rudiments of the profession.” The court awarded Dunn $10 and court costs. See “Lost His Temper,” San Francisco Call, September 28, 1895. 7 For information on William Mooser I, see “New Western Hotel,” San Francisco Call, May 2, 1890; “William Mooser’s Death,” San Francisco Call, November 8, 1896; “He Designed the Capitol,” San Francisco Call, November 9, 1896. For information on William Mooser II, see “City Architect Ready to Resign,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 3, 1902, 5; “Public Official Who Can’t Resign,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 1902, 8; “Resignation of Mooser Accepted,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 1902, 14; “Appoints a New City AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 6)

The bathhouse interior was finished as a Federal Art Project by a number of artists. John Glut designed the light fixtures. Sargent Johnson, one of only two African-American artists working in the western Works Progress Administration program, was responsible for the intaglio carvings at the entrance surround, the tile mosaics on the north exterior façade, and two sculptures. Hilaire Hiler designed the first-floor murals and the “Prismatarium” in the lady’s lounge, assisted by Richard Ayer, Thomas Dowley, Lawrence Holmberg, and Ann Sonja Medalie. Richard Ayer was responsible for the banquet room relief work and floor, which was a shoal chart of San Francisco Bay. Shirley Staschen Triest assisted Richard Ayer, along with several other artists, with the upper floor murals. Ann Rice O’Hanlon executed a design by George Harris on the second floor using egg tempera. Robert Clark designed the radio room on the fourth floor. Beniamino Bufano sculpted animals out of red granite, including one crab, one turtle, two fish, one fly, one seal, one snake, one bear, one snail, one penguin, and one frog, along with a torso and a group sculpture of a mother and children.8

A 1937 planting plan by T. M. Grabow seems to have guided the planting plans for Aquatic Park.9 The landscape plans for Victorian Park were done by landscape architect Emmet Blanchfield with the California State Division of Beaches & Parks. His plans were incorporated with those produced by noted landscape architect Thomas Church (1902-78) by the California Department of Public Works, Division of Architecture. Church opened his practice in San Francisco in 1932. His work includes the campus master plans for the University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University, as well as the grounds of the Mayo Clinic and the General Motors Research Lab.10

Architect,” San Francisco Call, August 26, 1902; “Hospital Prize Awarded,” Los Angeles Herald, September 9, 1902; “Los Angeles County’s Million-Dollar Hospital,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 22, 1902, 2; “To Build Hotel on Taylor Street,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 1902, 14; “Building Will Grace East Line of Taylor Street,” San Francisco Call, December 17, 1902; “we’re going to dig a well” quote from “Plans for Barn Raise A Squall,” Los Angeles Herald, August 5, 1903; “County Hospital Buildings Have Peculiar Construction,” Los Angeles Herald, June 3, 1904; “Architects Hold Annual Meeting and Election,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 21, 1910, 4. For general information on the family, see “Mooser, William,” Entry by David Parry, Encyclopedia of San Francisco, available online at http://www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com/articles/m/mooserWilliam.html, accessed July 14, 2015, and Architectural Resources Group, “Aquatic Park Amphitheater Focused Historic Structure Report” (San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, San Francisco, California, 20 June 2005), 6. 8 Toogood, “A Civil History,” 146; William Mooser, Jr., Branch Manager, Works Progress Administration, “Report on Progress of the Works Program in San Francisco,” Prepared for William R. Lawson, Administrator, Northern California, January 1938, 18, 23-24; Nicholas Veronico, Gina F. Morello, Brett A. Casadonte, and Gilda Collins, Depression-Era Murals of the Bay Area (Charleston: Arcadia Publishers, 2014); “Oral History Interview with Shirley Staschen Triest, 1964 April 12-23,” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, available online at www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-shirley-staschen-triest-13257, accessed December 2015; “Oral History Interview with Ann Rice O’Hanlon, 1964, July 8,” Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, available online at www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-ann-rice-ohanlon- 12570, accessed December 2015. 9 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 23. 10 “Thomas Doliver Church,” entry, Pacific Coast Architecture Database (PCAD), available online at http://pcad.lib.washington.edu, accessed July 2015. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 7)

San Francisco architect George Quesada, Jr., designed the shelter at the Bocce Ball Courts.

3. Builder, contractor, laborers, suppliers: Site work occurred at various times between 1920 and 1929. The initial site work was contracted to Owen McHugh, the San Francisco Motor Drayage Company, and J. P. Holland, Inc. State Emergency Relief Administration workers also did some site work, including hauling materials to the site. Works Progress Administration laborers did most of the site work and construction of the structures between 1935-39.

Healy-Tibbitts Construction Company won the contract for the construction of the State Belt Railroad’s trestle, which occurred from 1922-25. The company also built the Municipal Pier from 1931-34. The parapet wall, benches, and curbs on the pier were let as a separate contract to Meyer Brothers.

Adam Arras & Son and Arthur W. Baum completed the bocce ball courts and shelter in 1960-61.

The State of California would have contracted for the work at Victorian Park, which took place in 1962, but information about the contractors has not yet been found.

Cagwin & Dorward installed the water fountain adjacent to the Bocce Ball Courts while Alfonso Pardinas did the tilework in 1967.

4. Original and subsequent owners, occupants: The City of San Francisco initially owned and operated Aquatic Park. For a brief period of time during World War II, the Federal government assumed authority but then returned it to the city. In 1972, the U.S. Congress established Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which resulted in the transfer of the park from the Recreation and Park Commission of the City and County of San Francisco to the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1977. In 1988, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park was established as an independent unit of the National Park System. Since 1947, a portion of the bathhouse has been used by the San Francisco Senior Center.

5. Periods of development

a. Original plans and construction: There were a number of early designs for the proposed aquatic park created for illustration and planning purposes, and these designs helped inform the final plans that became reality. Edward L. Frick won first prize in a contest to produce the best sketch of an aquatic park if the 1912 bond measure passed. Frick’s sketch was made from a high vantage point and included a protective breakwater for the cove. A rendering in a 1916 Recreation League Bulletin showed a Beaux Arts influenced design with a pavilion centered on the cove, dense vegetation, and winding paths. A pier extended at an angle into the bay, and the opening to the AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 8)

cove was large enough to admit yachts rather than being enclosed with a breakwater.11

In 1920, John Punnett completed plans for the proposed park at the request of the city’s Bureau of Engineering. That same year, the City Engineer’s Office sponsored a design contest. Because the judges could not decide on a clear first- prize winner, the first and second prizes were combined and awarded to Horace G. Cotton and George M. Cantrell (for their joint submission) and Ernest E. Weihe. Third prize went to Lawrence Kruse, fourth to Ferdinand F. Amandes, and fifth to Walter Baumberger. Cotton’s and Cantrell’s entry showed a curving breakwater, with a series of Mediterranean Revival-style buildings lining a terrace set back from the shoreline. A beach with a circular structure in the center was drawn, as well as a pier at the location of Hyde Street. Trees planted at regular intervals lined Jefferson, Beach, and Hyde streets around the park. The west end of the site near Van Ness Avenue consisted of lawn and plantings.12 [See Figure 1, E. Supplemental Material]

The 1923 Bakewell, Brown, and Bauer plan, which was undoubtedly influenced by Edward Frick, Ernest Weihe, and Lawrence Kruse, who had all submitted early designs and were all working at Bakewell & Brown at that time, included two curving piers ending in bulbous terminals sheltering the cove. The pier on the west side would be used for fishing while the one on the east was considerably wider and included a planted area in the center. A central circular structure was centered on the beach, with a series of buildings behind. The park would be lushly vegetated and have paths for strolling.

Punnett was retained again in 1932 to create the final site plan. This version included a “boulevard” along the shore with a bathhouse. A railroad trestle at the west end of the park led to the railroad tunnel. The curving “Recreation Pier” extended along the west edge of the cove. Another pier extended along the east edge of the cove and was labeled “Amusement Pier,” much like the Bakewell, Brown, and Bauer plan. There would also be a boat landing and municipal boathouse in the park.13

11 “Yachtsmen for Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Call, December 17, 1912; “Five Sketches Were Selected as the Best,” San Francisco Call, December 17, 1912; Mother’s Club Number, Recreation League Bulletin, III, no. 7 (San Francisco, February 1916): 3. 12 Photo ID AAA-6901, n.d., in San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, available online at http://sflib1.sfpl.org:82/record=b1002012, accessed June 2015, the notes entry for this record states that the names listed below the first prize plan are Horace George Cotton and George M. Cantrell; Photo ID AAA-6903, n.d., in San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, available online at http://sflib1.sfpl.org:82/record=b1002014; “Cotton and Cantrell Tied for Park Plans,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 7, 1920, 4. 13 John M. Punnett, C.E., “Plan of Proposed Aquatic Park, San Francisco, Cal.,” Prepared for Aquatic Park Committee, Feb. 1932, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park [hereafter cited as SFMNHP]. See also, Punnett, Parez & Hutchison, “Plan of Aquatic Park, San Francisco, Showing Proposed Change of Location, State Belt R.R.,” November 20, 1933, August 7, 1934, October 11, 1934, and February 1, 1935. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 9)

From 1933 to 1935, various proposed changes to the site plan were made, the most significant of which was a proposal to re-route the railroad tracks from the promenade to parallel Beach Street, behind the bathhouse. The tracks would then curve to the west of the bathhouse and cross Van Ness Avenue at the railroad tunnel.

The final 1936 site plan was much like the previous designs with an important shift in architectural styling to Streamline Moderne. The park continued to be centered on the cove to provide active water recreational opportunities. A concrete pier curved around the west side of the cove in a semicircle with a convenience station and transformer vault planned for the end. The pier was planned to have sidewalks flanking the roadway and “electroliers” at regular intervals providing illumination. The west boundary of the park was Van Ness Avenue, lined with sidewalks, lawns, and trees. East of the pier was a structure in the water indicated as “Rowing Unit No. 2.” The lot between Van Ness Avenue and Beach Street contained the City Pumping Station, indicated as the site of a proposed children’s playground. The cove itself was lined with a rubble masonry seawall and a promenade. The State Belt Railroad tracks were incorporated into the promenade, making them a prominent feature of the shoreline. Gently curving paved walkways traversed the park, providing access to the various structures. At the east and west sides of the park, circular buildings indicated as convenience stations and lifeguard lookouts were planned, along with speaker towers. Centered on the cove was the bathhouse (labeled as the bathing pavilion), the dominant structure of the landscape, flanked on either side by ramps and then bleachers. Under the west bleachers was a women’s dressing room while the men’s dressing room was located under the east bleachers. To the east of the east convenience station and situated on the shore were the buildings used by the rowing clubs, along with their handball courts and wharfs.14 [See Figure 2, E. Supplemental Material]

While the Punnett plan outlined the basic spatial organization and location of structures and the circulation pattern, it did not provide many landscaping details. There was an allée of trees on Van Ness Avenue with groupings of vegetation defining boundaries and walkways as well as the foundations of buildings. The more detailed landscape plan was developed in 1937 by the San Francisco City Office of Park Commissioners. Assistant Superintendent T. M. Grabow was supervisor. This probably served as the basis for the planting plan for the site.15

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) progress report indicated construction of the “public playground for water sports” would require 3,250 cubic yards of masonry rubble sea wall, one bathhouse, two boat houses, two life-saving stations, 101,000 square feet of paved promenade, 1,400 linear feet of railroad

14 John M. Punnett, Board of Park Commissioners, “Plan of Aquatic Park, San Francisco, Cal.,” January 10, 1936, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP. 15 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 23. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 10)

tracks, 20,000 cubic yards of excavation and fill, a flood light system for night swimming and rowing, and an approach wharf for the school boat house. William Mooser III designed these buildings at the park, the centerpiece of which was the bathhouse.16

The original 1961 shelter at the Bocce Ball Courts in the southwest corner of the park consisted of 20' tall precast reinforced-concrete columns faced with an exposed aggregate finish supporting an undulating glue-laminated roof. The 2'-6"- wide columns narrowed to 1'-4" wide about 3'-6" down from the top of the column. The roof consisted of a structural frame and tie rods.17

The 1961 plan for the waiting station at the cable car turnaround was a circular pavilion on cobblestone paving. The roof structure consisted of 4 x 6 beams and 2 x 6 purlins forming a dodecagon with metal-covered wood battens on the exterior. The roofing material was metal with lap seam joints. A mermaid roof ornament to be supplied by the state and installed by the contractor would be placed at the roof’s center. The posts supporting the pavilion roof had decorative knee braces. Tempered glass and medium-density plywood with a painted decoration formed the walls. The benches were cast iron with decorative legs and seat dividers and had white oak slats for the seats and backs. A note on the drawings stated: “cast iron bench legs and seating divider casting patterns are available for use from the maritime museum located in San Francisco, Calif. Contractor shall obtain sample bench from the museum on a loan basis and return upon the completion of its use. This bench consists of a left and right end segments, one center leg segment and two seating divider segments.”18

The 1961 planting plan for Victorian Park provides the details of the original landscape plan. Thirteen Pittosporum undulatum (mock orange) were placed at regular intervals along Jefferson Street. At the northeast corner of the park was an existing sewage pump, which was screened by six Araucaria araucana (monkey puzzle tree), nineteen Melaleuca nesophila (pink melaleuca) shrubs, seven Escallonia rubra (crimson spire), and seven Callistemon lanceolatus (bottlebrush). The remainder of this area, bounded by pathways and sidewalks, was planted in ground cover and lawn. The northern portion of Victorian Park was lawn with pathways crossing it and punctuated by small planting beds. A planting bed on Jefferson Street was ringed with twenty-six Juniperus sabina tamariscifolia (Tamarix juniper), a low-growing evergreen shrub. Another rectangular bed lining a pathway was also planted with twenty-two Juniperus sabina tamariscifolia. The diagonal path extending between the promenade along

16 Mooser, “Report on Progress,” 18. 17 George Quesada AIA, “Facilities Development, Bocce Ball Courts, Phase II,” Recreation & Park Department, City & County of San Francisco, Approved 1951, Sheet 2 of 3, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP. 18 State of California, Department of Public Works, Division of Architecture, Sacramento, “Cable Car Waiting Station, Maritime Plaza (Victorian Park), Maritime State Historical Monument, San Francisco,” June 30, 1961, Sheet 11 of 11, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 11)

the beach and the west end of the Victorian Park plaza was lined with planting beds. The east bed contained three Pittosporum undulatum and Juniperus sabina tamariscifolia to create a “shrubby bank cover.” The two west beds adjoining the bleachers, one of which was rectangular and one of which was L-shaped, contained ground cover of Vinca minor along with Escallonia rubra and Pinus radiata (Monterey pine). Curved beds between the Victorian Park promenade and the lawn area to the north contained Juniperus sabina tamariscifolia with bark mulch specified to be spread in a 10'-wide perimeter, and the center mulched in wood shavings. Araucaria araucana provided shade.

The promenade at the upper part of Victorian Park was laid out in a formal, geometric pattern with beds and rows of trees. At the west end of the promenade, near the East Speaker Tower, were two beds containing Vinca minor, two existing pines that were to be retained, and Escallonia rubra. Three beds placed at the end of the promenade in a circle to mirror the pavilion and cable car turnaround at the opposite end of the promenade contained Agapanthus africanus (blue African lilies) and Cornus Florida (flowering dogwood). The central beds of the promenade contained Fragaria chiloensis (beach strawberry), with tree wells containing Pittosporum undalutum placed at regular intervals on both sides of the promenade. Separating the promenade from the public sidewalk of Beach Street were three beds of varying sizes planted with Agapanthus africanus in the centers and lined with Juniperus sabina tamariscifolia, Pelargonium peltatum (an ornamental geranium), Coprosma baueri (now an endangered shrub), and Chamaecyparis lawsoniana nidiformis (an evergreen shrub). The slope below the cable car turnaround had a stairway at the center with beds on either side planted with Juniperus sabina tamariscifolia and a few Pittosporum undulatum along the edges for shade.19

The specifications for Victorian Park’s construction indicated that 10" of topsoil would be placed in planting and lawn areas. The lawn was to be 20 percent Kentucky blue, 40 percent creeping red fescue, and 40 percent chewings fescue, mulched with peat moss. Twenty-five unspecified trees were to be planted in the tree wells; they were to be 10' tall from tip to the ground with trunks no less than 1' diameter. The landscape was to be watered by a sprinkler irrigation system.

