A castle in the trees at the de Young
If you’re walking (or driving) along JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, at about Ninth Avenue you might notice a looming metal tower rising amidst the lush canopy of evergreens. The tower, clad in an exoskeleton of reddish copper, resembles a castle battlement. Follow the tower to its base, through a sculpture garden, behind the trees, and you come to the de Young Museum, one of the Bay Area’s largest fine art museums and one that mixes natural and manmade aesthetics with abandon and flourish.
When the de Young Museum was rebuilt after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the architectural firm of Herzog and de Meuron, with San Francisco’s Fong and Chen Architects, set out to use natural materials, such as copper, wood, stone and glass in its design. Some residents adore the ultra-modern reconstruction; others prefer the original Beaux-Arts-style building that was torn down.
Info
Address de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco, CA, 94118, www.deyoung.famsf.org, +1 415.750.3600 | Public Transport Bus: 44 (Academy of Sciences stop) | Hours Tue–Sun 9:30am–5pm| Tip Every Sunday during the summer, the Golden Gate Park Band gives free concerts in the Music Concourse and Pavilion, located in front of the de Young Museum.
Regardless of taste, the observation floor is a unique pleasure. An elevator rises 144 feet to the 360-degree viewing area, which is ringed by a full circle of tall windows. The tower just clears the tallest trees in the park, so that the panoramic vistas are framed by the lush greenery and swaying eucalyptus boughs below.
From this airy vantage point, it feels as if you are viewing San Francisco from a very high tree house. The landscape of the park flows out in all directions. To the east, the living roof of the Academy of Sciences undulates like the hillside just behind it. To the west, the view stretches all the way to the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge—which appears strangely close, partly because it rises above the city to about the same elevation.
Visitors can pinpoint other landmarks throughout the city using the giant aerial photographs posted along the base of the windows. Admission to the Hamon Tower Observation Level, located in the east wing of the museum, is free to visitors.
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