Upstairs, downstairs, in Golden Gate Park
On the western border of San Francisco, at the Golden Gate Park waterfront, you’ll find the Beach and Park Chalet, where locals are likely to spend a Saturday afternoon, or even a foggy evening, lounging on the chairs in back of a 100-year-old building that houses two restaurants. Upstairs, at the Beach Chalet, the special offering is a view of the coast across the Great Highway, while downstairs at the Park Chalet, life spills into the park itself. Kids can frolic among the trees while parents enjoy a microbrew and live music.
The building, Spanish colonial in design, was the work of Willis Polk, supervising architect of the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915. The Exposition was a celebration of the new canal but became a showcase for San Francisco’s recovery from the earthquake in 1906. Polk’s best work includes the Pacific Union Club, the Filoli Estate, the War Memorial Opera House, and the Hobart Building. It was also Polk who guided the restoration of Bernard Maybeck’s Palace of Fine Arts and who said, “Make no small plans for they have not the power to stir men’s minds.”
Info
Address 1000 Great Highway, San Francisco, CA, 94121, www.beachchalet.com, +1 415.355.9400 | Public Transport Light rail: N-Judah (Judah St & La Playa Ave stop) | Hours Daily 8am–11pm| Tip An archery field lies just northeast of the Park Chalet. Lessons and equipment are available at the nearby San Francisco Archery Shop at 3795 Balboa Street.
Visitors entering the Beach Chalet are immediately struck by the superbly done wraparound murals, comprising frescoes done in the Arts and Crafts style. Created by Lucien Labaudt, a self-taught French artist who came to the city in 1910, the murals offer an intimate sense of San Francisco during the Great Depression. The scenes are foreshortened and naturalistic; the figures depicted were actually distinguished residents of the city. Indeed, some of the models were WPA administrators who may not have realized how these renderings—of people enjoying good times, playing tennis, and riding horseback; and of women sometimes looking bored and desultory—would suggest the inequality and moodiness of the times.
In the center of the lobby you’ll find a wonderful scale model diorama of Golden Gate Park.
Back
To the online map