Concrete used in the park was specified as a five bag mix, except curbs, which were to be a six bag mix of grey cement. Concrete was to have lamp black added so it would be uniform in color. Concrete walks along city streets and near the sewage pumping station plan were to be finished with a bristle brush run transversely across the walk. There was to be a ¼" expansion joint every 30'. The concrete slab was to have a “Victorian” finish, referring to a smooth, even surface “showing a large percentage of exposed sand particles.” The concrete used in the

19 State of California, Department of Public Works, Division of Architecture, Sacramento, “Planting Plan, Maritime Plaza (Victorian Park), Maritime State Historical Monument, San Francisco,” June 30, 1961, Sheet 7 of 11, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 12)

steps, planter boxes, and retaining walls would have a coarse finish for the exposed surfaces.

The cobblestone-surfaced pavements were to have basalt rock pavers, like those used throughout the city, set in a sand/mortar bed of a 2" minimum thickness, and the pavers were supposed to touch. Those cobblestones used in the concrete paved area would be mortared in place. The cobblestone surface in the bench area was specified as being laid in a sand bed with sand between joints. Street furniture included cast-iron benches, newels, stair balustrades, tree guards, and grates, as well as gas lamps.20

One of the last structures installed in Aquatic Park was a memorial drinking fountain in 1967. The circular fountain was designed with an exposed concrete base comprised of rectangular concrete blocks and a sand-blasted finish, while the top was glass mosaic. There was a central drain and four “deck mounted bubblers.” The fountain was located on cobblestone paving to the northeast of the Bocce Ball Courts. A bronze plaque reading: “Gift of May J. McLean, 1883-1938, In Memory of Her Family, Pioneers of San Francisco, Grandparents John and Marie Phillipi, Parents Joseph R. and Henrietta McLean” would be mounted on the base.21

b. Changes and additions: The park and its structures retain a high degree of integrity, but the landscaping has become greatly simplified over time to reduce maintenance costs. The biggest change to the park was the realignment of the Powell & Hyde cable car line in 1982. The cable car line used to enter Victorian Park from Hyde Street at a 90- degree angle so that the terminus was at the pavilion. The tracks were changed to instead enter the park at 45-degree angle, necessitating a reconfiguration of the plaza and replacement of the plantings.22

The pocket park off Van Ness Avenue is another area with substantial change. As originally designed in the 1970s by National Park Service landscape architect John B. Sage, the park featured four earthen berms and a paved, semi-circular area lined with benches and a planting bed of lilies. Twelve Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Palo Alto’ (sweet gums), nine Pinus Canariensis (Canary pines), and one Salix babylonica (weeping willow) shaded the park. Most of the trees are now gone, as are the benches and planting bed.23

20 Division of Architecture, Department of Public Works, Sacramento, California, “Specifications for Maritime Plaza (Victorian Park), Maritime State Historical Monument, San Francisco, California,” Work Order No. 4640SC, June 1961, in Folder: San Francisco Recreation and Park Department-Specifications (1961) in HDC 1058 (SAFR 1375), San Francisco Recreation & Park Department Specifications Collection, SFMNHP. 21 City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Works, Bureau of Architecture, “Aquatic Park, Memorial Drinking Fountain, Plan Elevations & Details,” June 24, 1967, Sheet A-1, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP. 22 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 40. 23 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 89-90. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 13)

In 1993, the bocce ball court shelter was re-roofed. The work by Transwestern Construction included removing the existing corrugated-plastic roof, glue- laminated wood beams and purlins, and the gutters and downspouts. The concrete pylons were cleaned. New tube steel trusses were manufactured and installed, along with a new corrugated-metal roof, gutters, and downspouts.24

In 1993, the park installed covers over the skylights behind the bleachers. From 1998-2002, Moffatt & Nichol Engineers undertook a two-stage resurfacing project of bleachers and ramps to repair cracking and spalling concrete. A 2006 assessment of the bleachers noted the east bleachers were severely deteriorated, with portions that needed to be removed. From 2006-08, the bathhouse windows and roof were replaced, and from 2009-10, seventy percent of the east bleacher was replaced, while the west bleacher was repaired. In addition, water infiltration necessitated the removal of the original glass block and steel frame skylights and replacement with concrete ones that matched the historic design. The concrete ramps flanking the bathhouse were also replaced.25

B. Historical Context: Early Site History The site of what would become Aquatic Park was called Punta Medanos (Sand Dune Point) or Black Point Cove (due to the contrast of the vegetation and rock with the white sand). The Spanish recognized the strategic value of the site and built a battery there. The battery was later abandoned with the transfer of California to Mexico, but the strategic value of the site was still recognized. President Millard Fillmore authorized the creation of military reservations in this area in 1850 and 1851. Undeterred by the designation as a military reservation, private industries and residences were constructed along the cove in the nineteenth century. By 1869, there had been so much filling activity to accommodate development that the cove shoreline extended out an additional 20'. Examples of the industrial activities taking place at the site included John Bensley of the San Francisco Water Works building a flume to carry water to Russian Hill in 1857. This company later consolidated with Spring Valley Water Works, forming the Spring Valley Water Company, and a pumping station was erected west of the cove in 1865 in the general area of the Bocce Ball Courts. Thomas Selby of the Selby Smelting & Lead Company built a smelter at the edge of the cove near Hyde and Beach streets, which was gone by 1885. Later, the California Fruit Canners Association built a warehouse at that location (now the site of the Argonaut Hotel and the park’s visitor center). In 1893, the Ghirardelli Company established its business on Beach Street.26

24 Series 2.04, Files 002.006-003, Box 027, in HDC 1609, (SAFR 23821), SFMNHP. 25 Architectural Resources Group, “Aquatic Park Amphitheater Focused Historic Structure Report,” San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, San Francisco, California, June 20, 2005, 12-13; engineering-environmental Management, Inc., “Environmental Assessment: Rehabilitate Failing Amphitheater Structure in Aquatic Park National Historic Landmark District,” April 2006. 26 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 10; James Delgado, “Aquatic Park Historic District,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination, February 1984, 2; James Delgado, “Pioneers, Politics, Progress and Planning: The Story of San Francisco’s Aquatic Park, Historic Structures Report,” (January 1981), 10-26, in SFMNHP. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 14)

Even with the industrial and residential development that had congested the shoreline, the site was identified as an ideal location for a waterfront park due to the sheltered cove and the natural sand beach. This was facilitated by a Congressional act changing the boundaries of the San Jose Military Reservation to exclude the cove in 1870. The idea of creating a park was formalized in 1866 when famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted recommended creating a waterfront park at this location as part of a larger plan for the City of San Francisco. In May 1904, the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) hosted a reception for Daniel Burnham, who presented his ideas for beautifying the city. Burnham also identified the cove as an ideal location for a “bay shore park.” The cove had long served as an informal recreational area for city residents as well. In the late nineteenth century, the Neptune Bath House, Golden Gate Sea Baths, and the Sheltered Cove Baths were established at the site. These businesses closed in the late nineteenth century due to competition from other enclosed bathhouses in the city like Sutro Baths. Recreational boating and swimming clubs moved to this site after being forced from their location at Mission Bay by the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club (established 1877) opened a bathhouse at the foot of Van Ness Avenue in 1895, followed by the Ariel Rowing Club (established 1877, later called the San Francisco Rowing Club until its closure in 1977), and the South End Boat Club (established 1873, now called the South End Rowing Club) in 1909. The clubs would become vocal advocates for the preservation of the site as a park. It would be several decades, however, before an aquatic park was fully realized.27

Despite the recreational use of the area, fill continued to be dumped along the cove’s shoreline in the early twentieth century. After the April 18, 1906, earthquake, a reported 15,000 truckloads of building rubble (including the bricks from the Palace Hotel, a luxurious 1875 hotel that burned after the earthquake) were dumped on the beach. The U.S. Senate authorized the Southern Pacific Railroad to bore a tunnel under Fort Mason to provide access to the proposed Fort Mason transportation facilities comprised of docks and warehouses in 1908, which spurred park supporters to found the Aquatic Park Improvement Organization the following year. The organization argued that “San Francisco is the only city of any magnitude in the United States possessing a water front which does not boast of an aquarium and a water park, and local lovers of aquatics are at a loss to understand why they themselves have been so tardy in advocating one.” Ideas for park amenities included a landing place for yachts and space for rowing, attendants to insure the safety of boaters and swimmers, a public bathhouse and gymnasium, and landscaping of lawn and trees. The organization stated that these improvements would allow more residents (particularly children) to learn to swim so that a “new era of health and vigor will be initiated.” The Aquatic Park Improvement Organization was successful in lobbying the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to introduce bond legislation to fund the purchase of land for the park, but the issue failed a public vote. At the same time, there was legislation enacted during this time that allowed for the eventual establishment of the park.28

27 “Would Make a Fairer City,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 8, 1904, 33; “Cultural Landscape Report,” 9-12; Toogood, “A Civil History,” 116-121; Delgado, “Pioneers,” 35-36; Delgado, “Dream,” 4. 28 “Those Who Swim, Row or Sail Are Boosting for Votes for Aquatic Park Bond Issue,” The San Francisco Call, June 13, 1909; “Result of Bond Issue,” San Francisco Call, June 23, 1909; Toogood, “A Civil History,” 121-122; quotes from “Seek Water Front Reserve for Sports,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 21, 1909, 9; “Harbor Board Can Not Block,” San Francisco Call, December 23, 1908. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 15)

Undeterred by the bond failure, supporters for the establishment of an aquatic park continued their efforts. The Recreation League of San Francisco (made up of more than fifty men’s and women’s groups) organized the city’s first annual aquatic day on June 16, 1912, to show “San Francisco’s interest in the movement to establish a recreation beach under municipal control where young and old mermaid and mermen may disport themselves in healthy diversion with Father Neptune.” Aquatic day events included rowing and swimming races, diving, and a parade of floats and decorated watercraft.29

The North Beach Promotion Association and the women’s auxiliary of the Recreation League continued lobbying the Board of Supervisors to issue a bond for the creation of the park. On November 12, 1912, the board approved a bond issue that would include $800,000 for the aquatic park. It is significant that women, having just achieved the right to vote in California the year before, were instrumental in the efforts to establish an aquatic park. The women’s auxiliary of the Recreation League and North Beach’s Vittoria Colonna Club, for example, formed a committee to advocate for the bond measure, noting the potential benefits to children. In opposition to these Progressive arguments about the need for public recreation, there were arguments that other improvements were of greater necessity. A San Francisco Chronicle editorial caustically noted,

of course an aquatic park is just the thing that everybody has been wanting these many years. It becomes almost unbearable at times to wake up in the night and think that San Francisco has no aquatic park. Of course, there is the ocean beach, which is all right in a way; and there is the Presidio, and in fact, a good deal of marine view scattered all over the city, but no aquatic park. There isn’t a doubt but that every taxpayer in the city will be willing to go without a few sowers and a few new schoolhouses and be content with unrepaired streets if San Francisco can only have an aquatic park.30

Another opinion was that the upcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition would result in a potential aquatic park site. The 1912 bond failed as well, because while the official vote had majority approval, it failed to meet the two-thirds requirement.31

Although two bond issues did not pass, the Board of Supervisors continued to support the establishment of an aquatic park, recognizing that the cove was the “only place in the City and County of San Francisco suitable or that could possibly be used for aquatic purposes, and notwithstanding the fact that San Francisco is a seaport town and almost entirely surrounded by water there is not within its boundaries a single place where citizens can safely enjoy boating or

29 “Aquatic Carnival Great Success: San Francisco Shows Play Spirit,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 17, 1912, 11. 30 “Municipal Unthrift Proposed in Borrowing for More Parks,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1912, 9. 31 “North Beach to Rally for Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Call, September 18, 1912; “Women Work Hard for Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Call, December 16, 1912; “City Needs No More Parks at Present,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 16, 1912, 6; “Women Aid Campaign Work for Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Call, December 18, 1912; “More Parks Are Luxuries the City Cannot Afford,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 18, 1912, 27; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco 11, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1916); “Two Only of Bond Measures Ratified,” San Francisco Call, December 21, 1912; “Official Count Defeats Bonds,” San Francisco Call, December 27, 1912. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 16)

swimming or aquatic sports except in the said cove.” In May 1913, the board resolved to ask that the state-owned submerged lots in the cove be set aside for recreational use. The board also requested that the State of California’s Attorney General take action to prevent continued dumping.32

While the board had committed itself to protecting the site, there were other entities destroying it. The U.S. Army was still dumping debris and fill on the west side of the cove as part of the construction of a seawall and extension of McDowell Avenue to Van Ness Avenue and into Fort Mason in 1914. The San Francisco Recreation League petitioned the Board of Supervisors to issue an injunction against the army’s dumping activities. The sand beach, by this time, was practically nonexistent having been covered by tons of rubble and debris. The army was not the only culprit. In January 1914, the Recreation League filed an injunction against the Southern Pacific Railroad and other private land owners to prevent the continued dumping. The league also requested that a permit issued by the Board of Supervisors to J. P. Holland allowing the contractor to build a spur track for hauling dirt for filling operations be revoked. Their case was bolstered by a Supreme Court decision ruling that tidewater land was state property. The State Belt Line Railroad, backed by the Army and the Panama Pacific Fair Committee, further marred the landscape by building a railroad trestle that extended across the water to a tunnel at the foot of Van Ness Avenue as part of the extension of its line in 1914. This action angered the rowing clubs, whose access to the water was interrupted by the railroad trestle and other aquatic park supporters, and seems to have been the final impetus needed for coalescing support for the creation of an aquatic park at the site. Various organizations, including the Recreation League, North Beach Improvement Club, multiple rowing clubs, and the Pacific Athletic Association sent telegrams protesting the activities to California Congressmen.33

State Belt Railroad The construction of the railroad trestle across the cove was part of an extension of the State Belt Railroad. The State Board of Harbor Commissioners, whose authority extended to all property below the mean low-water line, had proposed a belt railroad as early as 1872. It was not until March 1889, however, that the California state legislature approved its construction with the State Board of Harbor Commissioners identified as the owner. The purpose of this line, as defined in the enabling legislation, was to provide rail transportation between the piers along the city’s waterfront and various trunk lines. Another motivation for its creation was the state’s desire to keep the “powerful Southern Pacific from getting all the switching business….The California State Belt Railroad controlled the waterfront and turned over traffic to the competing railroads—the SP, Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, Western Pacific, Ocean Shore and the Northwestern Pacific.”34 Referred to as “Wooden Axle Line,” “Toonerville Trolley,” or “Fetch-

32 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 8, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1913). 33 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 14; “Campaign to Save Black Point Cove,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1913, 72; “May Secure New Pleasure Beach,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 30, 1913, 17; “Begin Suit Over Black Point Cove,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 11, 1914, 68; “Protest Against Filling Up Cove,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 1914, 35. 34 Harre W. Demoro, “End of Line for Belt Railroad,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1993, in Folder: California Railroad, State Belt Railroad in San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library [hereafter cited as SFPL]. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 17)

and-carry Line,” the State Belt Railroad functioned as “a locomotive middleman responsible for seeing that the big line railroad cars entrusted to it are shunted to their destinations and returned, either full or empty, to the originating line.”35

The construction of the State Belt Railroad along the San Francisco waterfront required huge amounts of fill and construction of a retaining sea wall; by the mid-1890s, fifteen blocks had been built. The railroad was dedicated in March 1913 with numerous officials in attendance, but it was not yet complete. The upcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition provided the impetus to extend the line to Fort Mason, west of the cove. On November 22, 1913, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a plan for a $300,000 tunnel under Fort Mason to provide rail access to the Panama-Pacific Exposition site and the U.S. Army docks further down the shore. In 1915, with an approved plan by the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, the contractors dumped the spoils from the excavation of the 17' wide, 22' tall, and 1,500' long tunnel along the west shore of the cove. Angered by the erection of the trestle and U.S. Army dumping activities, the San Francisco Recreation League, North Beach Improvement Association, the rowing clubs, and other groups protested the actions while the Board of Supervisors considered legal action.

