Golden Gate Park Memo

Memorandum

From: Eesha Bemra, Camden Davidson, and Lauren Harter

To: Carlton Lassiter, Director of Citywide Planning

Date: March 11, 2016

Re: Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA

The Golden Gate Park, over one hundred and forty years old, is a popular public park in San Francisco that was converted from previously uninhabited, unincorporated land that sat at the city’s former edge. Its construction helped promote development and city expansion into the area. Similar to Central Park in overall shape, the rectangular park is actually twenty percent larger than its New York City counterpart (Trust, 2011). This is comprehensive summary of the history of the area, the steps taken to develop the park, and the significance of San Francisco’s large

park today.

Background
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park began a desolate mess of sand dunes and was cultivated into the world-famous public park space it is today, attracting 13 million visitors annually (SF Rec and Park, 2015). The park is home to dozens of attractions, including the De Young Memorial Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, the oldest public Japanese garden in the country, a Victorian-inspired greenhouse and flower conservatory, the first children’s public playground, and a bison conservation area. These facilities resulted from the gradual need for more structured and specialized activities rather than solely open space utilized for relaxation.
The creation of the Golden Gate Park had an impact not just in the desolate land it was built on, but much of the surrounding area. In recent years, the Golden Gate Park has evolved into an irreplaceable part of the city’s history and current identity. The development of such a vast urban park in a previously ignored area has led to an abundance of public and private infrastructure and housing development surrounding it.
The Golden Gate Park was created in response to the population’s wish for a large urban park similar to Central Park in New York City, but also, in part, due to government and housing developers’ desire to further urbanize the sparsely populated area previously known as the “Outside Lands.” The area had been covered in sand dunes and was home to squatters, undeveloped and largely uninhabited.

The success in transforming such a bleak area into the widely used park that it is today makes the Golden Gate Park a remarkable example of a successful redevelopment project that has grown to become a vital, essential part of a city's identity and unique

character.

Conflict
The park was initially proposed by local residents who wished to have a large public park space similar to the world famous Central Park in New York City, and the city government along with city and park planners moved forward to legally acquire the uninhabited land, survey it, and begin the monumental task of preparation and landscaping. The park was overwhelmingly supported by the citizens, many of whom had initially petitioned to have a park in the first place, and was further supported by government officials and park planners, including the city’s Park Commission, William Hammond Hall, and John McLaren (Wilson, 1950).
However, in 1876, the development of the park was met with opposition from a group of wealthy railroad magnates colloquially known as the “Big Four”: Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Charles Crocker. Instead of a park, the four millionaires wanted to oversee the development of a racetrack for horse racing, a much more profitable venture than a public park; as park development stalled, people like Gus Mooney set up shanties and shacks to sell refreshments to passersby. In order to move forward with racetrack building, the Governor at the time, George C. Perkins, appointed the founder of a local attorney, Frank M. Pixley, who subsequently used park security to drive out Mooney and his associates; Pixley then granted Leland Stanford a fifty-year lease on the land area, presumably to allow for the racetrack plan to go into motion (Levinsohn, 1989). Because the park plans had indefinitely been put on hold, Hall and his associate park commissioners resigned from the project.
It is the citizens of San Francisco who yet again came to the rescue of the land area. By 1886, the original park plan was reinstated once park visitors reached an all-time high; 47,000 people from the city’s population of 250,000 visited the park via streetcars on a single weekend, reinforcing the public’s desire to have a public park and forcing the local and state government to reconsider the racetrack plan. In 1887, once the establishment of the public park was once again a priority, Hall, the original commissioner, chose John McLaren, his previous assistant, to be his successor (Pollock, n.d.).

