Sutro Baths: A Forgotten Landmark

it's ugly and it looks unfinished pins and rods and broken stair cases and pipes coming out on the ground and basic question people knows what was this place the Sutro Baths once San Francisco's crown jewel acquired its fame for being the largest indoor swimming structure in the world it's a piece of San Francisco history that is really history well there weren't very many places to swim in San Francisco it was very cold in Sutro Baths was kind of a legendary place catering to thousands the Sutro Baths continued to impress the public by its extraordinary architecture and beautiful venue the pool house expanded to offer its visitors shows a museum and an ice skating rink in June of 1966 disaster struck transforming culture into desolation though it had such rich history it has faded into obscurity going to the Sutro Baths from an orphanage where I was living and I was only 6 years old but I really remember damn near drowning in one of the pools of a Sutro Baths but yeah it's a memory you don't forget I guess first memory uh I remember exchanging my suit and I was it was cold in the rooms there was no heat and the board you walked on these little boards had checkers checkerboard and it hurts your feet and the boys couch and I needed to learn to swim when I was seven years old he brought me out there and dumped me into one of the swimming pools it says here you go see if he can swim my first memory of going to the baths would have been about 1955 or 56 and taking the streetcar from my grandma's house out to Ocean Beach and then walking uphill past the cliff house and into the bath I used to run inside and you go down these these stairs and you can see all the the buggies and wagons and Tom thumb's museum and then you got down below and they had all these mummies Egyptian mummies and they had this Tucker car there and they had all these exhibits they had plants and birds and statues and there was so much to see adult Sutro made his way to America through Panama arriving in San Francisco in 1850 he gained his wealth in Nevada and brought his fortune to San Francisco Sutra was the 24th mayor of San Francisco and was very eccentric it all Souter doesn't get the recognition today that he really should have he was German and Jewish in a society dominated by Protestants basically from England so he always was kind of a minority and probably had a chip on his shoulder to a certain extent he was probably a genius in his own way and he had lots of money to back up whatever he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do it he says I can do anything I can build anything I can make anything he says I'm I'm that good he was a server of a Renaissance man and he very much believed in it because we called noblesse oblige the duty of the rich to help the working class he gave more to San Francisco than any other mayor or any other person he had a scientific mind without having any formal science training he could do engineering feats that not many other people could do plus he had the money and the willpower to go ahead and do it the architecture of the Sutro Baths was futuristic for its time it was the largest pool house in the world Sutra designed the bath so that sea water was used to fill them visitors traveled from around the globe to see this famous landmark it started when Sutra decided to build an artificial wave powered aquarium as an outdoor attraction and he constructed a circular aquarium built of stone quarried out there at the point filled by wave acts and then it drained at low tide and he got so intrigued with this waterworks concept he decided to build a series of outdoor swimming pools adjacent to his what he called his aquarium and it just kept growing he kept changing his mind constantly and after it was all finished he sat back and got the idea of cold weather so in Clement out here we better cover it with glass he said anybody comes up with a design that I like you can get $500 so long came collie and lemme a contractor's here in the city submitted their drawings of a building and suture love that gave him five hundred dollars and they started building it by the time the building was built it didn't look like anything that the drawings that had submitted late 1894 the building was finished everything was done and there was supposed to be a grand opening when the baths were finally thrown open ever been watching them be constructed but Adolph Sutro got into a battle with the Southern Pacific Railroad and his brother Gustav under wrote the construction of a steam train line they sold out the rights to the railroad pretty soon after they began construction they got another group to finish it he says one condition you have to leave that fare alone you can't do anything to it you have to leave it the way it is for the people to get out the deal is passed and sure enough they raised the fare to ten cents he says okay if you got a charge a dime Southern Pacific I'm gonna build my own railroad he did ran around the end of Lands End on a series of tracks of constantly being washed out or swept into the sea by landslides whose really treacherous it was also incredibly dramatic he got off at the end of the line you were literally no more than about 200 feet from the entrance to see trio's estate 1896 is when Sutro Baths finally opened to the public there was Sutra baths three and a half acres a footprint immediately stairs went down to the first level which was opened up into the museum that went without on the roof you could go over the top