By 1922, the State Belt Railroad extended 54.62 miles. With the onset of the Great Depression, traffic declined but picked up again during World War II as the line transported troops to Fort Mason and to the hospital at the Presidio. In 1960 the railroad reportedly operated with five crews a day, averaging 170 cars and serving three districts (Aquatic Park was part of District A) with a range of industries. Railroad Superintendent J. B. Silva stated, “our crews enjoy the trip thru Aquatic Park, with its bathing beauties, weather permitting, thru tunnel to Fort Mason and thence over Marina Grove to Presidio, where we handle switching for the U.S. Government.” With the shift to container shipping, however, the railroad began to decline. The city assumed ownership in the 1960s and renamed it the San Francisco Belt Railroad. By 1973, however, the city had given up on the railroad’s profitability. The Port Commission offered it for sale at $1, and Kyle Railways, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, assumed ownership that year, but the railroad basically ceased operations by the late 1970s. San Francisco’s plans to widen the Embarcadero and extend street car lines to Fisherman’s Wharf resulted in the removal of large swaths of railroad track beginning in 1991.36

Creating a Park While the erection of the trestle and massive dumping activities by the State Belt Railroad seemed to have permanently destroyed the potential to create a park at the site, advocates continued their campaign. Starting in 1913, the South End Rowing Club and the San Francisco Recreation League petitioned the Board of Supervisors to authorize a land exchange with the Southern Pacific Railroad, which also spurred more decisive action about the establishment of

35 Stanleigh Arnold, “The Embarcadero Limited,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 30, 1950, 2 in Folder: California Railroads, State Belt Railroad, in San Francisco History Center, SFPL. 36 Information on the State Belt Railroad from: “The State Belt Railroad, Serving Port of San Francisco,” typescript manuscript, from talk by J.B. Silva, Superintendent, State Belt Railroad, August 1960, “our crews enjoy” quote from pp 3-4, in Folder: California Railroads, State Belt Railroad, in San Francisco History Center, SFPL; Demoro, “End of Line for Belt Railroad”; William H. and Michelle S. Kaufman, The State Belt: San Francisco’s Waterfront Railroad (Berkeley and Wilton, CA: Signature Press, 2013); “Harbor Celebration Will be Elaborate,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 28, 1913, 17; Arnold, “The Embarcadero Limited,” 2. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 18)

the park. The land proposed was a parcel at the foot of Van Ness Avenue owned by the Southern Pacific to be exchanged with city-owned lots in China Basin. At the Board of Supervisors’ meeting of December 20, 1916, the Board of Arbitration presented the proposed land exchange between the city and the Southern Pacific. The city property located in China Basin and totaling 393,923 square feet was leased to the Southern Pacific and valued at $818,768.75. The Black Point Cove land owned by the Southern Pacific, totaling 678,458 square feet, was valued at $818,976.31. Louis H. Mooser, chair of the arbitration board, believed the land exchange

is perhaps the last opportunity the people have for acquiring such a park, and while it is true this exchange provides for the giving up of the property which yields the city $1500 a month income, I do not consider this an argument against its approval. The value of such improvements as Golden Gate Park or an aquatic park of the kind that this could be developed into cannot be measured by the direct return in dollars and cents. The returns are not measured in dollars and cents, but rather in the health and happiness of the people who enjoy them.37

At a special session on January 4, 1917, the Board of Supervisors met to consider the proposed aquatic park and land deal with the railroad and viewed “moving pictures showing the adaptability of Black Point Cove for aquatic park purposes” along with lantern slides of maps. Some concern about the park plans was expressed at the meeting. Dr. Charles Maguire, a property owner, noted that the railroad would have to be moved and pointed out potential problems with realigning the tracks with the Fort Mason tunnel. Dr. A. T. Leonard expressed his concern about the cleanliness of the water. No decision was made on either the park or the land deal, with the board deferring the proposal to the Joint Committee on Lands and Tunnels, Finance and Commercial Development.

Southern Pacific Railroad president William Sproule had three alternatives for consideration. In the first option, Southern Pacific could make an offer on the city’s property with no reservation. In the second option, the city would sell the land at the appraised value of $818,976.70 and lease land at Black Point Cove to the railroad with an option to purchase. The final option was the city would sell the land at the appraised valuation, and the railroad would give the city an additional $400,000 in cash and then transfer the Black Point Cove land (valued at $413,976.70) for use as a park. In February 1917 the Joint Committee reported to the Board of Supervisors that the land swap could take place, and the third option was settled upon. The holdings were to be transferred “in fee simple title and fully unencumbered; and in addition thereto pay the City the sum of $392,073.30,” which represented “the exact difference in cash value between the appraised values of the lands exchanged.” Negotiations were finally completed in May 1917, and the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the land exchange.38

37 “Clubs Indorse Aquatic Park at Black Point,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 3, 1917, 3. 38 “Chance to Get Aquatic Park is Presented City,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 1916, 11; “$10,000,000 Terminal for S.P. Is Revealed as Plan Back of Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1917, 1; “City to Make 3 Proposals to Railroad,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 1917, 11; “China Basin Black Point Swap Agree,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 14, 1917, 13; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 11, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1916); quote from Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 12, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1917). AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 19)

Attorney Daniel O’Connell attempted to stop the deal by filing a temporary injunction. O’Connell believed the land was worth more than valued for the exchange. He also thought a market and produce exchange at the site would be of more use to city residents than an aquatic park. A judge, however, ruled that the city had the authority to make the sale, and the last obstacle to the creation of the aquatic park was effectively removed.39

With the Board of Supervisors supportive of the aquatic park idea and the initial acquisition of lots from the Southern Pacific serving as the basis for the new park, additional parcels of land were acquired through the 1920s. In 1917, the Board of Supervisors voted to condemn a portion of Block 37 at the foot of Van Ness Avenue where the three rowing clubs were located, as well as the Spring Valley Water Company’s pier on the west side of the cove. Additional submerged lots on blocks 406, 427, and 430 were condemned on May 20, 1918. By 1919, the park encompassed about eight city blocks, of which less than two were above the shoreline. A proposal submitted to the legislature in 1919 suggested adding 2-1/2 submerged blocks owned by the state and within the proposed park boundaries to the park. A portion of a block at the corner of Jefferson Street and Van Ness Avenue was also proposed for purchase, as it would “give control of the present shore line for three blocks, from Van Ness avenue to Hyde street.”40 By 1925, the necessary lots for the park had been purchased. This included the 1923 acquisition of four parcels (Resolution No. 20764), the transfer of submerged land between Polk and Larkin streets from the state to the city of San Francisco (Resolution No. 18), and the outright purchase of other lots from private owners.41

As land acquisition continued, the Board of Supervisors authorized the Board of Public Works in Aquatic Park Bill No. 5361, passed on November 10, 1919, to issue a contract for the creation of plans and specifications for the proposed Aquatic Park. Civil Engineer John Punnett was contracted to develop the general design of the park, which served as the basis for a design competition sponsored by the Board of Public Works to drum up enthusiasm for the project. Prior to the design competition, the route of the State Belt Railroad through the site was tentatively determined, and a sanitary sewer system was designed to deal with the water flowing into the cove. The Bureau of Engineering also noted that “investigation of methods and equipment are now being made with reference to the sterilization and filtering of water in connection with the proposed swimming pool, the intention being to use part of the equipment of the existing high pressure pumping station at Fort Mason for this purpose,” revealing that perhaps due to the water quality of the cove, a swimming pool was seen as an alternative to accommodate swimming and diving activities. A five-person committee made up of John Reid Jr. (City Architect), M. M. O’Shaughnessy (City Engineer), Frederick H. Meyer, Arthur Brown, Jr., and J. E. Scully judged the entries, with first prize awarded jointly to Horace Cotton, George Cantrell, and Ernest Weihe. On December 16, 1922, the Board of Park Commissioners, who

39 “Urges Market Instead of an Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 1917, 9; “O’Connell Loses City Land Deal Injunction Suit,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 1, 1917, 37; Toogood, “A Civil History,” 127. 40 Toogood, “A Civil History,” 128; quote from “Aquatic Park Boosters Seek State Holdings,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 1919, 10. 41 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 18, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1923). AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 20)

were responsible for the city’s parks, authorized Bakewell, Brown, and Bauer to prepare the final plans for the park.42

Even though final plans for the park were not yet complete and funding for construction was not available, work began at the future park site. This may have been due to the continued pressure from park advocates including the 1919 formation of the Aquatic Park Welfare League, made up of a number of groups like the Pacific Association of Amateur Oarsmen, the Civic League of Improvement Clubs, San Francisco Yacht Club, Corinthian Yacht Club, Richmond Improvement Association, Polk Street Improvement Club, and the North Beach Promotion Association. One of the first contracts let for the site was to Owen McHugh for improvement of the beach on April 21, 1919. This work was completed in July and August of that year. Another of the necessary first tasks to be completed was the construction of a 15" pipe sewer on Beach Street in 1921 to reduce the amount of sewage flowing into the cove and to improve water quality. That same year, the Board of Public Works approved the City Engineer’s plans to grade the site north from Beach Street to the cove between Van Ness Avenue and Larkin Street. The Board of Supervisors allocated $25,500 for grading, and on March 2, bids for the contract opened. On March 21, the contract was awarded to San Francisco Motor Drayage Company. With a park planned for the site, the railroad tracks had to be moved from the location across the cove. Healy-Tibbitts Construction Company won the contract for the re-alignment of the tracks so that they followed the shoreline, with a trestle carrying them across the northwest corner of the cove. The work had been completed by 1922.43

In 1922, the Board of Public Works transferred jurisdiction of the park to the Park Commission. The resolution authorizing the transfer also requested that the project be completed “as soon as possible to the end that our citizens may avail themselves of the wonderful opportunities for recreation which would thereby be given them.” The transfer was accompanied by funding totaling $89,000. Unfortunately, it would be another decade before construction began in earnest.44

Integral to the new park was the proposed Municipal Pier, which would curve around the west side of the cove. The proposed location of the pier, however, was on Fort Mason’s shoreline and the same site as the existing U.S. Army Quartermaster’s wharf. As a result, the wharf would have

42 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 14, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1919); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 15, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1920); “investigation of methods” quote from Annual Report of the Bureau of Engineering of the Department of Public Works, City and County of San Francisco, Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1920, 24-25; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1922-1930, December 16, 1922. 43 “Supporters of Candidates to Hold Rallies,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 1919, 13; “Aquatic Park Plans Approved by Board,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 12, 1921, 11; Journal of Proceedings, 1919; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 16, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1921); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 17, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1922); Annual Report of the Bureau of Engineering of the Department of Public Works, City and County of San Francisco, Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1922, 23; “Important Contracts Awarded by Board,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 1921, 13. 44 Journal of Proceedings, 1922; “Park Board to Take Over S.F. Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 21, 1922, 3. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 21) to be moved west and permission obtained from the Secretary of War for the new pier. It was not until March 28, 1928, however, that Congress authorized the city to utilize a piece of shoreline at Fort Mason for the new pier. In the interim, engineer Frank G. White was retained to prepare the plans and specifications for the structure in fall 1926.45

While waiting for the War Department to sign off on the new pier, the Board of Supervisors committed to funding and completing the park thanks to the continued pressure from citizens’ groups. By 1926, the city had spent $378,799.96 on the park. In approximate amounts, this included: $10,000 to Owen McHugh for grading; $28,000 to San Francisco Motor Drayage Company for grading; $10,400 to W.J. Tobin for sewer; $18,200 to Healy-Tibbitts for the railroad trestle; $2,000 to the California State Harbor Commission for railroad tracks; $5,600 to the Park Commission for planning, surveying, and labor; and $305,100 on land purchases. Only $10,000 was appropriated for the 1926-27 fiscal year and another $10,000 for the next fiscal year, a far cry from the estimated $1.5 million needed to replace the Army wharf, build a recreational pier, pave the Van Ness Avenue extension, construct the various structures and circulation system, and landscape. Since the city could not finance the entire construction cost, the Board of Supervisors passed Resolution No. 29610 in September 1928 to put before the voters a $950,000 bond for park construction. A special election was called to approve the bond, but it failed to pass. Some funding was provided in a 1931 bond for park and square improvements.46

Despite limited funding prior to 1931, construction still continued at the park. In 1927, the boating clubs were moved east from Van Ness Avenue to the foot of Polk Street [see Figure 3, E. Supplemental Material, for a view of their original location]. J. P. Holland was contracted for site improvements at the foot of Van Ness Avenue in 1929.47

Municipal Pier Congress finally authorized the Secretary of War to permit the City of San Francisco to build, maintain, and use a recreational pier on the Fort Mason shoreline on June 8, 1931. Prior to this, however, the Board of Supervisors had awarded a contract to remove the existing ca. 1871 Quartermaster’s wharf and build a new reinforced-concrete one to the east to M. B. McGowan at

45 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 19, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1924); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 21, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1926); “Coolidge Signs S.F. Aquatic Bill,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 30, 1928, in Folder: SF Parks: Aquatic Park (pre-1949), in San Francisco History Center, SFPL; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, July 7, 1931. 46 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 21, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1926); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 22, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1927); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 23, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1928); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 24, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1929); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 26, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1931). 47 Toogood, “A Civil History,” 135-136; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 22, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1927). AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 22)

a cost of $30,357. The new wharf was conveyed to the U.S. Transport Service. Bids for the construction of the first section of the Municipal Pier opened in 1931. The Board of Park Commissioners rejected the bids of George Pollock Company, Clinton Construction Company, M. B. McGowan Inc., A.W. Kitchen & Company, and Duncanson-Harrelson. The bids of Healy- Tibbitts Construction Company and Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corporation were under consideration.48 On July 7, the committee unanimously decided to award the construction contract to Healy-Tibbitts, who had the low bid of $92,570 for bents 80-133, with $1,900 for each of the next ten bents, and $1,500 for any more after that.49

Since the new pier was to be located at the foot of Van Ness Avenue, the street had to be extended down to the pier’s entrance. Foreman Bill Hansen described the work. On August 17, twenty-two men started clearing the property from Beach Street between Polk and Larkin streets to the cove. Using a handcar borrowed from the State Belt Railroad, dirt was moved to the Van Ness Avenue extension. Fourteen men salvaged twelve railroad cars of cobbles and brought them to the site. Another twenty-five army trucks worth of cobbles were salvaged from Fort Scott for use at the site. A hastily-built cobblestone seawall and cribbing of salvaged lumber created the platform for the road extension.50

Frank G. White served as consulting engineer to the Municipal Pier project, while L. A. Smith was resident engineer. A progress report from the Park Commissioners noted that Healy-Tibbitts started work on the initial 636' of pier on August 1, 1931, building the necessary forms. On October 5, 1931, construction work started at 8:45 am with a survey crew and a floating diver moving blocks to the west side of the pier for riprap. By December, they had completed 126' of the 636' they had been contracted to erect. The concrete jackets were cast from August to October and given the necessary forty-five days of curing. By December, therefore, 100 percent of the concrete jacket castings had been finished. Pile driving started on October 6 and was 59 percent complete. The wave baffle slabs were 42 percent complete, of which 32 percent had been placed. The deck steel was 33 percent finished while the concrete deck lagged slightly behind at 31 percent.

On June 3, 1932, the board approved a resolution:

whereas the Board of Park Commissioners of the City and County of San Francisco on the 31st day of July, 1931, did enter into a contract with the Healy- Tibbitts Construction Company for the construction of 600 feet more or less of the Recreation Pier at Aquatic Park, all in accordance with the plans, drawings and specifications as prepared by Bakewell & Brown and John A. Bauer, architects, and Frank G. White and Harry E. Squire, Engineers, and whereas the provisions of this contract do permit the Park Commissioners to secure from the

48 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 26, no. 2 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1931); San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, July 6, 1931 and July 7, 1931. 49 Journal of Proceedings, 1931; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, July 6, 1931 and July 7, 1931. 50 Journal of Proceedings, 1931; “Cultural Landscape Report,” 17. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 23)

contractor the construction of additional bents on the continuation of this Pier, for the sum of $1,500 per bent.

