Sutro Baths

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Interior view of Sutro Baths on May 1, 1896

Sutro Baths was a privately operated saltwater indoor pool on the Pacific coast to the west of San Francisco . The swimming pool was built on behalf of the German immigrant Adolph Sutro and was the largest indoor swimming pool in the world when it opened in 1896. The complex burned down in 1966 and its ruins in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area are now one of San Francisco's tourist attractions.

history

The aquarium

Adolph Sutro was the 24th mayor of the city of San Francisco between 1894 and 1896. Portrait of the American photographer Mathew B. Brady from the second half of the 19th century.

The Aachen- born Adolph Sutro (1830–1898) had made a fortune in the silver mining in California and in 1881 bought large lots of land in the then undeveloped west of San Francisco. Two years later he opened his private estate Sutro Heights in what is now Sutro Heights Park to the public. At that time there were few recreational parks for the working people of San Francisco and visits his Italian garden was a small fee views of the Pacific Ocean and on the other side of the Golden Gate nearby Marin Headlands enjoy.

On behalf of Sutros, workers began in 1884 at the northern end of the Point Lobos headland with the construction of a system modeled on tidal pools , which was fed by sea water and measured around 30 by 34 meters. At the beginning of 1886, Sutro already mentioned his plan to later expand the facility into a swimming pool to a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle , but initially it was a question of building an aquarium "with all kinds of sea anemones, bryophytes and shellfish".

The original construction consisted of a collecting basin for seawater, from which an underground tube led to the actual aquarium and fed it with water at high tide. If this water ran off again at low tide, the animals and plants washed in from the Pacific became visible to the public. During a public demonstration of the system, Sutro announced that the system would soon be expanded into a swimming pool, which should extend over an area of ​​more than 10,000 square meters at a depth of between one and 2.7 meters.

Construction of the swimming pool and the Sutro Railroad

Immediately after the completion of the aquarium , workers began to erect a stone wall to enclose the later swimming pool on the sea side. In 1890 they began building cement walls dividing the original Swimming Pond into five smaller, rectangular pools and one larger, L-shaped pool. In August 1891, Sutro put the construction of the above-ground parts of his swimming pool out to tender. Two months later, he commissioned the architectural office of Emil S. Lemme and CJ Cooley to erect a steel and glass structure that would enable future visitors to see the Pacific.

Exterior view of the completed facility. In the foreground the former aquarium , to the left of it the three-story building with steam power station and laundry, in the center of the picture the hall construction.

The first building was a steam power plant with an attached laundry in the summer of 1892. Then the construction of the steel frame of the roof began. This canopy consisted of three halls of roughly the same size, two of which spanned the swimming pools and one of the grandstands and lounges facing away from the ocean. In July 1893, work on this part of the plant was completed.

After the roof was built, carpentry and plumbing work began, as did the installation of the electrical systems and the large-format glass surfaces. However, the opening planned for April 29, 1894 was delayed after two workers fell from their scaffolding and were killed in the process. Another delay arose from Sutro's dispute with the Southern Pacific Railroad over prices to transport passengers to the bath. Sutro initially insisted on not opening his swimming pool until the Southern Pacific had lowered the price to 5 cents per passenger. Against the backdrop of Sutro's campaign for the upcoming mayoral election in November 1894, the railway company finally gave in. Sutro was still not satisfied with this result and decided to build its own railway line, the Sutro Railroad , with which he wanted to break the dominance of the Southern Pacific. The Sutro Railroad connected San Francisco's Clement Street to the swimming pool and began operating on February 1, 1896. This paved the way for the opening ceremony and Sutro - now Mayor of San Francisco - was able to officially open the bathing establishment in March 1896.

The time between 1896 and 1965

In the years between 1896 and 1933, only a few structural and technical changes were made to the Sutro Baths . In 1904 the operation of the power station was switched from coal to fuel oil. Due to storm damage in June 1905, repair work had to be carried out on the western parts of the plant. Since 1912 the bath was supplied with electricity by Pacific Gas and Electric , so that from now on the power plant was only used to heat the lake water.

In the first half of the 1930s, a comprehensive renovation of the facility began under the supervision of Sutro's grandson, Adolph G. Sutro. The entrance area and the large swimming pool were renewed, the outside area was expanded to include picnic areas and part of the inside area was converted into an ice rink.

In the course of decreasing visitor interest, Adolph Sutro's heirs decided in September 1957 to sell the Sutro Baths to the entrepreneur George Whitney. This converted the facility into an amusement park, but ultimately could not prevail against the competition from more modern swimming pools in San Francisco. Between 1954 and 1955, Whitney had a gondola system built that took passengers from nearby Cliff House to an observation deck at the far end of Point Lobos. However, this Sky Tram closed ten years later because it was not economically viable.

The end in 1966

Current state of the Sutro Baths (looking north with the Marin Headlands in the background)

In the early 1960s, George Whitney's heirs decided to sell the property to real estate entrepreneur Robert Frasier. He planned to tear down Sutro Baths and build apartments in their place.

The operation of the swimming pool ended on March 1, 1966 and shortly afterwards the demolition work began. On June 26, 1966, a fire caused by arson completely destroyed the facility. Resistance to the planned construction of apartments, financing problems and new regulations for the development of the Pacific coast meant that Frasier's plans were never implemented and Sutro Baths survive as ruins to this day.

literature

  • John A. Martini: Sutro's Glass Palace: The Story of Sutro Baths , with illustrations by Lawrence Ormsby, Bodega Bay 2014, ISBN 978-0-9761494-6-0 (opulently illustrated standard work with numerous illustrations).

Web links

Commons : Sutro Baths  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ John A. Martini: Sutro's Glass Palace: The Story of Sutro Baths , with illustrations by Lawrence Ormsby, Bodega Bay 2014, p. 16.
  2. ↑ "About the baths, my plans are in embryo. Let us first finish the aquarium. ”, The Sutro Aquarium , in: San Francisco Chronicle of January 7, 1886, quoted here from Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , p. 16.
  3. ^ "It will be a salt-water aquarium entirely. It shall have in it every class of sea anemone, sea mosses, and shell fish ", The Sutro Aquarium , in: San Francisco Chronicle of January 7, 1886, here quoted from Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , p. 16.
  4. ↑ Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , p. 20.
  5. ^ Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , pp. 27-29.
  6. ↑ Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , pp. 41f.
  7. ↑ Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , pp. 44-47.
  8. ↑ On this and the following cf. Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , p. 84.
  9. ^ Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , p. 99.
  10. ↑ On this and the following cf. Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , pp. 105-109.
  11. ↑ On this and the following cf. Martini, Sutro's Glass Palace , pp. 111-115.

Coordinates: 37 ° 46 '48.4 "  N , 122 ° 30' 49.8"  W.