Sutro Heights Park is an historic public park in the Outer Richmond District located on the West Side of

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. It is within the

Golden Gate National Recreation Area The Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) is a U.S. National Recreation Area protecting of ecologically and historically significant landscapes surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of the park is land formerly used by the Unite ...

and the Sutro Historic District. It is located above the Cliff House in the Lands End area, with views of the Seal Rocks, Ocean Beach, and the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

History

The park is on the site of the former "Sutro Heights" estate of

Adolph Sutro Adolph Heinrich Joseph Sutro (April 29, 1830 – August 8, 1898) was a German-American engineer, politician and philanthropist who served as the 24th mayor of San Francisco from 1895 until 1897. Born a German Jew, he moved to Virginia City ...

, a

Comstock Lode The Comstock Lode is a lode of silver ore located under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, a peak in the Virginia Range in Virginia City, Nevada (then western Utah Territory), which was the first major discovery of silver ore in the U ...

silver baron, and a major land owner/developer in and

mayor of San Francisco The mayor of the City and County of San Francisco is the head of the executive branch of the Government of San Francisco, San Francisco city and county government. The officeholder has the duty to enforce city laws, and the power to either appro ...

.U.S. National Park Service, Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA): Sutro Heights History
/ref> In 1881, Adolf Sutro purchased of undeveloped land south of Point Lobos (San Francisco) and north of Ocean Beach at the western edge of the city. It included a promontory overlooking the Pacific, with scenic views of the

Marin Headlands The Marin Headlands are a hilly peninsula at the southernmost end of Marin County, California, United States, located just north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge, which connects the two counties and peninsulas. The entire area is p ...

Mount Tamalpais Mount Tamalpais (; ; Miwok languages, Miwok: ''Támal Pájiṣ''), known locally as Mount Tam, is a mountain, peak in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, often considered symbolic of Marin County. Much of Mount Tama ...

, and the

Golden Gate The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by ...

. Sutro built his mansion on a rocky ledge there, above the first Cliff House. The grounds consisted of a spacious turreted mansion, a carriage house, and outbuildings set in expansive

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

s. The estate dominated the Lands End area, with an elaborate entrance gate. He spent in excess of a million dollars to recreate an Italian style garden. It was filled with fountains, planted urns, and statues, Victorian flower beds,

hedge maze A hedge maze is an outdoor garden maze or labyrinth in which the "walls" or dividers between passages are made of vertical hedges. History Hedge mazes evolved from the knot gardens of Renaissance Europe, and were first constructed during the mi ...

parterre A ''parterre'' is a part of a formal garden constructed on a level substrate, consisting of symmetrical patterns, made up by plant beds, plats, low hedges or coloured gravels, which are separated and connected by paths. Typically it was the ...

s, forests of trees, a glass plant conservatory, and other garden structures. Vista points included the "observation plaza" overlooking the Cliff House, and the "Dolce far Niente Balcony," a long terrace-like structure along the cliff overlooking Ocean Beach. To provide garden decorations, he imported over 200 concrete replicas of Greek and Roman statuary from Belgium, to provide examples of European culture to visitors.Sfcityguides.org: Sutro Heights Park
/ref> By 1883 Sutro opened his estate's gardens, named Sutro Heights, to the public and allowed strolling the grounds for the donation of a dime. That small fee helped to pay the 17 gardeners, machinists, and drivers he employed to maintain the grounds. Other features he developed on his land holdings in the Lands End area include: the

Sutro Baths The Sutro Baths was a large, privately owned public saltwater swimming pool complex in the Lands End area of the Outer Richmond District on the West Side of San Francisco, California. Built in 1894, the Sutro Baths was located north of ...

(1894–1964), the second and elaborate Victorian style Cliff House (1896–1907) and an amusement park named Sutro Pleasure Grounds at Merrie Way (1896–1898). To provide inexpensive transportation for visitors to these he built a passenger steam train from downtown San Francisco to Lands End. Adolph Sutro died in 1898, land rich but cash poor following his frustrating tenure as Mayor of San Francisco. His daughter Emma Sutro Merritt moved to the Sutro Heights estate then. As she aged she could not maintain the grounds, and the house became seriously deteriorated, though she lived there until her death in 1938. Throughout the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, people took away many of the rose garden plantings and vandalized the statues.

Park

The Sutro family donated the estate to the City of San Francisco in 1938. In 1939 the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

(WPA) demolished the residence. Remaining statuary was removed, with the exception of The Lions, copies of those in London's Trafalgar Square at the entrance gate, and a statue of Diana the Huntress (Artemis), a concrete copy of the Louvre's Diana, itself a Roman copy of a Greek statue. The city park then opened. Sutro Heights Park is no longer a city park, it is part of the

. It is maintained by a neighborhood group, Friends of the GGNRA, many of whom live on the surrounding streets.Parksconservancy.org: Park Stewardship in San Francisco
/ref> File:San Francisco's horror of earthquake and fire to which is added graphic accounts of the eruptions of Vesuvius and many other volcanoes, explaining the causes of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, (14780923444).jpg, SUTRO HEIGHTS. Located on the bluffs above the Cliff House. From here a grand view of the ocean and bay can be had. File:Sutro Heights Park lion, SF 01.jpg File:Diana the Huntress statue, Sutro Heights Park, San Francisco (June 2013) 1.jpg

References

External links

NPS−Golden Gate National Recreation Area: Visiting Lands End

— ''digital guidebook''. {{authority control Parks in San Francisco Golden Gate National Recreation Area Urban public parks History of San Francisco Historic district contributing properties in California Richmond District, San Francisco National Register of Historic Places in San Francisco Parks on the National Register of Historic Places in California Protected areas established in 1938 1938 establishments in California

History

Park

See also

References

External links