On September 16, the city attorney affirmed the city could retain Healy-Tibbitts for the construction of the additional bents at the original contracted price without readvertising the contract. The Board of Park Commissioners, therefore, requested that $125,000 be set aside for the company to continue construction. By January 21, 1932, the pier was 1578 ½' long. In February, Healy-Tibbitts Company arranged with Granfield, Farran + Carlin to fill the back of the bulkhead. Other work that month included setting the concrete jackets and brace piles, placing baffle slabs, erecting and waterproofing the stiffening deck forms, touching up the asphalt paint below deck, and pile driving. On April 16, 1932, bents 81/82 to 67/68 were poured from 6:45 am to 2:00 pm with the deck completed at 7:00 pm. The progress report indicated “this was too large an area to pour in one day. Considerable trouble in getting satisfactory finish.” By 1933, the 1,850' pier was complete, but on January 7, 1934, Punnett, Parez & Hutchison reported that a ferry operated by the Southern Pacific-Golden Gate Ferries Company had damaged the pier. On March 15, 1934, the Board of Park Commissioners approved the extra work by Meyer Brothers to repair the structure.51

Punnett, Parez and Hutchison, Consulting Engineers, designed the pier’s concrete parapet walls, curbs, and seats. The materials required for construction included concrete, reinforcing steel, water pipes, and Oregon pine lumber. The concrete was specified to consist of cement, sand/fine aggregate, rock/coarse aggregate with a maximum size of ¾", and water. The specifications directed that the concrete be tamped into place using vibrators driven by compressed air. The reinforcing steel bars were to be structural grade that had been “rolled from new billet stock” and galvanized after cutting. The northwest side of the pier was to have electroliers on the wall. The curb located on the northwest side of the pier contained a 3" galvanized water pipe supplying water to four drinking fountains. The parapet walls would require the use of plywood forms for the interior while the outside was to be tongue-and-groove. The surface was to be rubbed with carborundum stone to remove any imperfections. Three metal forms were constructed for the seats, which were to be 1-3/4" x 13'-8" long. The seat would be Oregon pine fastened to the concrete and painted as close to the color of the concrete as possible. The contract for construction of the railings, curbs, and seats was awarded to Meyer Brothers, whose bid totaled $10,996. By March 1934, the concrete parapet wall, benches, and curbing had been finished.52

In 1933, the National Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots suggested that a double-stroke mechanical fog bell be installed at the end of the pier. The Board of Park Commissioners,

51 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, January 21, 1932, June 2, 1932, September 16, 1932, January 18, 1934, and March 15, 1934; “Progress Report on the Aquatic Park Pier,” in Folder: White, Frank G., Papers, Notebook Contents re: S.F. Aquatic Park, est. + Reports, in HDC 260 (SAFR 17393), State Board Harbor Commission Chief Engineer Frank G. White Records, SFMNHP; Journal of Proceedings, 1931. 52 “Specifications for Furnishing Materials and Construction Concrete Parapet Walls, Concrete Curbs, and Concrete Seats on Recreation Pier, Aquatic Park at the Foot of Van Ness Avenue, City and County of San Francisco,” in Folder: San Francisco Recreation and Park Department Specifications (1933-1963) in HDC 1058 (SAFR 1375), San Francisco Recreation & Park Department Specifications Collection, SFMNHP; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, August 22, 1933 and October 5, 1933. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 24)

however, decided that the signal was “purely for the convenience of the ferry company and not required by harbor regulations.” Therefore, they approved its installation, but only if the ferry company paid for the bell, which was estimated by Punnett, Parez and Hutchison to cost $700. In August, the Board of Supervisors authorized the expenditure of $7,500 of emergency funds for construction of a convenience station on the pier, which was not finished.53

The Board of Supervisors enthusiastically announced in January 1935 that the pier had “been thrown open to the use of the public and this modern, concrete structure is enjoyed daily by thousands of San Francisco fishermen.” The pier was so popular with bass fishermen that it was recommended that parts of it be treated with “Konset,” a cement finishing material, to keep it clean and sanitary.54

In 1946, an Army tug hit the pier and caused significant damage. During the ensuing assessment of the structure, Punnett, Parez and Hutchison reported in their 1947 survey that there was deterioration. They noted the need for riprap between bents 52 and 81 on the east side and between bents 36 and 88 on the west side. They deemed the condition of some bents “dangerous” and recommended closing the pier to vehicular traffic, warning “unless something is done immediately, a sudden storm may cause a collapse of this portion of the pier.” Scouring had exposed the green piles below the concrete jackets, which had attracted teredoes (saltwater clams) that were boring holes in the piles and causing the deck to sink as much as 1-1/2'. The estimated cost of riprap installation and repair was $25,000. On January 31, 1949, the Board of Supervisors appropriated $23,887 from the Emergency Reserve Fund to repair the pier, with Ben C. Gerwick, Inc. completing the work.55

Additional repairs were required in 1953 after a Luckenbach Steamship Company steamship struck the pier on February 23. The company offered to spend $5,730 to repair the pier and reimburse the city $750, the amount the city paid Punnett, Parez and Hutchison and J. E. Hayes to prepare plans and specifications for the repair work. Later work included repairs to spalled concrete, completed by Mastercraft Tile and Roofing Company of Richmond, California, in 1964.56

53 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, November 2, 1933 and December 6, 1933; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 29, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1934). 54 Quote from Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 30, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1935); San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, July 20, 1934. 55 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1947-1951, October 23, 1947 and April 27, 1949; Letter from E. Elmore Hutchison of Punnett, Parez & Hutchison to Board of Park Commissioners, September 3, 1947, in Folder: San Francisco Recreation and Park Department Specifications (1933- 1963) in HDC 1058 (SAFR 1375), San Francisco Recreation & Park Department Specifications Collection, SFMNHP; Letter from E. Elmore Hutchison of Punnett, Parez and Hutchison to Park Commission of the City and County of San Francisco, December 31, 1948, in Folder: San Francisco Parks, Aquatic, in San Francisco History Center, SFPL; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 44, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing & Publishing Company, 1949); Toogood, 155. 56 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1963-1964, October 1, 1952 and March 26, 1964; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 48, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing & Publishing Company, 1953). AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 25)

Works Progress Administration Era While the pier work progressed, the construction of the park languished. Resolution No. 1053 of the Board of Park Commissioners, approved September 30, 1933, stated

determining and declaring that public interest and necessity demand the construction and completion by the City and County of San Francisco of Municipal improvements consisting of boat houses for rowing clubs, the creation of a bathing beach, park and playground areas, a concrete wharf to facilitate auto parking, bath houses, convenience stations, service buildings, gymnasiums, hand ball courts, shower and locker rooms, solariums and club quarters, grading and rock filling, construction of concrete seawall and retaining walls and paving street promenade and sidewalk areas, relocating Belt Line Railway and creating water and electric light systems and landscape gardening at Aquatic Park, and that the estimated costs of said improvements are and will be too great to be paid out of the ordinary annual income and revenue of said city and county.57

In November 1933, the Board of Supervisors called for a special election for a $700,000 bond for the park and planned to have the National Recovery Administration pay 30 percent of labor and materials. Although other municipal bonds passed, the one financing Aquatic Park was rejected with 70,446 votes for and 72,518 against. Construction did continue with some funds from the State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA); the project was officially numbered 2-1311- 248. In November 1934, $10,000 was transferred from the SERA for salvaging basalt blocks from the San Francisco street reconstruction project and headstones from the Odd Fellows Cemetery, hauling them to the site, and building a new wall. Ultimately, the park may never have been realized if not for the Works Progress Administration.58 [See Figure 4, E. Supplemental Material]

The city requested $1,777,887 from the Works Progress Administration for the Aquatic Park project, which was given the official number of 65-3-2014. The City and County of San Francisco was designated as the sponsor. John Punnett was appointed consulting engineer due to his completion of the earlier plans for the park. On January 16, 1936, he presented a revised plan to the San Francisco City Board of Park Commissioners. This plan “introduced asymmetry and contemporary forms for the layout of the circulation system, open spaces, and planting beds. These forms were designed to complement the new Streamline Moderne architectural style of the park buildings and structures designed by architect William Mooser, Jr.” Mooser Jr. (also the III) drafted the plans for the proposed structures on the site, including the speaker towers, convenience stations, bleachers and bathhouse, with civil engineer Elmore Hutchison.59

Work started in December 1935 with 782 WPA laborers. The development of the park required massive alteration of the landscape due to the topography of the site. The bathhouse was inset

57 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, November 2, 1933. 58 Toogood, “A Civil History,” 139-140, 142; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, September 19, 1934 and November 15, 1934. 59 “Cultural Landscape Report,” quote from p. 18. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 26)

into the slope so that the south entrance was at grade with Beach Street while the north entrance was at grade with the promenade. The stepped bleachers on either side followed the slope of the site, while retaining walls and terraces provided transitional spaces to accommodate the topography. Work started with the seawall, which could only be built during low tide (around 1 and 2 am). The temporary rubble/concrete sea wall built in 1931 was demolished, and the new 2,200' sea wall was built on the same foundation. Faced in basalt blocks, the sea wall utilized 3,350 cubic yards of rubble.60

On August 7, 1936, a progress report indicated that 1,700' of seawall and 475' of terrace wall was in place, each about 90 percent complete. Of the street pavement, nearly 47,000 square feet was poured, 30,000 square feet of promenade had been graded, and more than 17,000 yards of material excavated. While site work was underway, the building plans were still being finalized. At a November 1937 meeting, the Board of Park Commissioners rejected the convenience station design as too tall. During a January 1938 meeting, they approved the speaker design and reviewed the light standard design for the park, the entrance gate to the pier, and the convenience station at the pier. The board “unanimously approved the construction by the Works Progress Administration of the foregoing items with a modernistic type of treatment, with the understanding that the final designs be submitted to and approved by Mr. John Bakewell, Jr.” Later that month, the board accepted Bakewell’s recommendations that they accept the revised convenience station plans, reject the entrance gate plans and ask for new ones, and authorize the use of regulation light standards.61

The March 1937 progress report indicated 80 percent of the retaining and sea walls had been completed, while the promenade and landscaping was estimated to be at 85 percent. The bathhouse was only 40 percent complete, and work had not yet started on relocating the rowing clubs and the railroad tracks. Nevertheless, there was considerable optimism that the work could be done by June 30, 1937, except for the bathhouse interiors. Delays were attributed to the “disagreeable personality” of the project superintendent “who did not receive much cooperation from other WPA divisions and from vendors” and consequently suffered from a shortage of skilled labor and delayed shipments of materials.62 By August 1937, construction of a temporary railroad track was being planned south of the bathhouse so that the rowing clubs could be moved. Once those buildings were gone, the railroad tracks could be located on their permanent route north of the bathhouse and extending across Van Ness Avenue. Other work underway included the construction of the east convenience station and a 24" cast-iron overflow sewer. Since the final location of the railroad tracks was “practically on top” of the concrete sewer line, a steel framework was planned for placement over the sewer. Finally, dirt from the foot of Larkin Street was moved to the front of the bathhouse for backfill. By spring 1938, the bathhouse was estimated to be 75 percent complete. Total federal funds expended on the project by 1938 were

60 Mooser, “Report on Progress,” 19; “Cultural Landscape Report,” 19; Toogood, “A Civil History,” 143. 61 Microfilm Reel No. 13-447, Roll 38, WPA, Project Folders, in Record Group 69, National Archives and Records Administration-College Park, Maryland [hereafter cited as NARA-College Park]; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1936-1939, November 30, 1937, quote from January 6, 1938, and January 20, 1938. 62 Microfilm Reel No. 13-447, Roll 38, WPA, Project Folders. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 27)

$1,065,245 with 68 percent of that spent on labor. The city contributed $59,081.63 [See Figure 5, E. Supplemental Material, for a 1936 view of the park]

While William Mooser reported in 1938 that “the Works Progress Administration has furnished the man power and money to turn the dream into a reality, every effort has been expended to bring about its completion,” the WPA terminated the Aquatic Park project in January 1939 and transferred the unfinished park to the city. The three convenience stations, estimated to be 77 percent complete, and the floodlight system, estimated to be 96 percent complete, had to be finished. The beach was not yet ready for recreation either, requiring “the removal of about 5,600 cubic yards of debris and the pumping in of about 35,000 cubic yards of sand.” The park plans called for the construction of two boathouses (one for use by the Sea Scouts and public schools and the other by the Ariel Boat Club, South End Rowing Club, and Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club) along with berths, approach wharfs, and landings, but these were never realized. Instead, the rowing clubs’ buildings were simply moved again, this time to the foot of Hyde Street.64

The unfinished park opened in January 1939. The dedication ceremony included a deed presentation, speeches by government officials, boat races, a “tub-tilting” contest, and an aquaplaning exhibition. Even as the park was being celebrated, federal investigations into the project were underway.65

One investigation was into the tangled family and business relationships of William Mooser II, William Mooser III (director of the San Francisco WPA office), and E. Elmore Hutchison (a WPA supervisor under Mooser III). Hutchison was a principal in Punnett, Parez and Hutchison, a firm that had been awarded most of the contracts for the city’s waterfront work since 1924. John Punnett, who had been contracted to design the park’s plans, was also a principal in the firm. Punnett had paid Mooser II a fee of $350/month from his contracts with the Board of Park Commissioners. Mooser III stated that he had Punnett hire his father, Mooser II, as a “consulting engineer” to help carry out his ideas that had been “incorporated in the project when he worked on its plans as a subordinate WPA architectural official.”66

While the seeming nepotism and cronyism were certainly troubling, federal officials were most interested in the use of the bathhouse. In January 1940, the Board of Supervisors announced that the “imposing Aquatic Park building has been turned over to the City by the W.P.A. and is now in full operation and affording enjoyment to thousands of persons daily.” This was a bit of an overstatement. In order to fund the completion of the bathhouse and other unfinished areas of the park, the city decided to lease the bathhouse to Leo and Kenneth Gordon for use as a private restaurant and bar, which the Gordons operated as the “Aquatic Park Casino.” (The Gordons also

63 Microfilm Reel No. 13-447, Roll 38, WPA, Project Folders; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1931-1935, May 12, 1938; Mooser, “Report on Progress,” 24; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 33, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1938). 64 Toogood, “A Civil History,” 149-151; Journal of Proceedings, 1938; quote from Mooser, “Report on Progress.” 65 “Aquatic Program Set,” unknown newspaper, January 20, 1939, in Folder: San Francisco Parks, Aquatic, in San Francisco History Center, SFPL. 66 Reel No. 13-447, Roll 38, WPA, Project Folders, RG 69, NARA-College Park. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 28)

leased one of the convenience stations for use as a concession stand.) Sculptor Beniamino Bufano, who had been commissioned to create sculptures for the bathhouse and park, refused to allow his sculptures to be put on display at the casino restaurant and complained about the lease arrangement, triggering an investigation.

The lease agreement required the Gordons to install $25,000 worth of furniture, fixtures, and equipment; no doubt the city saw this as a means of getting the interior completed without allocating public funds. The lease terms stipulated a minimum $1,000/month rent. Only a few months after the lease was signed, the Board of Supervisors considered canceling it because of the low revenues coming in from the operation. No doubt the federal investigation was also a factor. In August 1940, the supervisors canceled the lease, and the casino ceased operations in 1941. The Gordons, meanwhile, filed for bankruptcy. In Federal district court, the referee in the bankruptcy proceedings, Burton J. Wyman, dismissed the removal of the Gordons from the bathhouse and criticized the city for not collecting the rent when it was due and upholding its end of the agreement. Aquatic Park Casino ceased operations in 1941.67

In the course of the investigation, WPA official J. J. Mieldazis found significant management problems that had contributed to the delays in construction and high costs. These problems included poor supervision, a lack of completed plans so that construction proceeded at times without drawings to guide it, and 150 revisions to the building specifications. There had been at least six project superintendents, most of whom had little knowledge of the building’s purpose. Mooser II supported the WPA assessment, reporting that revisions to the plans for plumbing and electrical made it extremely “difficult to determine the exact locations of the final installations.” Finally, the city did not provide the necessary labor, funds, and interest in the project as outlined in the initial agreement with the WPA.68

The poor management of the project meant the grand visions of how the park would be utilized were not realized. There had been plans to have park staff teaching swim, dance, and bridge lessons, lifeguards, a story teller, and a game leader, but with the bathhouse in private hands and not open to the public (despite being funded by federal monies), the potential of the park to serve the residents of San Francisco was not achieved. “Aquatic Park, which has given our city fathers more headaches per gallon than a hogshead of mountain dew, still lies damply at the foot of Polk Street, of little use to man or beast. Efforts to make the $1,000,000 plant self-sustaining have proved futile to the point where litigation is about the only result to date” bemoaned one newspaper article. The casino’s closure in 1941 allowed the bathhouse to open as the Aquatic Park Recreational Center for all San Francisco residents, and the Maritime Section of the Museum of Science and Industry opened in the “Blue Room” with an exhibit of ship models. The exhibit materials had initially been collected by a committee of steamship company executives under the leadership of Edward S. Clark for an exhibit at the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition at Treasure Island. The poor condition of the beach was also corrected