Planning and Construction
In response to the requests for a large urban public space from San Franciscans in the 1860s, field engineer William Hammond Hall prepared a topographic map and survey of the Outside Lands in 1870. The following year, he became the park’s commissioner, and along with his assistant, John McLaren, began working tirelessly to create a public park with gardens that recreated nature’s beauty and would satisfy the desires of the public (Wilson, 1950).
Design plans changed several times prior to development due to conflicting preferences of nearby landowners and budget constraints. Once the conflicts regarding budgeting and the lease issues with the Big Four millionaires were resolved, park plans were resumed in 1886, headed by John McLaren.
The first stage of the park’s development required planting thousands of trees to stabilize the sand dunes that covered three quarters of the landscape. McLaren was adamant about creating a park that replicated nature’s beauty. By 1879 the original 60,000 trees they planted--mostly globules, pine, and cypress--had more than doubled to cover over 1,000 acres. From there, the park has added various structures and buildings to its composition over time.
Hall proposed a flower conservatory in his original design plan, but the notion was rejected. It was not until 1879 that his vision was actualized by 27 of the wealthiest business owners in San Francisco, and the iconic Conservatory of Flowers was constructed. The conservatory is home to one of the few remaining Victorian greenhouses in the United States, and houses 1,700 species of rare and tropical plants (WMF).
In 1894, the Music Concourse area was excavated for the California Midwinter International Exposition. Since then, the sunken, oval-shaped plaza has been used for other musical performances throughout the seasons. The Fine Arts Building, which later became the De Young Museum, was also constructed in the park for the 1894 International Exposition. The original building was later renovated to house a larger collection of exhibits, and is made mostly of copper to reflect the San Francisco sunlight and fog (Petalson, 2010).
Another significant feature of the park that was initially developed for the 1894 International Expo is the well-renowned Japanese Tea Garden. The garden was initially prepared for the exposition by Australian immigrant George Turner Marsh, and was subsequently maintained by Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese landscape designer, for many decades. Unique features of the garden include a Drum Bridge, a Tea House, and a Zen Garden (Brown, 1998).
In 1853, the California Academy of Sciences was established. The academy is renowned for its work with public education outreach through its museum of natural sciences, as well as its work in research through its Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability (California Academy of Sciences, 2013). While it has a presence throughout much of California, the academy moved its North American Hall of Birds and Mammals, the Steinhart Aquarium, and the Simson African Hall to the Golden Gate Park in the 1900s. Another fascinating branch of the academy located in the park is the Morrison Planetarium which houses a one-of-a-kind star projector that displays an impressively realistic star field. The natural history museum also located in the park is one of the ten largest in the world of its kind, housing over 18 million scientific specimens. The public outreach branch of the academy is served largely through this museum which provides a wide range of exhibits to its visitors, from earthquakes, to astronomy, to aquatic life.
This wide array of features, among others, the park has gradually added has created a diverse and intricate public space whose success and variety has surely exceeded the hopes and expectations Hall and McLaren had in beginning this endeavor. They managed to turn a desolate area into a beautiful space, home to quaint gardens, rich culture, and ground-breaking science. The park is so massive in space and diverse in its features that it is truly feasible that each visit a person may take provides a completely different experience.

Current Impact
Today, the Golden Gate Park is both nationally and internationally renowned, attracting 13 million visitors annually; it is the fifth most-visited city park in the United States (Trust, 2011).

Many of the park’s main features, such as the De Young Museum, the Academy of Sciences, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Conservatory of Flowers, the windmills, the carousel, the Arboretum, and the Bison Paddock, are over a century old, serving as reminders of the rich history of the San Francisco Bay Area and providing a stunning variety of attractions and activities for park visitors.

The Music Concourse area, home to many of the more prominent features of the park, is a century-old testament to the grandeur and importance of the 1894 Midwinter International Expo. Other areas of the park contribute to the different facets of San Francisco's unique culture and history; the Bison Paddock and various nature trails, gardens, and pristine woods and fields are indicative of conservation and environmental protection efforts, while Hippie Hill, which was the site of the 1967 “Summer of Love”, a precursor to the ‘70s counterculture

movement.

Sources

Brown, Kendall H. (1998). Rashômo : The Multiple Histories of the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park. Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
Levinsohn, John L. (1989). "Frank Morrison Pixley of The Argonaut," The Book Club of San
Francisco. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
Pollock, C. (n.d.). Encyclopedia of San Francisco. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
San Francisco Board of Park Commissioners (1875), Third Biennial Report of the San Francisco
Park Commissioners, San Francisco: Edward Bosqqui & Co. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
Trust for Public Land (2011). The Most Visited City Parks in the U.S. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
Wilson, Katherine (1950). Golden Gate: The Park of a Thousand Vistas. Caldwell, Idaho: The
Caxton Printers. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
Petalson, Ruth (2010). Architect: The Work of the Pritzker Prize Laureates in Their Own Words. New York, New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. pp. 118–121
"Golden Gate Park Conservatory of Flowers | World Monuments Fund". www.wmf.org. Retrieved 2015-11-30.
Wilson, Katherine (1950). Golden Gate: The Park of a Thousand Vistas. Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers. pp. 52–58.
California Academy of Sciences. "About Us". California Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on April 20, 2013. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
SF Rec and Park. "Golden Gate Park." Web. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
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