of the boardwalk and jump into the saltwater pool which was a huge big pool and we'd swim in that it was all saltwater and it would go up your nose and burn your eyes and then he had a big slide in there and one end they had a big diving platform and we just had a ball and we stayed there all day sort of like what my kids thought of Disneyland like there was all these stuff there were stuffed animals and mechanical things and I mean this was just like unreal not only with a Sutro Baths a place to take your friends and family swimming it slowly transformed to offer different attractions to its visitors over time the baths were converted into an ice rink and the pools drifted into neglect always like the museum that was the thing with me so always like going down and looking at all the artifacts the mummies and all there was just so much stuff you couldn't take it all in plus a place was so big it was it was just unbelievable I got good at skate skating so they let me be a guard on the ice and because some of the speed skaters would make a lot of trouble and hockey players people like that so I found myself working there late at night I used to go there on a special night of the week a Wednesday or whatever and we waltzed and I met a fellow that was I'd meet every time I went out there that's a week we would vault he was a I can remember he was tall very tall and skated beautifully how he did a couple of squats and it was lovely all of us who would go there during the ice-skating years knew that the place had once been have been big swimming pool complex and if you can imagine where the ice-skating rink was located there was sort of fire doors as an emergency exit and if you push those fire doors open that didn't take you outside they led into the drained baths and every kid I've talked to who grew up did the same thing they push that fire door open and as long as they could keep that thing open they just get a drink in the visuals inside and till the security guard came made to close it but in front of you were all the drained swimming pools and the rusting diving boards and the old food concessions boarded up on the side and the bleachers it was almost like frozen in time and that was the only really got a scale of what the inside Sutro Baths was like the Sutro Baths and his attractions catered to thousands but the costs of maintenance became too high as erosion and leaky roofs continue to worsen soot rose estate sold the property to george whitney in 1952 it only took time before Whitney fell into debt and was forced to shut it down shortly after it closed a mysterious fire broke out and put a final end to the ever famous pool house the plan was to demolish the empty building they pulled all the artifacts out demolish it and redeveloped the cove as a series of condominiums looking out over the Pacific Ocean and the objects were removed the they had sold off a lot of the interior furnishings and the building was being demolished when in June of 1966 what everybody calls a very convenient fire broke out and in one horrific afternoon the entire bath building growl so we all jumped in cars rolled out there the fire lines were already up and you couldn't get down the hill towards it so we went into soot to a park and climbed down from the top and sat on the bushes over we had a grand view of it it was like it was being played out for us it's like an amphitheater it was just a tremendous fire well I thought to me there was a lot of rumors that this was not a an accidental fire I kind of thought that it was painful yeah it was painful up to real as it was closing but you see it burned out that was a spectacular wanting to be closer remember looking toward the cliff house when I could see the smoke coming up in the air so I rode my bike up the chute rose and I remember to have all the hoses running down the street and the firemen didn't want to let us up there but I walked up to the side by the gift shop and I watched it burned down that day I watched it burn down and a lot of people don't know this but my dad arrested the kid that burnt down suit Rose in 1966 the kid was a magic batch and his sister set the fire at soot Rose according to the San Francisco Police Department magic batch was at one point an employee at the baths but let go shortly after being hired he still remains the main suspect in the case although never convicted for the crime he was seen running away from the fire and was detained by an officer for 70 years San Franciscans and tourists were able to experience and hold a memory of a unique landmark once a prominent attraction in San Francisco the Sutro Baths will forever hold its history and continue to draw in spectators curious of what once laid on this very land you sit in Lewis for for a morning breakfast and the people get off the buses streetcars get out of their cars and start walking first thing they do is start looking down at the bass and they are just fascinated by it and they want to know what happened there and a lot did happen you wasn't some old ruins from Rome and it was it also chose suitor baths

Channel: Project House

Views: 208,549

Rating: 4.9314661 out of 5

Keywords: SutroBaths, Education, Educational, News, San, Francisco, Bay, Entertainment, Gate, California, Area, Golden, Sutro, Baths, Ocean

Id: 2jCtJWGcLfs

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/Raaab]

That was a great watch! Thanks!

[u/dick_tracy1]

Nice video. Thanks for sharing it.

[u/cuddlejohn]

Looks really cool! Why can't we have nice things like that anymore?