67 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 35, no. 1 (San Francisco: Franklin Typesetting Corporation, 1940); Toogood, “A Civil History,” 147-148; “City to Appeal Park Decision,” unknown newspaper, n.d., in Folder: San Francisco Parks: Aquatic Park (pre-1949), in San Francisco History Center, SFPL. 68 Toogood, “A Civil History,” 147-148. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 29)

to encourage swimming. In July 1941, the city had 80 million cubic feet of sand trucked in to the park from the Union Square garage construction.69

The following month, the Board of Park Commissioners passed Resolution No. 885 allocating $7,500 to build an apron or pier(s) as needed “to correct an excess sand condition on the beach at Aquatic Park immediately adjacent to the three rowing clubs there located, viz., South End, Dolphin and Ariel Rowing Clubs, and to do such other work as is necessary to provide said rowing clubs access to the water for the purpose of facilitating the launching of boats in conjunction with the activities of the said rowing clubs.” The beach was eroding at the southwest corner of the park with the sand being pushed to the southeast corner near the boating clubs. The erosion at the southwest corner was undermining the seawall because it exposed the wall to the action of the tide and waves. In a discussion with members of the park commission, the engineer of the Harbor Commission, and others, it was decided that the seawall had to be strengthened at that location due to concerns about collapse. The strengthening was to be done by constructing three groins using plans developed by a Mr. Wilder of the Bureau of Public Works. Once the groins had been built, the sand would be pushed from the southeast corner to the southwest. Funds totaling $821.60 for repair of the seawall were approved.70 Even with an improved beach, the water itself was not safe for swimming due to the discharge of untreated sewage into the cove. It was closed to bathing until July 1953, but swimming again had to be banned from 1961- 70 because of pollution.71

Nevertheless, the pier was extremely popular with fishermen, and there were various events held at the park, including a 1938 water carnival held by the San Francisco Junior Chamber of Commerce to raise money for the Community Chest. Festivities included a swimming horse known as “Blackie,” who was slated to compete against area swimmers. A 1939 “aquatic fete” had members of the South End, Ariel, and Dolphin rowing clubs engaged in skiff races, canoe tilting, and tub races. A highlight of the fete was the “scene laid in Aquatic Park cove portraying the traditional landing of Columbus with his fleet of three ships.” During a 1945 observance of Harbor Day, swimmers and divers from area swim clubs competed in various events, along with a “large contingent of service men.” Events included fire boat drills, rope climbs, water skiing, whale boat races, bos’ns chair drill, tub races, and “a tug of war between a Coast Guard team and muscle men from the Maritime Officers Training School.”72

69 Quote from Dudley Hall, “Don’t Mention It,” October 26, 1939; “Exhibit of Boats is Favored for Aquatic Park,” unknown newspaper, April 11, 1941; “Aquatic Park Million Dollar Plan Would Make Ideal ‘Hall of Ships’,” February 20, 1941; and “Old and Modern Ship Models Fill Aquatic Park Room,” May 6, 1941, all in Folder: San Francisco Parks: Aquatic Park (pre-1949), in San Francisco History Center, SFPL; Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 37, no. 1 (San Francisco: A. F. Heuer, successor to Franklin Typesetting Corporation, 1942). 70 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1943-1946, December 14, 1943, January 13, 1944, and January 31, 1944. 71 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 29-30; Toogood, “A Civil History,” 160. 72 “Muni Pier is Popular with Anglers,” unknown newspaper, July 30, 1938; “Horse Vs. Man in Swim Race,” unknown newspaper, November 18, 1938; “Bay Area Clubs to Hold Aquatic Fete,” unknown newspaper, October 14, 1939; “Stars Mingle at Aquatic Park,” unknown newspaper, August 10, 1945, all in Folder: SF Parks: Aquatic Park (pre-1949), in San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 30)

World War II and the Park With the onset of World War II, the military began using the park. By 1941, the Battery B, 216th Coast Artillery Battalion were housed in the bathhouse. The Board of Park Commissioners authorized federal use of the pier and park area at their February 13, 1942, meeting, and in May, the city entered into a year-to-year lease of the site. Dances for servicemen were held in the bathhouse on the first and third Wednesdays of the month on the third floor while the fourth floor was designated as a lounge for service men. As noted in the supervisor’s proceedings, “early in the year an influx of military units into San Francisco created a problem as to where to bivouac the thousands of soldiers. This condition was alleviated when the Park Commission entered into lease agreements with the United States government for the use of certain park properties,” including Aquatic Park.73

Raymond Rock who served with Battery B, 216th Coast Artillery Battalion (a National Guard unit from Minnesota) recalled his time at the park. After training at Camp Haan in Riverside, California, the unit traveled by convoy to San Francisco and bunked at the bathhouse. Rock remembered his quarters were in the women’s dressing room. A hospital was located in the museum office, while the kitchen and mess were in the basement. The battalion’s chaplain lived in the East Convenience Station. On the empty lot east of Larkin Street and bounded by Jefferson, Hyde and Beach streets, the army set up its motor pool. A small wharf and frame structure was built at the west end of the cove near the West Convenience Station and Municipal Pier in 1943-44; this would later be used by the Sea Scouts (a Boy Scouts of America program). By 1948, the U.S. Army had returned the park to the city.74

Civilian use of the park also continued during World War II. In summer 1944, the Board of Supervisors and the Board of Park Commissioners approved the concession agreement with Solly Schuman and Barton Harris, who wished to rent the “Round House” (the West Convenience Station) and operate a concession stand. Schuman and Harris planned to sell popcorn, peanuts, sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, soft drinks, cigarettes, cigars, candy, gum, and ice cream. The agreement stipulated they would pay 10 percent of their gross revenues, or a minimum of $100/month.75

73 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 37, no. 1 (San Francisco: A. F. Heuer, successor to Franklin Typesetting Corporation, 1942); Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 38, no. 1 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing and Publishing Company, 1943). 74 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 31-32, 36, 72; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1940-1942, February 13, 1942, July 10, 1942, and August 27, 1942; “Aquatic Park building in wartime,” Raymond Rock, interviewed by Karl Kortum, July 10, 1987, in Folder: Karl Kortum Collection, Raymond Rock, 1987, Box 5, in HDC 1084 (SAFR 18350), Karl Kortum Collection, SFMNHP; “Two Request Use of Aquatic Park,” unknown newspaper, November 29, 1944 in Folder: S.F. Parks, Aquatic, in San Francisco History Center, SFPL. 75 Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco 39, no. 2 (San Francisco: The Recorder Printing & Publishing Company, 1944); San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1943-1946, July 26, 1944 and August 7, 1944. The West Convenience Station remained a concession stand for an extended period of time, with Harry and Bessie Schuman operating it as S&S Catering in 1964 under a five-year contract. See San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1963-1964, August 13, 1964. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 31)

With the park’s return to the city, the San Francisco Senior Center was established in the bathhouse in 1947, making it the “oldest, private, non-profit senior center in the United States.”76 Additional amenities and plans for empty lots were also considered during the 1940s and 1950s. The southwest corner of the park was informally used for bocce ball after the pumping station was removed some time later. A 1948 proposal considered recreational uses at the northeast corner of the park at the intersection of Jefferson and Hyde Streets. The pumping house remained, screened by vegetation, with bocce ball courts nearby, and a small children’s playground with a sandbox, slides, merry-go-round, rings, and benches was proposed for the area east of the East Bleachers with tennis courts behind. These plans were never realized. In summer 1952, Mayor Elmore S. Robinson requested the transfer of the land along Van Ness Avenue and Beach Street to the city so that a municipal swimming pool could be installed. The Board of Park Commissioners subsequently authorized Fred H. Riemers and Paul C. Overmire to design the “Aquatic Park Swimming Pool,” but by 1954, the plans had been abandoned in favor of installing a pool at Balboa Park. Later in the 1950s, organizations in the North Beach District expressed interested in building a baseball park in the east portion of the park, but their proposal interfered with the master plan for the area. The Park Commissioners promised to work with the citizens groups to find another suitable site for a baseball field.77

Maritime Museum The next major phase of development at the park resulted from the establishment of a maritime museum. San Francisco Mayor Elmore Robinson appointed a committee to explore establishing a permanent maritime museum at Aquatic Park in February 1950 and that same year, the San Francisco Maritime Museum Association was formed. Edward Harms of the association reported that “Aquatic Park is ideal for a maritime museum because of its central location in respect to the population and arterials of the city, and at the same time having good weather, and a marine setting.” In addition, he noted the existing infrastructure supported a museum, such as a harbor where historic ships could be anchored, the bathhouse that could house exhibits, and available land for other development. Harms noted the vision of the park as “a living museum, much like Williamsburg, Virginia, and Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.” Karl Kortum, who became director of the museum, is generally credited as the impetus behind the creation of the museum at the site. In an interview, Kortum stated he had the idea to use the bathhouse as a museum and was able to persuade Robinson to agree to the proposal. The Board of Park Commissioners approved the association’s use of that “white elephant of a building” and rented the space to them for $1/year. The initial exhibit was actually the one that had previously been displayed in the bathhouse prior to World War II. Mrs. Alma de Bretteville Spreckles had taken over the exhibit materials and donated it to the museum association in 1950.78 Kortum’s plans for the museum were much

76 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 33. 77 Board of Park Commissioners, San Francisco, California, Division of Engineering and Landscape Design, “Proposed Landscape Plan, Aquatic Park ‘Cal-Pac’ Lot,” May 12, 1948, Sheet 1, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1952-1957, June 12, 1952, August 28, 1952, and September 25, 1952; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1952-1957, March 25, 1954, November 15, 1954, June 23, 1955, and July 7, 1955. 78 Alma de Bretteville Spreckels had a falling out with Kortum in the late 1950s because she thought she had not been properly credited for funding and donating the exhibit that helped establish the maritime museum. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 32)

larger than simply displaying exhibits in the bathhouse though.79 [See Figure 6, E. Supplemental Material]

In the mid-1950s, there was interest in expanding the interpretation of the state’s maritime legacy by creating a San Francisco Maritime State Historical Monument where historic vessels would be preserved. The creating legislation noted,

the maritime conditions existing on the Pacific Coast caused shipbuilders of this coast to produce indigenous and superior types of schooners and steam schooners, and of the over three hundred three- and four-masted schooners and two-hundred twenty-four steam schooners built on this coast, only five vessels now remain in existence. Because of their great historical importance to California history, immediate steps must be taken to prevent the imminent destruction of an example of each of these types, namely one steam schooner and one three-masted schooner, to be permanently preserved and displayed in a manner comparable to that of the other historic landmarks and buildings of California.80

Another description of the project stated: “The purpose of the San Francisco Maritime State Historical Monument will be to give a picture of San Francisco’s past as it relates to the early history and development of California. It will do this primarily through exhibits related to shipping, transportation and communication at Aquatic Park, with its dramatic prospect of San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate and the hills of Marin, with a background of old brick buildings characteristic of the early days of San Francisco.” The California State Park Commission’s Division of Beaches and Park would prepare a master plan for presentation to the State Park Commission. The State Legislature would then have to appropriate $2 million for the approved plans in 1956.81

The Maritime Museum had already been working on plans for an outdoor museum relating to California transportation. The first iteration was Kortum’s idea for “Argonaut Bay.” This project would create a “living outdoor museum of sails and rails preserving, bringing together,

79 Harms quote from Edward H. Harms to Mayor Robinson, San Francisco Maritime Museum Progress Report, April 25, 1950, in Folder: Karl Kortum Collection, Museum History, 1950-1951, Box 4, in HDC 1084 (SAFR 18350), Karl Kortum Collection, SFMNHP; “Cultural Landscape Report,” 35; Harlan Trott, “San Francisco’s Maritime Valhalla: Meet Mr. Kortum,” The Christian Science Monitor, October 30, 1963, 9; “Feasibility Report for the Proposed Queen Victorian Garage, Aquatic Park, San Francisco,” prepared by Frank E. Carroll Co., Parking Consultants, September 1967, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, Report (feasibility re: Proposed Aquatic Park Garage), 1967, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP; “Spreckels [nee de Bretteville], Alma Emara,” in Encyclopedia of San Francisco, available at www.sfhistoryencyclopedia.com, accessed July 2015. 80 State of California, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Beaches and Parks, Historical Inventory, Research and Interpretation in Historical Monuments and Parks; “Bungling Away a Park,” unknown newspaper, March 19, 1956, and “Ferry Park Plan Ordered,” unknown newspaper, March 20, 1956, all in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, scrapbook, 1955-1963, 1/3, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. 81 San Francisco Maritime State Historical Monument Statement of Purpose, undated, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, Scrapbook, 1955-1963, 3/3, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 33)

interpreting the three great elements in San Francisco’s growth and development.” The project would be a companion to the Maritime Museum and finish Aquatic Park, comprised of “34 acres of land and sheltered lagoon now lying idle at the foot of Van Ness, Polk and Larkin…facing the ‘most romantic harbor in the New World’.” Anchored in the bay would be significant historic ships, while on land, there would be “a connoisseur’s collection of historic rolling stock.”82

Kortum’s idea was expanded upon in three studies produced in 1954 and 1955 of the empty lot east of Aquatic Park along Hyde Street and near the turnaround for the Powell-Hyde cable car line, which was then under construction at the corner of Beach and Hyde streets. Study No. 1 located bocce ball courts and tennis courts at the northeast corner of the park, similar to the 1948 plan for the lot, with the railroad museum placed on the slope above the courts and west of the cable car turnaround. A roundhouse sat west of the museum. The areas around the museum and roundhouse would be paved, although planting beds would be created. The area around the turnaround was screened with trees and vegetation. Study No. 2 placed the roundhouse and museum in the same location as Study No. 1, but there were no bocce ball and tennis courts. Instead, that area was terraced for a display of three small ships. To the west of the terrace and below the roundhouse would be a curved reflecting pool with figureheads attached to the wall. To the north of the terrace and paralleling Jefferson Street would be a parking lot with a sixty- three-car capacity. Finally, the third study had two parking lots, the top one closest to the roundhouse, railroad museum, and cable car turnaround with a capacity of eighty-four cars, and the bottom one with a capacity of sixty-one cars. Motorists would enter the upper parking lot from Hyde Street and wend their way through the lots north, exiting on Jefferson Street.83

While the bill called for the location of the monument at Hyde Street, there was discussion of instead locating it at the San Francisco Ferry Building. The debate over the monument’s location delayed its establishment. According to one account, the park was cut from the state’s budget to save money in 1954, but a citizen’s group revived the project. While there were keen supporters for creating the park at the Ferry Building, the proposed construction of the double-decker Embarcadero Freeway directly outside the building stymied the plan. Proposals to put the freeway underground or route it away from the Ferry Building were dismissed as too expensive. When it seemed the freeway would become reality, the State Park Commission responded by refusing to fund a park at that particular site. Sensing an opportunity and angered by the incorporation of elements of their plan into those for the Ferry Building, the Maritime Museum

82 Brochure for Argonaut Bay, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, scrapbook 1955- 1963, 2/3, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. 83 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1952-1957, September 8, 1955; “Cultural Landscape Report,” 36. For the three studies, see H.C. Schmidt, “Study No. 1 for Proposed Outdoor Museum at Aquatic Park,” Aquatic Park Proposed Outdoor Museum, City and County of San Francisco, Recreation and Park Department, December 29, 1954; H.C. Schmidt, “Study No. 2 for Proposed Outdoor Museum at Aquatic Park,” Aquatic Park Proposed Outdoor Museum, City and County of San Francisco, Recreation and Park Department, December 20, 1954; and H.C. Schmidt, “Study No. 3 for Proposed Outdoor Museum at Aquatic Park,” Aquatic Park Proposed Outdoor Museum, City and County of San Francisco, Recreation and Park Department, January 5, 1955, all in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 34)

Association decided to shift from Kortum’s Argonaut Bay concept to an even more ambitious project known as Project X.84

The $1 million Project X was described as a “super kind of Smithsonian Institution of transportation here in the Pacific West” that would create a “park haven where stout-framed relics of world-going windjammers and their less glamorous coastwise counterparts, and once- ubiquitous inland schooner scows as homely as Dutch shoes, and frontier locomotives and sky- tilting cable cars will fan out around the harbor’s edge.”85 Ideas circulated about the project included acquiring additional buildings near the park, like the Ghirardelli complex; anchoring the Gjoa (a sloop), a Chinese junk, and a scow schooner in the cove or hauling them up on the beach for display; and putting on display the 500' relief map of California then housed in the Ferry Building and a set of dioramas of San Francisco produced for the 1939 International Exposition in one of the buildings identified for acquisition. Lawrence Halprin designed a landscape plan for the site while Campbell and Wong created a triangular museum building. Much like Aquatic Park, Halprin’s plan contained minimal plantings consisting primarily of California live oak, olives, Monterey pine, Eucalyptus rostrata, Acacia melanoxylon, and Eucalyptus globulos, along the paths and near the buildings.86

