18.5.2023, ♣ San Francisco: Golden Gate Park

Shakespeare Garden; Van Niekerken, Bill (2015_09_08): The mysteries of Shakespeare Garden in Golden Gate Park, www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/The-mysteries-of-Shakespeare-Garden-in-Golden-6491913.php: … The tiny meadow’s actual name is the Garden of Shakespeare’s Flower … the California Spring Blossom and Wildflower Association … championed plans for a garden where all of the flowers mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare could grow … The Parks Commission … approved the plan in September 1927, and the association and legendary Superintendent John McLaren got to work installing water lines, plowing the grounds and fertilizing the soil …

Music Concourse, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Concourse: … an open-air plaza … Flanking the oval-shaped concourse are the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Academy of Sciences … Originally excavated for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894, it underwent … significant redesign … as a venue for public gatherings centered on music performances … focal point of the plaza, Spreckels Temple of Music … has served as a stage for numerous performers … the Grateful Dead …

Hamon Tower, De Young Museum, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Young_Museum: … 44 m … observation tower allows visitors to see much of Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse … and rises above the Park’s treetops, providing a view of the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands. The twisting … tower is a distinctive feature …

Conservatory of Flowers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatory_of_Flowers: … a greenhouse and botanical garden that houses a collection of rare and exotic plants … With construction having been completed in 1879, it is the oldest building in the park. It was one of the first municipal conservatories constructed in the United States and is the oldest remaining municipal wooden conservatory in the country … sits atop a gentle slope overlooking Conservatory Valley … modeled after Kew Gardens in London … The conservatory has 16,800 window panes …

Golden Gate Park, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_Park: … large urban park … administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the development … Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape to … Central Park in New York City, to which it is often compared …

8., 16.-17. May 2023, The Presidio of San Francisco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidio_of_San_Francisco: … (originally, El Presidio Real de San Francisco …) … a park and former U.S. Army post on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula … part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area … a fortified location since … 1776, when New Spain established the presidio to gain a foothold in Alta California … passed to Mexico in 1820 … to the United States in 1848 … As part of a 1989 military reduction program …, Congress voted to end the Presidio’s status as an active military installation of the U.S. Army … 1994, it was transferred to the National Park Service, ending 219 years of military use and beginning its next phase of mixed commercial and public use … In a first-of-its-kind structure, Congress mandated that the Presidio Trust make the Presidio financially self-sufficient by 2013. The Presidio achieved the goal in 2005 … The park has … wooded areas, hills, and scenic vistas overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco Bay, and the Pacific Ocean … recognized as a California Historical Landmark in 1933 … as a National Historic Landmark in 1962 … Beginning in the 1890s, the Presidio was home to the Letterman Army Medical Center (LAMC), named in 1911 for Jonathan Letterman, the medical director of the Civil War-era Army of the Potomac …

Preservation – After a hard-fought battle, the Presidio averted being sold at auction and came under the management of the Presidio Trust, a U.S. government corporation established … in 1996. The Presidio Trust … has jurisdiction over the interior 80 percent of the Presidio, including nearly all of its historic structures. The National Park Service manages coastal areas … The Presidio Trust Act calls for “preservation of the cultural and historic integrity of the Presidio for public use.” The Act also requires that the Presidio Trust be financially self-sufficient … These imperatives have resulted in numerous conflicts between the need to maximize income by leasing historic buildings, and permitting public use despite most structures being rented privately. Further differences … from the divergent needs of preserving the integrity of the National Historic Landmark District in the face of new construction, competing pressures for natural habitat restoration …  inventory of approximately 800 buildings, many of them historical … Sections of the Letterman Army Hospital were preserved by the Thoreau Center for Sustainability … The Trust entered a major agreement with Lucasfilm to build a new facility called the Letterman Digital Arts Center (LDAC), which is now Lucasfilm’s corporate headquarters. The site replaced portions of what was the Letterman Hospital. George Lucas won the development rights for 15 acres (6.1 ha) of the Presidio, in June 1999, after beating out a number of rival plans …

Presidio Cycling advance – Signage: „The Presidio Trust is piloting an innovative type of bike facility called Advisory Bike Lanes … where roadway width is limited and traffic volumes are low … When two cars traveling in opposite directions approach each other, one vehicle merges into the bike lane to pass … When cyclists are in the bike lane, the motorists must yield to the cyclists before entering the bike lane …”Presidio Cycling advance – Signage: „The Presidio Trust is piloting an innovative type of bike facility called Advisory Bike Lanes … where roadway width is limited and traffic volumes are low … When two cars traveling in opposite directions approach each other, one vehicle merges into the bike lane to pass … When cyclists are in the bike lane, the motorists must yield to the cyclists before entering the bike lane …”