Surmounted by a freighted galleon, with streaming pennant and
wind-filled sails, a granite pedestal "remembers" Robert Louis Stevenson
in Portsmouth Square, cradle of San Francisco's civic history. This
square, the Plaza of the early city, was the forerunner of a chain of
parks, children's playgrounds and open spaces that checkers San
Francisco with refreshing green.
Farther uptown is Union Square, in the center of the hotel and retail
district. Over on the other side toward North Beach, at the foot of
Telegraph Hill, is Washington Square, one of the recreation spots of the
Latin Quarter, with church spires outlined above its willows. A park
that will command the entire harbor is being built on top of Telegraph
Hill.
In the Western Addition, Richmond, Sunset and Mission districts are many
parks that provide resting places for mothers, their infants in
go-carts, and romping children.
Golden Gate Park is the aureole of San Francisco's recreational haunts.
It was saved to the city in the beginning by Frank McCoppin and C. R.
Dempster and made an area of living beauty by John McLaren, Scotch
landscape engineer, who is Superintendent of Parks.
From the panhandle at Baker street to the Ocean Beach, the park
stretches like a massive gold-green buckler enameled with lustrous gems.
There are 1013 acres in the park, its Main Drive, including the
panhandle, being 4 1/2 miles long.
Whether you loiter along tree-shaded alleys, or stroll through
rhododendron dells in the late Spring, when the landscape fairly quivers
with color, there is an ineffable loveliness about Golden Gate Park. Its
opulence is heightened by its contrasts, as are all well-considered
landscape designs. Treading the expanse of daisy-starred emerald lawns,
loitering under the elms in the Band Concourse, or wandering through the
dwarf trees patterned against humpback bridges in the Japanese Tea
Garden, you find new lures in Golden Gate Park with each successive
visit.
The de Young Memorial Museum, the Academy of Sciences, the Steinhart
Aquarium, Stow Lake, the Dutch windmills, Huntington Falls, the aviary,
the buffalo paddock, the bear pit, the children's playground with its
goats and donkeys, the tennis courts, the harness racing in the Stadium,
the bowling on the green--almost every rod of the thousand odd acres in
the park unfolds unexpected allurements.
On a hill in the park is the granite cross which commemorates the first
church service in the English language on the American continent, held
in 1579 by Sir Francis Drake's chaplain on the coast just north of the
Golden Gate.
A copy of Rodin's bronze Thinker is here. The "Portal of the Past,"
taken from a Nob Hill residence after the fire of 1906, is seen in
idyllic whiteness against a clump of Irish yews across the luminous
water of a lake that picks up their outline like a Renaissance picture.
Statuary, classic and modern, arrests interest at every turn in the
park. Among the figures and busts are those of Junipero Serra, General
Grant, Goethe, Schiller, Cervantes, General Pershing and President
Garfield.
At the extreme westerly end of the park, fronting the sea whose perils
it braved, is the sloop Gjoa in which Captain Roald Amundsen cut one of
the Gordian knots of exploration and found and navigated the Northwest
Passage.
Lincoln Park, with a municipal golf course on a headland overlooking the
Golden Gate, affords a distant but luring view of San Francisco. In
Lincoln Park is a replica of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Paris,
gift of Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Spreckels as a memorial to San Francisco's
soldiers in the world war. In addition to its art treasures it was built
to house trophies from all the fronts on which the American
expeditionary forces fought, Marshal Foch and other commanders having
interested themselves in the collection.
The Palace of Fine Arts on the Marina close to the Presidio, with its
masterpieces from the Phoebe A. Hearst and other collections, is a short
drive from Lincoln Park. The city's Aquatic Park is close by.
Sutro Heights, with its gardens, classic marbles and outlook upon the
sea, is near the Cliff House above the Ocean Beach. The Seal Rocks and
the Sutro baths are in sight of these heights.
San Francisco has established a new playground for children at the end
of Sloat Boulevard, with a second municipal golf course and the largest
outdoor swimming pool in the world among its attractions.