In 1957, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Francis McCarty proposed allocating the $2 million of state tideland oil monies earmarked for the creation of the San Francisco State Historical Maritime Monument to the Maritime Museum Association for Aquatic Park instead of the Ferry Building. As reported by the San Francisco Examiner, “his proposal blasted a hole in the wall of city unity behind the Ferry Building project. It came on the eve of a meeting called by Mayor Christopher to seek means of forcing the park commission to allocate the money.” In September 1957, the Park Commission adopted a resolution approving Project X in principle and using the $2 million in tideland monies. The State Beaches and Park Commission allocated the money the next month. Monies were used to restore four vessels between 1959 and 1963 (including Balclutha), purchase the Haslett Warehouse, lease and develop Victorian Park, and lease and rebuild Hyde Street Pier.87

84 Letter from Aubrey Neasham, Historian, Division of Beaches and Parks, to Newton B. Drury, Chief, April 11, 1955 and “No State Funds for Ferry Bldg Park on Present Plan,” unknown newspaper, September 23, 1956, both in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, scrapbook, 1955-1963, 1/3; “What the Ferry Park Fight’s All About,” unknown newspaper, October 3, 1956 and Jack Burby, “Ferry Park Plan Rejected Again by State Board,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 1957, both in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, scrapbook 1955-1963, 2/3, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. 85 “An Era Best Remembered,” The Christian Science Monitor, August 23, 1956, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, scrapbook, 1955-1963, 1/3, in SFMNHP. 86 “S.F. Historic Center Park Plan Proposed,” S.F. Call-Bulletin, December 12, 1956; “City Will Consider Historical Center at Aquatic Park,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 16, 1956; “San Francisco to Put Old Engines on Throne,” San Francisco News, December 12, 1956; all in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, scrapbook 1955-1963, 2/3, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. Lawrence Halprin, Landscape Architect, “Planting Plan, Aquatic Park, Beach & Hyde Street, San Francisco,” December 15, 1956, Sheet 3, in in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP. 87 Quote from “Project X Urged for State Fund,” San Francisco Examiner, August 27, 1957, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, scrapbook 1955-1963, 2/3, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP; “State Allots $2 Million for ‘Project X’,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 19, 1957, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, Scrapbook, 1955- AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 35)

Victorian Park Instead of a transportation museum, the area around the cable car turnaround became Victorian Park. Emmet Blanchfield, landscape architect with the California State Division of Beaches & Parks designed the initial landscape plan in 1958-59, which Kortum and the museum rejected “because of its poor detailing,” specifically the lack of period details. Kortum caustically noted, “the impressions that will assail him under the present plans are those of a banal backyard in Marin County…of a bourgeois barbecue behind a $28,000 home in Escondido.” The 1958 “Initial Development Plan” maintained some of the ideas from Project X. There would be a small boat display on the beach at the south end of Hyde Pier. The City Sewage Pumping Station, built in 1946 to help with the issue of sewage entering the cove, on Jefferson Street and south of the small boat display remained, albeit shielded by vegetation. An esplanade with the cable car turnaround at the east end paralleled Beach Street, with plantings separating the esplanade from the street. To the north of the cable car turnaround was a semicircular “Display Building” with a sloping lawn extending down to the beach. 88

Perhaps sensing the design process would go more smoothly with Kortum and the museum in control of the design, the state gave that responsibility to Kortum, who contacted San Francisco landscape architect Thomas Church and asked him to review the plan and incorporate the desired details. Instead of the modern landscape of Aquatic Park, Kortum envisioned a park reflecting the Victorian architecture of the city. Many of the elements of Church’s plan, such as the locations of trees, cobblestone paving, and use of wrought iron, were incorporated in the state’s final plan. Kortum provided detailed information about what he wanted to see in the park. Since the “contemplated redwood benches are sheer horrors in this setting,” three styles of ornamental cast iron and wood benches found in the city were provided as examples. The newel posts were copies of one found in front of a house on Van Ness Avenue, while the handrails between the newel posts were adapted from a photograph taken by the museum of a railing in the Western Addition before it was razed. For the tree guards, the museum supplied the book One Hundred and Twenty Photographic Gems of Scottish Scenery. Instead of the state’s proposed brick planter boxes, the museum suggested using Victorian cast-iron fretwork borders about 8" tall. Kortum noted that the planners were “afraid of cobblestones. They are using a minimum. Yet cobblestones (basalt blocks) are the essence of old San Francisco.” Church indicated cobblestone paving under benches and at the turnaround. Finally, the lighting suggested in the state plan was dismissed by Kortum, who scoffed, “is one of the actual styles used on San Francisco streets in days gone by being reproduced or is a corny catalogue item ‘for the front path of your home’ being substituted?” The lamp posts used in the park were reportedly found by an antique dealer named James Leonard in the Midwest and included posts from the Illinois Street Gas Company of Chicago, the KKB Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, the Southern

1963, 3/3, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP; and San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1952-1957, September 17, 1957. 88 Quote from letter from Karl Kortum to Aubrey Neasham, October 1, 1959, in Folder: Karl Kortum Collection, Victorian Park/Landscaping and Accoutrements (1959-1969),” Box 5 in HDC 1084 (SAFR 18350), Karl Kortum Collection, SFMNHP; “Initial Development Plan, Part of the Master Plan, San Francisco Maritime State Historical Monument,” State of California, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Beaches and Parks, Designed by E. U. B., 3-18-58, Sheet 2 of 6, in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, SFMNHP; “Cultural Landscape Report,” 36. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 36)

Wheel Company of St. Louis, the Wellsbach Street Lighting Company of America, Banner Iron Works of St. Louis, and A.P. & S. Company of Cincinnati. Wellsbach gas lamps provided the illumination. The Blanchfield and Church plans were incorporated in 1962, and Victorian Park was built. The construction required building a shelter for cable car passengers encompassing about 321 square feet, preparing the site, landscaping, paving, and installing an irrigation system and the illuminating gas systems, among other tasks.89

In 1967, the Maritime Museum Association and developers of Ghirardelli Square and the Cannery commissioned studies for a $10 million parking garage near Victorian Park to accommodate visitors. Henry Degenkolb and Associates, Consulting Engineers, and Thomas Church and Associates prepared plans and specifications. Haas and Haynie would build the 1,000-car garage and restore the park. Bounded by Beach, Larkin, Jefferson and Hyde streets, the lot would be leased for fifty years. Church’s plan included an “unusual reverse entrance” that moved motorists from Beach Street and into the park, “while lowering him into the garage on an open spiral ramp hung with greenery and Victorian ornamentation and providing a forest grove at its deepest point and completely open to the sky above.”90 The proposed cast-iron pedestrian bridge would be “the first built in America in nearly 100 years” while the reverse entrance “provides a raised viewing platform for walkers, and eliminates the necessity for the normal ‘mound’ type opening typical of underground garage construction.” This garage was never built.91 [See Figure 7, E. Supplemental Material]

Bocce Ball Courts During the 1960s, the lots west of the bathhouse were formally developed as bocce ball courts. Although this area of the park had been used informally for bocce ball, the construction of a new Kodak Eastman building just north of the park encroached upon the courts. In 1956, Kodak Eastman transferred $1,000 to the Recreation and Parks Commission for the construction of new courts. As the Aquatic Park Bocce Ball Association noted, “our group has pursued a vigorous campaign that has led to the appropriation of these funds for the construction of new courts, an appropriate storage building and toilet area, and landscaping that should aid materially to the aesthetic balance of the Northern Sales Division building [owned by Eastman Kodak] itself.” 92

89 “Specifications for Maritime Plaza (Victorian Park) Maritime State Historical Monument, San Francisco, California,” Division of Architecture, Department of Public Works, Sacramento, California, Work Order No. 4640SC, June 1961, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, specifications and correspondence (re: Maritime Plaza/Victorian Park), 1961-1974, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP; see also, Folder: Karl Kortum Collection, Victorian Park/Cable Cars- Waiting Room, Klussman Plaque, 1961-1965, Box 5; Karl Kortum, “Design of the Victorian Park, Role of the San Francisco Maritime Museum,” 1963, typewritten report, in Folder: Karl Kortum Collection, Victorian Park garage, 1966, 1967, Box 5; Letter from Karl Kortum to David Nelson, April 10, 1974, in Folder: Karl Kortum Collection, Victorian Park (lamps, benches, ironwork), 1959-1991 [1979], Box 5, all in HDC 1084 (SAFR 18350), Karl Kortum Collection, SFMNHP. 90 “Feasibility Report for the Proposed Queen Victorian Garage, Aquatic Park.” 91 News Release, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, Report (feasibility re: Proposed Aquatic Park Garage) 1967, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. 92 Quote from Letter from Attilio Gemignani, President, Aquatic Park Bocce Ball Association, to Willard Campbell, General Manager, Eastman Kodak Co., October 30, 1960; see also, “Bocce Ball Courts Settled,” Little City News, August 23, 1956, and letter from Attilio Gemignani, President, Aquatic Park Bocce Ball Assn to George Harmon, AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 37)

The association hired architect George Quesada, Jr. to develop the plans for the shelter in 1959, and the Park Commission approved the final plans the following year. Between 1960 and 1961, the courts and shelter were built. The initial bid on the project was by the C. J. Collins Company of San Francisco for $47,600, but it was re-let and awarded to Adam Arras & Son for considerably less at $15,304. Quesada was then hired to prepare the working drawings and specifications. Phase II of the project was awarded to Arthur W. Baum of San Francisco in April 1961 for $14,669.93

The site on which the bocce ball courts were located had been developed around 1858 by the San Francisco Water Works with the construction of a pumping station to carry water to two reservoirs on Russian Hill. In 1865, Spring Valley Water Works incorporated with San Francisco Water Works to form Spring Valley Water Company. Later, the Spring Valley Water Company pumping station was adapted to pump water to customers in the North Beach and Marina areas. The city purchased the building as part of the acquisition of the company in 1920, and during the grading of Van Ness Avenue, WPA laborers erected a retaining wall to protect the station. The wall featured a cast concrete cap and carved acorn finials, which may have come from a city cemetery since several cemeteries were moved in the 1920s and 1930s. Research suggests that the wall originally turned and ran alongside Van Ness Avenue. Portions of the wall were later removed for the bocce ball courts in the area, and sand was placed along the wall for sunbathing.94

One of the last elements installed in the park was the memorial drinking fountain near the bocce ball courts. Cagwin & Dorward were awarded the contract to build the fountain at the park at cost of $5,975, in May 1967. Alfonso Pardinas was awarded the contract to work on the mosaic tile design and installation in September 1967.95

Administration of the Park By 1967, a variety of entities operated Aquatic Park. The State Department of Parks and Recreation owned the ships. Victorian Park was operated under a 50-year lease from the City of San Francisco, while the museum and the land on which it stood was operated by the City Department of Parks and Recreation. As described, “the whole thing is a hodgepodge of overlapping jurisdictions.”96

Chief Engineer, Recreation-Park Dept, October 26, 1960, all in Folder: San Francisco Maritime Museum Records, Bocce Ball Program correspondence (1958-60), in Box 13, HDC 649 (SAFR 9386), San Francisco Maritime Museum Records 1921-1978, SFMNHP. 93 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1958-1962, November 21, 1958, August 13, 1959, March 10, 1960, May 4, 1960, August 11, 1960, and April 6, 1961. 94 James P. Delgado, Park Historian; Martin T. Mayer, Park Archaeologist; and John A. Martini, Park Technician/Historian, “Excavation and Examination of a Stone Wall at the Aquatic Park Bocce Ball Court: Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, California,” in Folder: Aquatic Park, Bocce Ball Courts, Excavation and Examination of a Stone Wall, 1980, in SAFR Library. 95 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1967-1971, May 11, 1967 and September 14, 1967, on microfilm. 96 Letter from Harry Dean, Jr., Supervisor, Master Plans Unit, to Erwin L. Williams, Urban Planner, John S. Bolles Associates, December 26, 1967, in Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, Correspondence, Haslett Warehouse, 1961-68, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 38)

In 1972, the U.S. Congress established Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Resolution No. 10488 passed by the Board of Park Commissioners transferred Aquatic Park from the Recreation and Park Commission of the City and County of San Francisco to the U.S. Department of the Interior for incorporation into Golden Gate Recreation Area. The transfer was delayed due to litigation with the rowing clubs until December 1977 and did not include the land on which the cable car turnaround and rowing clubs were located.97 In 1977, the Haslett Warehouse was conveyed to the National Park Service.98

Aquatic Park was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. The following year, Public Law 100-348 established the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park as a park unit independent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

PART II. PHYSICAL INFORMATION

A. Landscape Character and Description Summary: The landscape of Aquatic Park reflects the Streamline Moderne style of the 1930s-era facilities, echoed in the gently curving paths that cut through the swathes of lawn and the restrained use of plantings around structures, lining paths, or as ground cover. The terraces and retaining walls installed during the WPA-era of construction accommodated the sloping terrain down to the shore, creating a stepped landscape with unrestricted vistas of the cove and the San Francisco Bay beyond. The paths and ramps traversing the site lead visitors down to the shoreline. Victorian Park, with its formal planting beds and use of Victorian-style elements, contrasts with the historic portion of Aquatic Park but also serves to buffer the cable car turnaround in that location.99

B. Character Defining Features:

1. Natural features:

a. Topography: The site of Aquatic Park has been heavily altered due to filling activities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that extended the shoreline and destroyed the natural sand beach. Punnett’s plan of terraces and retaining walls to accommodate the naturally sloping topography of the site from its high point at Beach Street to the waterline that was implemented during the WPA-era of construction remains intact. The difference in elevation between Beach Street and the mean high tide is 24'-6".

97 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1976-1977, September 16, 1976, November 17, 1977 and December 15, 1977. 98 Folder: San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, Correspondence, Haslett Warehouse, 1971-1977, in HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records, SFMNHP. 99 The current site description is based on site visits conducted in 2015. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 39) b. Vegetation: Van Ness Avenue is lined with mature Platanus x acerifolia (London planetree) with a couple of Pinus canariensis (Canary pines) and one Ficus benjamina (weeping fig) on the west side of Van Ness Avenue and across from the Sea Scout Base. These trees are located in tree wells surrounded by metal grates. The land around the Sea Scout Base is lawn. The pocket park to the west of Van Ness and near the Fort Mason Tunnel is primarily lawn with a semi-circular paved area of brick adjacent to Van Ness. It is bounded by a retaining wall and fencing as the topography rises dramatically to the west. Three mature Pinus canariensis are located along the western edge of the park.

The West Convenience Station has a bed containing Lantana (shrub verbena or lantana) at the south end while a hedge of Coprosma repens (mirror bush) is located on the curved retaining wall to the north. East of the building are two Melaleuca nesophila (pink melaleuca).

Immediately west of the West Bleachers is a steeply sloped bed of Cistus sp. (rock rose) bounded by a low, concrete aggregate wall that gives way to a swathe of lawn. This area of lawn is punctuated by a circular planting bed around the West Speaker Tower consisting of eleven Escallonia ‘compakta’ (dwarf escallonia) and five Laurus nobilis (Grecian laurel).

Pittosporum sp. are located west of the Bocce Ball Courts and along the Van Ness Avenue retaining wall. The area north of the courts is lawn with minimal plantings of one Escallonia, one Rhaphiolepis indica (Indian hawthorn), and two Ilex crenata (Japanese holly) bordering the north edge of the courts. Callistemon sp. (bottlebush) and an Escallonia hedge line the walkway to Van Ness Avenue. The triangular area of lawn between the Bocce Ball Courts and the Bathhouse is lined with Populus nigra ‘Italica’ (black poplar) on Beach Street. A hedge of Escallonia lines the south side of the West Bleacher structure while low Buxus microphylla Japonica ‘Green Beauty’ (Green Beauty Japanese boxwood) encircle the skylights. The only vegetation by the Bathhouse is a row of Juniper on the north side facing the cove. The junipers are planted in individual semi-circular concrete planters located right next to the building. Two low concrete planting beds are also located between the promenade and the Bathhouse, but these are currently empty.

