Located in San Francisco on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean beach, this restaurant is one of the oldest in California, famous for its panoramic views and delectable cuisine. A flat roof, neoclassical, reinforced concrete structure called Cliff House was built in 1909, but they were not the first buildings to be built here.
Here is the history of this building …
The original home was originally built on the cliff in 1863 as a fashionable resort in the recently wealthy and popular San Francisco. It was a modest one-story timber-framed building that offered stunning panoramic views of the Pacific coastline.
In 1881, Cliff House was bought by millionaire Adolphe Sutro, who later became mayor of San Francisco. Sutro wanted to turn the restaurant into a complete family vacation spot. To this end, he renovated the building, hired new staff, and began building a railroad to bring visitors to this remote coastline when a fire broke out on Christmas Day in 1894. The fire destroyed the entire timber frame building.
Victorian rock house between 1896-1907.
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Within two years, Sutro built and opened a new house on the cliff. The new building was a grand seven-story Victorian castle with turrets, decorative spiers, fancy roofs, dormers and an observation tower. The castle contained several private dining rooms, lounges, bars, a large art gallery, pearl displays, a photo gallery, and outdoor verandas on the upper floors. The new home The rock, dubbed "Gingerbread Palace", has become the most photographed attraction in San Francisco.
The most impressive part of the Sutro complex were the baths, located in a small cove to the north of the restaurant. It was a massive glass house containing a freshwater pool and six seawater pools at different temperatures. The bathhouse was 150 meters long and 77 meters wide. During high tides, water from the ocean filled the pools. At low tide, a powerful turbine and water pump filled the tanks for about five hours.
The baths had over 500 private dressing rooms with amenities for 20,000 bathers. There were slides, horizontal bars, springboards and towers. The complex also housed a museum with an extensive collection of stuffed animals and a 2,700-seat amphitheater.
Unfortunately, the life of this holiday center was short-lived. Eleven years later, in 1907, another fire razed the house to the ground.
The current building is the third one built by Adolf Sutro's daughter Emma Sutro Merritt. Due to the restaurant's past history of fires, the new building was constructed from fire retardant reinforced concrete.
Baths existed until the 1930s. In the end, the baths were sold by the developer, who began to demolish the buildings. A mysterious fire in 1966 brought the project to completion.
In 1977, the National Park Service acquired the property and Cliff House became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The partially destroyed ruins of the Sutra Baths are still preserved.
House on the rocks today.
The ruins of the baths Sutro. The modern Skala house is visible in the background.