RON HENGGELER

March 30, 2009
Hissing cats and the Sutro Baths

The Sutro Baths The largest of the Sutro Baths’ public swimming pools was 300 feet long and 175 feet wide. Their creator, Prussian-born Adolf Sutro, arrived in San Francisco in 1851 at the age of 21 to seek Gold Rush riches, but made his fortune from silver and the Comstock Lode in Nevada. Mining silver proved to be too treacherous, so Sutro designed a four-mile-long tunnel beneath the silver vein that allowed miners better access to the lucrative seams. Returning to San Francisco, he sank his money into real estate and eventually owned one-twelfth of the land in the city. When Sutro opened his opulent Sutro Baths in 1896, there was room for 25,000 swimmers and spectators amid sculptures and ancient artifacts under a soaring glass dome. The baths had an assortment of slides, trapezes, and swings, 500 private dressing rooms, and restaurants on three levels. Visitors could see the ocean through a tunnel cut in the rocks or from behind 100,000 square feet of glass. Sutro Baths prospered for only about a decade, then gradually deteriorated. A suspicious fire destroyed the baths in 1966. The ruins can still be seen north of the Cliff House at the end of Point Lobos Avenue on land owned by the National Park Service. From SAN FRANCISCO SECRETS by John Snyder Chronicle Books 1999

Janais (hissing) and Francisco

Sunset near the Sutro Baths

A view of the Gate from the Sutro Baths

Ruins of the Sutro Baths

 

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