To the east of the Bathhouse and south of the East Bleachers are areas of lawn divided by pathways. The six skylights behind the East Bleachers as well as the south edge of the bleacher structure are lined with low Buxus microphylla Japonica ‘Green Beauty.’ At the southeast corner of the East Bleachers are two mature Cupressus macrocarpa (Monterey cypress). A lone Pinus radiata (Monterey pine) is nearby. A hedge of Escallonia lines the southeast corner of the East Bleachers. The East Speaker Tower is surrounded by four Laurus nobilis. Between the Bathhouse and Victorian Park and fronting Beach Street is an area of AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 40)

lawn with a small bed of four Polygala myrtifolia (sweet pea shrub) and Arctostaphylos sp. (Manzanita) at the east end.

The east side of the park consists of expanses of sloping lawn punctuated by planting beds delineating the circulation system. One planting bed flanks the east side of the spur pathway running alongside the East Bleachers. It is planted with Cordyline sp. (good luck plant), two Arctostaphylos sp. (Manzanita), and two Melaleuca nespohila (pink melaleuca). Another bed to the south of the diagonal path extending between Beach Street and Jefferson Street contains six Callistemon sp. (bottlebrush) and Santolinia in the lawn behind benches overlooking the cove.

Arbutus marina (madrone) have been planted in tree wells at regular intervals along the south side of Jefferson Street. The seating area with a water fountain on Jefferson Street is lined with Santolinia. Five Araucaria araucana (monkey puzzle tree) shade the corner of Hyde and Jefferson streets. The park sign is located in a bed planted with Hemerocallis (daylilies).

A curving planting bed lined with basalt blocks is located to the west of the East Convenience Station but it is not planted; instead, it contains two ship propellers.

In contrast to the rest of the landscape, the Victorian Park promenade and cable car turnaround are lushly planted. Raised concrete planting beds separate the sidewalk on Beach Street from the parallel Victorian Park promenade. These beds contain Agapanthus sp. (blue lilies), a total of fifteen Prunus sp. (flowering cherry), and one Metrosideros sp. (rata). The promenade contains central planting beds that are flush with the pavement and lined with low post-and-chain fencing. These are filled with perennials. Twelve Cordyline (good luck plant) are located in tree wells encircled by metal grates at regular intervals within the promenade. At the west end of the promenade are three planting beds flush with the pavement that form a broken circle and are planted with Dietes sp. (wood iris).

The cable car turnaround at the southeast corner of Victorian Park is on a terrace with the ground sloping to the north. Plantings prevent erosion of the slope and help screen the turnaround and waiting area. These include five Ceanothus ‘Ray Hartman’ (mountain lilacs), which have a blue flower and complement the Agapanthus, Echium fastuosum (pride of Madeira), Ceanothus ‘Dark Star’ (dark star California lilac), and Santolinia. A Pinus canariensis is located to the north of the stairs from Hyde Street to the turnaround, while the perimeter is delineated by a hedge of Escallonia. The western portion of the slope is planted with Phlomis fruticosa (Jerusalem sage), Buddleia (butterfly bush), Cordyline (good luck plant), and five Lupinus arboreus (Tree lupine).

At the corner of Hyde and Beach streets, to the east of the cable car turnaround is a group of four Metrosideros (rata) shading the waiting area near the ticket kiosk. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 41)

A planting bed along Hyde Street contains Buddleia, Cistus, and Agapanthus, while a Magnolia grandiflora (southern magnolia) shades the bed. (The magnolia was planted in honor of Friedel Klussman who advocated for the preservation of the city’s cable car system.) To the west of the cable car turnaround are two groups of four Metrosideros each. A planting bed to the west of the cable car tracks on Beach Street contains Agapanthus, Santolinia, and two Prunus. c. Water: The park is located alongside a sheltered cove of the San Francisco Bay. The west end of the cove is lined with rock riprap while the remainder is a sandy beach for recreation. A stone retaining wall supports the promenade and Van Ness Avenue, which are adjacent to the cove.

2. Spatial organization:

a. Land patterns: Aquatic Park is a recreational space. Large numbers of bikers and pedestrians accessing the Bay Trail to the west utilize the promenade along the shoreline. The lawns are used for relaxing and playing games, with the southwest corner of the park is devoted to bocce ball. The southeast corner of the park is heavily used by passengers of the cable car line who walk through Victorian Park to access the turnaround. The bleachers and beach provide passive recreational and relaxation opportunities for visitors. b. Circulation: Aquatic Park is bounded by Beach Street to the south, the promenade hugging the shore to the north, Hyde Street to the east, and Van Ness Avenue to the west. Within the park, curvilinear paths traverse the site.

The asphalt-paved Van Ness Avenue is lined with concrete sidewalks. The sidewalk on the west side of the road curves to the west, passing by the San Francisco Fire Department Pumping Station and ascending the steep slope of McDowell Road, part of the Bay Trail. The sidewalk on the east side of the road borders Aquatic Park and leads to the Municipal Pier. This sidewalk is also concrete and lined with a curb of basalt blocks.

A promenade extends across the park, following the shoreline and connecting Jefferson Street with Van Ness Avenue. Serving as the main thoroughfare across the site, the concrete promenade is about 15' wide. The north edge abuts the sea wall, and the two are on the same plane. The railroad tracks extend along the south edge of the promenade until the West Bleachers, where the tracks branch off to the south on an asphalt-paved spur, passing behind the West Convenience Station so the line can cross Van Ness Avenue and enter the Fort Mason Tunnel. The tracks within the promenade have asphalt pavement between them, the result of efforts to reduce their profile and prevent visitor and bicycle accidents. In this section of the promenade, a concrete retaining wall with a built-in bench forms AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 42)

the south edge of the path because of the topography of the site. The wall gradually slopes down, following the elevation of the spur.

The entrances to the West Convenience Station consist of concrete pavement lined with basalt blocks. A set of concrete stairs with nineteen steps and a metal hand railing to the west of the West Bleachers provides access to the western upper portion of the park, including the Bocce Ball Courts. From the stairs the path, referred to as the Upper Promenade in the Cultural Landscape Report, extends west along the north edge of the Bocce Ball Courts to Van Ness Avenue. Wood benches line the south edge of the asphalt-paved path, providing visitors with a place to sit and enjoy the views across the cove to San Francisco Bay. A large asphalt-paved area also extends from the concrete stairs south and west to the Bocce Ball Courts and the memorial fountain, which is set in a circular pavement of basalt blocks. Another asphalt-paved path branches to the south and east, extending to the south of the West Bleachers and connecting with Beach Street.

Grooved concrete ramps flank either side of the Bathhouse, and the south entrance to that building has concrete pavement.

Beach Street is lined with a concrete sidewalk along Aquatic Park, except outside the Bathhouse, where there is a decorative double wave motif of green terrazzo, and west of the Bathhouse, where the pavement is asphalt.

Extending in a northeast direction from Beach Street behind the East Bleachers to Jefferson Street is a gently curving asphalt-paved path. Two short spurs provide access to the East Bleachers. A seating area with benches on cobblestone pavement is located on the south side of the path near Jefferson Street. The path is lined with a concrete curb that is flush with the path. A wide asphalt path extends from Beach Street to the West Speaker Tower, which is surrounded by a paved area. Another asphalt path extends from the promenade, along the east side of the East Bleachers to the pedestrian promenade at Victorian Park. The Victorian Park promenade consists of two parallel paths divided by a planting bed. The benches lining this promenade as well as the benches in the circular formation at the west end of the promenade all sit on cobblestone pavement that is lined with a low concrete curb. The pavilion area at the east end of the Victorian Park promenade is paved in interlocking pavers. A strip of cobblestones serves as the transition between the asphalt and interlocking paver pavements. A concrete staircase leads down from Beach Street to the pavilion area. It features hand railings with decorative newel posts and S-shaped balusters. The pavement in the cable car turnaround is cobblestone while the pedestrian walkways are interlocking pavers.

An asphalt-paved path curves to the northwest from the center of the Victorian Park promenade, ending near Jefferson Street. Another curving asphalt path slopes down around the cable car turnaround and connects with Hyde Street. A AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 43)

spur from this path extends north to Jefferson Street. Both Hyde and Jefferson streets are asphalt. The sidewalks are primarily concrete, except for a narrow strip of cobblestone pavers on the north edge of the south Jefferson Street sidewalk. The seating area on Jefferson Street is paved in asphalt, with cobblestone pavement under the benches that face the cove and around the water fountain.

c. Views and vistas: The park provides unobstructed views of the cove and the San Francisco Bay with Alcatraz Island beyond to the north. To the east, the park’s historic ship collection at Hyde Street Pier is visible. To the south, the historic Ghirardelli Square and the commercial buildings along Beach Street can be seen. The view to the west is obstructed by the trees lining Van Ness Avenue and the hill beyond which Fort Mason is located. From Municipal Pier, the San Francisco Bay and Alcatraz, the Hyde Street Pier, Aquatic Park, and the Golden Gate Bridge are all visible. d. Water: The water feature of the park is the sheltered cove, bordered by Municipal Pier curving in a northerly arc along the west side, the Hyde Street Pier on the east side, and the promenade to the south.

e. Buildings and structures: Fort Mason Tunnel The Belt Line Railroad tracks extend from the promenade, across Van Ness Avenue, to the Fort Mason Tunnel (ca. 1915), exiting on the other side in Fort Mason. The tunnel portal is concrete with an arched opening. The height of the portal is approximately 22' while the width of the opening is 17'. The portal is stepped along the west and north wing walls, which are lined with an iron fence consisting of posts with knobs on top. The south wing wall is currently covered with vegetation so the top is not visible. The entrance to the tunnel has been blocked off.

Railroad Tracks The single-gauge tracks of the former State Belt Railroad (laid on its current route in 1936) extend along the promenade bordering the cove, then curve up to the south of the West Convenience Station, cross Van Ness Avenue, and go through the Fort Mason Tunnel. Each track is 4-1/2" wide and 8-1/2" tall.

Municipal Pier The pier (built from 1931-33) curves to the north around the west side of the cove and has a bulbous terminus. The approximately 1,400'-long and 60'-wide pier has a 7"-thick reinforced-concrete deck sitting on 634 reinforced-concrete jacketed timber piles and 116 bents. The bents each consist of five vertical piles and two battered piles. There are precast concrete baffle panels under the pier to form a breakwater. The 3'-6" tall concrete parapet walls feature squared openings along the bottom at regular intervals to allow drainage. Concrete curbs line the roadway to separate vehicles from pedestrians; they also contain utility conduits. The AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 44)

sidewalks flanking the roadway are slightly elevated as well and openings are located at regular intervals under the sidewalk to promote drainage. Concrete benches with high backs face the water. Illumination is provided by street lights on the parapets. A concrete, circular convenience station was intended for the terminus but never fully realized. The unfinished building sits on a low, stepped platform and has two protruding bands along the top for a decorative finish. The flat roof has a circular roof structure comprised of a rusted metal framework and a four-tier concrete roof. It was clearly meant to echo the Streamline Moderne style of the park’s other structures. A metal fence was recently installed at the pier’s entrance and along the west side for safety reasons due to the pier’s deteriorating condition.100

Sea Scout Base South of Municipal Pier and east of Van Ness Avenue, is the wood-frame, L-plan Sea Scout Base, the oldest portion of which dates to 1943-44. It sits on wood pilings and has docks and repair facilities on the east side. The one-story building is clad in clapboarding and has a gable roof. Access is via a narrow set of stairs from Van Ness Avenue.

Seawall The southern edge of the cove from the East Convenience Station to Municipal Pier is bordered by a stepped, cobblestone retaining seawall (erected in 1931-33) on a concrete foundation. The top of the seawall is flush with the promenade, and steps provide access to the beach. The cobblestones are laid in mortar.

A number of structures were erected in the park to support the recreational activities and events envisioned for the park.

Convenience Stations The West Convenience Station, which housed a concession stand and public restrooms, is located to the east of Van Ness Avenue at the intersection of the promenade and Van Ness. Designed in a Streamline Moderne-style and built by the WPA, the three-story concrete structure measures 27'-3 1/2" x 37'-2 1/4". The lower level houses a sewage tank; the second story contains restrooms and the concession stand, while the upper level is an observation deck. The exterior features a double-wave motif encircling the top. The flat roof has a metal railing around the perimeter with a concrete post and concrete octagonal roof centered on it. This originally had glass walls and was intended to serve as a lifeguard station. A concession window shaded by a concrete awning fronts Van Ness, flanked by a porthole window. A geometrical stair with a metal railing abuts the north side of the building and leads to the roof. Metal doors pierce the building’s façade, and fenestration consists of elliptical, multi-light, awning windows; rectangular, multi-light hopper windows; and portholes.

100 Dimensions from Winzler & Kelly, “Municipal Pier Structural Check-Up Assessment,” February 2012, 2-1 – 2- 2. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 45)

The East Convenience Station (completed in 1944) is located at the foot of Jefferson Street to the west of the rowing clubs. It is similar to the West Convenience Station but is only two stories tall. The ground floor contains storage and restrooms, and the upper level has an observation deck.

Bathhouse The focal point of the park is the Bathhouse, also known as the Sala Burton Building, and colloquially as the Maritime Museum Building. Located between Beach Street and the promenade and built from 1936-39, the 125'-long, elliptical structure parallels the cove. Designed by William Mooser, II in a Streamline Moderne style, the concrete and steel-frame building is evocative of an ocean liner. The ground floor of the four-story building is below Beach Street but at the level of the Aquatic Promenade because of the site topography. The third and fourth stories are stepped back with observation decks bounded by metal railings to create a three-tiered form. The main entrance on Beach Street, which is on the building’s second floor, is centered on the façade and features green slate with bas-relief designed and carved by Sargent Johnson. Fenestration consists of stainless steel windows, some in the shape of port holes. On the north side of the second floor is an inset verandah overlooking the cove. The north exterior wall behind the verandah features abstracted glass tile mosaics of sea life in shades of green, also designed by Johnson. Air vents on the flat observation deck roof of the second floor are designed to look like ship’s funnels. The interior contains original murals, sculpture, and mosaics done by WPA artists Hilaire Hilyer, Sargent Johnson, John Glut, Richard Ayer, and Beniamino Bufano. The Bathhouse has been documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey; see HABS CA-2225 for additional information.

Bleachers The Bathhouse is flanked by concrete ramps and bleachers, which cover what used to be the shower and dressing rooms that form the lower level of the Bathhouse. The West and East Bleachers were completed in 1938 for use by spectators and sunbathers.

The West Bleachers, built of reinforced concrete, are 30' x 100' and have three full rows of seating with two smaller rows at the east end. A concrete retaining wall topped by a metal railing at the south edge of the bleachers retains the grassy terrace behind. It features a tall pillar with a circle motif at the west end and a concrete bench. Five rectangular windows at the west end of the bleacher wall facing the cove help light the interior spaces under the structure. Curved stairs provide access to the bleachers from the ramp alongside the bathhouse. A platform at the side of the stairs was the location of Bufano’s penguin mother and chick statue. The bleachers are at a higher elevation than the promenade, so a metal railing lines the north edge. The ends of the north concrete wall are curved AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 46)

and stepped to reflect the form of the bathhouse. At the west end of the bleachers is a doorway flanked by wingwalls.

The East Bleachers are larger at 65' x 250' and have eleven rows of seating. A walkway at ground level extends through the bleachers to access a door to the spaces under the bleachers, effectively dividing the bleachers into two. Concrete parapet walls topped by metal railings form the boundaries of the bleachers. The south edge of the bleachers is bounded by a concrete parapet wall with a high- back concrete bench facing Beach Street at the center. The west side of the bleachers follows the curve of the ramp while the east side is straight. Access to the bleachers is from the terrace paralleling Beach Street or from the promenade.

Speaker Towers A concrete speaker tower is located to the south of the west end of the West Bleachers with an identical one to the south of the east end of the East Bleachers. These sculptural concrete structures are evocative of the Streamline Modern style and were finished ca. 1938. The towers would have been used for broadcasting during events. They consist of granite piers with canted concrete supports on which are located circular enclosures. The West Speaker Tower enclosure has concrete walls with horizontal circular bands forming the east half facing the bleachers, while that framework has been removed from the East Speaker Tower so that the west half is open. Access was initially from ladders on the pier, but those were removed for safety reasons. The circular structures at the top of the speaker towers are nearly 16' wide and about 13'-6" in diameter. The West Speaker Tower is 40'-9 5/8" tall while the East is shorter at 36'-10 5/8".

Bocce Ball Courts The Bocce Ball Court area is delineated on the west by a concrete retaining wall lined with chain link fencing. This wall ends near the north half of the court with a timber landscape retaining wall abutting it. A retaining wall is necessary because Van Ness Avenue is at a higher elevation than the Bocce Ball Courts. The north edge of the site is defined by a sloping stone block wall topped with a concrete coping and eight granite piers topped with acorns. It meets the concrete retaining wall at Van Ness Avenue at a 90-degree angle. Materials for this wall reportedly came from cemeteries in the Richmond and Laurel Hill areas that were moved.101 A ninth acorn can be seen outside the retaining wall on Van Ness, indicating that at some point alterations were made to the western portion of the wall. The stone wall may have been constructed for the pumping station that formerly occupied this site, while the concrete wall was part of the WPA work.

Paralleling the concrete retaining wall to the east are two bocce ball courts surfaced in compact clay/sand. The north and south ends of the courts are delineated by a wood and pipe metal frame and fence with benches provided for players and spectators. A retaining wall with a wood bench incorporated into it is

101 “Cultural Landscape Report,” 76. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 47)

located to the west. The courts are sheltered by a structure consisting of a central row of concrete aggregate pillars and a metal truss and corrugated metal roof cantilevering over the courts. This replaced the original glue-laminated roof structure in 1993. At the south end of the courts is a small wood structure with a sign indicating it is the “Aquatic Park Bocce Ball Senior Clubhouse.”

To the east of these courts is an area of compact clay/sand with benches along the north edge.

Victorian Park The major structure within Victorian Park is the gazebo located to the southwest of the cable car turnaround. The gazebo consists of metal posts with decorative scrolls supporting a dodecagonal roof topped with a metal finial.

f. Small scale elements: The promenade and the Municipal Pier are lined with lamp posts. These have aggregate concrete bases with glass globe lamps topped with finials. An extant small metal plate at the base of one reads: “Taper Tube Co., San Francisco, Protected by Patent.” The lamp posts lining the paths in Victorian Park are wrought iron with glass globe lamps and decorative finials.

Benches in Aquatic Park are a simple design with wood slat backs and seats, while those in Victorian Park have decorative wrought-iron legs and arm rests with wood slats for the backs and seats. There are also concrete benches along the promenade and metal ones on Van Ness. Trash cans are black metal boxes with lids.

There are two water fountains in the park, neither of which are in operation (nor are there plans to put them in service). The decorative drinking fountain to the east of the Bocce Court has an aggregate concrete base with a decorative stepped band and a circular concrete step on the west side. The concrete is spalling. The water fountain is equipped with four bubblers and has a central grate covering the drain pipe. The basin is decorated with a glass mosaic in shades of green and blue and two red houses. In December 1940, the supervisors accepted Resolution No. 1520, a bequest from Mary McLean to install a “convenient and suitable drinking fountain at Aquatic Park in memory of her family.” It was not until September 1962 that the Park Commissioners decided to take action to provide the “suitable drinking fountain” as specified in the Mary J. McLean Bequest Fund. In August 1963, the commission approved $8,000 to be spent on the drinking fountain.102

The other fountain is located by the seating area off Jefferson Street. The metal fountain consists of a post with a basin encircling the central portion and two

102 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1958-1962, September 13, 1962; San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1964-1964, August 14, 1963. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 48)

smaller ones at ground level to the east and west. A plaque in the ground nearby states: “A gift to the State of California by the pioneer Mariani family. The grandfather, James Mariani, arrived on these shores in 1852. Presented in memory of the father, Stephen Mariani, who purchased the fountain in 1881 to place in front of his establishment at 23rd and Florida streets. November 1, 1961.”

The skylights for the basement areas of the Bathhouse are located behind each set of the bleachers. The West Bleachers have two skylights set in the grass on the terrace behind the structure. The East Bleachers have three large ones directly behind the structure and set in the grass terrace, with another three smaller ones set in the lawn on the other side of the path. Consisting of glass lites set in concrete, they are slightly raised in the center to maximize drainage.

There are several plaques and signs within the park. Near the East Speaker Tower is a rock with a plaque commemorating the first ship that entered San Francisco Bay, the Spanish packet San Carlos, on August 5, 1775. This memorial plaque was installed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with the San Francisco Twin Bicentennial, Inc., on August 5, 1975. The plaque was to celebrate the “arrival of the ‘San Carlos,’ the first ship to enter the San Francisco Bay, August 1775, commanded by Captain Juan Manuel de Ayala.”103 In the pavilion area of Victorian Park is a concrete pedestal with a marker for the Barbary Coast Trail. The park sign is located at the northeast corner of the park at the intersection of Jefferson and Hyde streets. Consisting of a concrete slab with a decorative wave pattern at the bottom echoing those on the convenience stations, it reads “San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park” with an arrowhead in the lower right corner on either side.

PART III. SOURCES OF INFORMATION

A. Drawings, plans: Drawings and plans in HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

Board of Park Commissioners, San Francisco, California, Department of Engineering and Landscape Design. “Proposed Landscape Plan, Aquatic Park ‘Cal-Pac’ Lot.” May 12, 1948. Sheet 1.

City and County of San Francisco, Department of Public Works, Bureau of Architecture. “Aquatic Park, Memorial Drinking Fountain, Plan, Elevations & Details.” June 24, 1967. Sheet A-1.

103 San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes, 1972-1975, July 10, 1975. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 49)

H.C. Schmidt. “Study No. 1 for Proposed Outdoor Museum at Aquatic Park.” Aquatic Park Proposed Outdoor Museum, City and County of San Francisco, Recreation and Park Department, December 29, 1955.

______. “Study No. 2 for Proposed Outdoor Museum at Aquatic Park.” Aquatic Park Proposed Outdoor Museum, City and County of San Francisco, Recreation and Park Department, December 20, 1954.

______. “Study No. 3 for Proposed Outdoor Museum at Aquatic Park.” Aquatic Park Proposed Outdoor Museum, City and County of San Francisco, Recreation and Park Department, January 5, 1955.

“Initial Development Plan, Part of the Master Plan, San Francisco Maritime State Historical Monument.” State of California, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Beaches and Parks, Designed by E. U. B., 3-18-58. Sheet 2 of 6.

Punnett, John M. “Plan of Aquatic Park, San Francisco, Cal.” January 10, 1936.

Quesada, George, AIA. “Facilities Development, Bocce Ball Courts, Phase II.” Recreation & Park Department, City & County of San Francisco, Approved 1951. Sheet 2 of 3.

State of California, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Beaches and Parks. Designed by E. U. B. “Initial Development Plan, Part of the Master Plan, San Francisco Maritime State Historical Monument.” March 18, 1958, Sheet 2 of 6.

State of California, Department of Public Works, Division of Architecture, Sacramento. “Planting Plan, Maritime Plaza (Victorian Park), Maritime State Historical Monument, San Francisco.” June 30, 1961. Sheet 7 of 11.

______. “Cable Car Waiting Station, Maritime Plaza (Victorian Park), Maritime State Historical Monument, San Francisco.” June 30, 1961. Sheet 11 of 11.

B. Historic views, photographs: Historic views of Aquatic Park are available online at San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, California, http://sfpl.org/index.php?pg=0200000301, and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park Library and Archives.

C. Bibliography

1. Primary and unpublished: Annual Report of the Bureau of Engineering of the Department of Public Works, City and County of San Francisco, Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1920. Available at San Francisco Public Library and digitally via the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscopubliclibrary. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 50)

Annual Report of the Bureau of Engineering of the Department of Public Works, City and County of San Francisco, Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1922. Available at San Francisco Public Library and digitally via the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscopubliclibrary.

Journal of Proceedings, Board of Supervisors, City and County of San Francisco. Various volumes and dates. Available at San Francisco Public Library and digitally via the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscopubliclibrary.

Mooser, William, Jr., Branch Manager, Works Progress Administration. “Report on Progress of the Works Programs in San Francisco.” Prepared for William R. Lawson, Administrator, Northern California, January 1938.

Project Folders, Works Progress Administration, Record Group 69. Reel No. 13-447, Roll 38. National Archives and Records Administration-College Park, Maryland.

San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners, Park & Recreation Commission Minutes. Various dates. Available at San Francisco Public Library and digitally via the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscopubliclibrary.

Vertical files, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. Folders accessed include:

Folder: California Railroads, State Belt Railroad

Folder: SF Parks: Aquatic Park (pre-1949)

Folder: S.F. Parks: San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.

Vertical files, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. Collections accessed include:

HDC 260 (SAFR 17393), State Board Harbor Commission Chief Engineer Frank G. White Records

HDC 649 (SAFR 9386), San Francisco Maritime Museum Records, 1921-1978

HDC 650 (SAFR 9400), San Francisco Maritime State Historic Park Records

HDC 1058 (SAFR 1375), San Francisco Recreation & Park Department Specifications Records

HDC 1084 (SAFR 18350), Karl Kortum Collection

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 51)

Newspaper Articles (listed chronologically): “New Western Hotel.” San Francisco Call, May 2, 1890.

“Lost His Temper.” San Francisco Call, September 28, 1895.

“William Mooser’s Death.” San Francisco Call, November 8, 1896.

“Design for Tuolumne County’s New Courthouse.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 22, 1898.

“City Architect Ready to Resign.” San Francisco Chronicle, April 3, 1902.

“Public Official Who Can’t Resign.” San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 1902.

“Resignation of Mooser Accepted.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 26, 1902.

“Appoints a New City Architect.” San Francisco Call, August 26, 1902.

“Hospital Prize Awarded.” Los Angeles Herald, September 9, 1902.

“Los Angeles County’s Million-Dollar Hospital.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 22, 1902.

“To Build a Hotel on Taylor Street.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 1902.

“Building Will Grace East Line of Taylor Street.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1902.

“Plans for Barn Raise a Squall.” Los Angeles Herald, August 5, 1903.

“Would Make a Fairer City.” San Francisco Chronicle, May 8, 1904.

“County Hospital Buildings Have Peculiar Construction.” Los Angeles Herald, June 3, 1904.

“Harbor Board Can Not Block Docks Scheme.” San Francisco Call, December 23, 1908.

“Those Who Swim, Row or Sail Are Boosting Votes for Aquatic Park Bond Issue.” San Francisco Call, June 13, 1909.

“Seek Water Front Reserve for Sports.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 21, 1909.

“Result of Bond Issue.” San Francisco Call, June 23, 1909.

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 52)

“Architects Hold Annual Meeting and Election.” San Francisco Chronicle, October 21, 1910.

“Plans for New City Hall Decided Upon.” San Francisco Call, June 12, 1912.

“Aquatic Carnival Great Success: San Francisco Shows Play Spirit.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 17, 1912.

“North Beach to Rally for Aquatic Park.” San Francisco Call, September 18, 1912.

“Women Work Hard for Aquatic Park.” San Francisco Call, December 16, 1912.

“City Needs No More Parks at Present.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 16, 1912.

“Five Sketches Were Selected as the Best.” San Francisco Call, December 17, 1912.

“Municipal Unthrift Proposed in Borrowing for More Parks.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 1912.

“More Parks Are Luxuries the City Cannot Afford.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 18, 1912.

“Two Only of Bond Measures Ratified.” San Francisco Call, December 21, 1912.

“Official Count Defeats Bonds.” San Francisco Call, December 27, 1912.

“Harbor Celebration Will Be Elaborate.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 28, 1913.

“Campaign to Save Black Point Cove.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1913.

“May Secure New Pleasure Beach.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 11, 1914.

“Protest Against Filling Up Cove.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 22, 1914.

“Chance to Get Aquatic Park is Presented City.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 1916.

“Clubs Indorse Aquatic Park at Black Point.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 3, 1917.

“$10,000,000 Terminal for S.P. Is Revealed as Plan Back of Aquatic Park.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 3, 1917.

“City to Make 3 Proposals for Railroad.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 7, 1917.

“China Basin Black Point Swap Agreed.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 14, 1917. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 53)

“Urges Market Instead of an Aquatic Park.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 1917.

“O’Connell Loses City Land Deal Injunction Suit.” San Francisco Chronicle, April 1, 1917.

“Supporters of Candidates Hold Rallies.” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 1919.

“Aquatic Park Boosters Seek State Holdings.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 12, 1919.

“Aquatic Park Plans Approved by Board.” San Francisco Chronicle, February 12, 1921.

“Important Contracts Awarded by Board.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 18, 1921.

Trott, Harlan. “San Francisco’s Maritime Valhalla: Meet Mr. Kortum.” Christian Science Monitor, October 30, 1963.

2. Secondary and published: Architectural Resources Group. “Aquatic Park Amphitheater Focused Historic Structure Report.” San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, San Francisco, California. June 20, 2005.

“Cultural Landscape Report, Aquatic Park, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.” Oakland, CA: National Park Service, Pacific West Region, 2010.

Delgado, James. “Pioneers, Politics, Progress and Planning: The Story of San Francisco’s Aquatic Park.” Historic Structures Report, January 1981.

______. “A Dream of Seven Decades: San Francisco’s Aquatic Park.” Reprinted from California History, 64:4, The Magazine of the California History Society, Fall 1985.

Kaufman, William H. and Michelle S. The State Belt Railroad: San Francisco’s Waterfront Railroad. Berkeley and Wilton, CA: Signature Press, 2013.

Toogood, Anne Coxe. “A Civil History of Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore, California,” Historic Resource Study. Historic Preservation Branch, Pacific Northwest/Western Team, Denver Service Center, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1980.

D. Sources not yet investigated: The State of California Archives may have additional information pertaining to the development and construction of Victorian Park.

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 54)

E. Supplemental material:

Figure 1: Competition for the Aquatic Park Situated at the Foot of Van Ness Avenue, First Prize, 1920. Photo AAA-6903, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library.

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 55)

Figure 2: Punnett’s 1936 plan of the Aquatic Park. The “Rowing Units” indicated on the west and east sides of the cove were never constructed. The “Vacant Block” eventually became Victorian Park. HDC 555 (SAFR 18765), Museum Plans Collection, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 56)

Figure 3: Looking from the Ghirardelli factory building towards Black Point, Fort Mason, San Francisco, Calif., South End Rowing Club and Dolphin Rowing Club can be seen in the distance, beyond the Spring Valley Water Company’s pump house, April 1927. San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, P79-195-A12.39,741pl (SAFR 18131).

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 57)

Figure 4: Aquatic Park seawall construction, Black Point in background, Fort Mason, San Francisco, Calif., February 4th, 1935. The Spring Valley Water Company pump house is visible in the picture. San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, A12.40,876pl (SAFR 21374).

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 58)

Figure 5: The Aquatic Park beach, August 5, 1936. Note the debris on the sand beach and the construction of the bathhouse in the background. Photo AAA-6730, San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 59)

Figure 6: Development Plans for a Marine Museum at Aquatic Park, May 8, 1950. AAA-6814, San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library. AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 60)

Figure 7: Victorian Park garage concept. HDC 1084 (SAFR 18350), Karl Kortum Collection, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

AQUATIC PARK HALS No. CA-113 (Page 61)

PART IV. PROJECT INFORMATION Aquatic Park was documented by the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) of the Heritage Documentation Programs of the National Park Service. The Aquatic Park Recording Project was undertaken in 2015 as mitigation prior to the removal of the former State Belt Railroad tracks. The principals involved were Robyn Jackson, Chief of Cultural Resources, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park; Paul Dolinsky, Chief of HALS; and Richard O’Connor, Chief of Heritage Documentation Programs. Chris Stevens, HALS Landscape Architect managed the project. The field team included architects Jason W. McNatt, Ryan Pierce, and Chris Stevens, photographer Todd Croteau, and historian Justine Christianson. Gina Bardi, Reference Librarian, provided invaluable research assistance.

For additional documentation, see: HABS CA-2225, Aquatic Park Bathhouse

HAER CA-54, Ship BALCLUTHA

HAER CA-59, Ferry EUREKA

HAER CA-60, Scow Schooner ALMA

HAER CA-61, Schooner C. A. THAYER

HAER CA-62, Steam Tug HERCULES

HAER CA-63, Steam Tug EPPLETON HALL

HAER CA-67, Steam Schooner WAPAMA

HAER CA-251, YAWL BONITA

HAER CA-252, PILOT YAWL

HAER CA-253, Sausalito Whitehall

HAER CA-254, Rowing Boat

HAER CA- 255, FELUCCA

HAER CA-256, ROWING SKIFF MAYFLOWER

HAER CA-257, BRISTOL BAY GILL NET BOAT

HAER CA-261, LEATHERS YAWL

HAER CA-262, Duck Boat