Golden Gate Park

“ Shooting out through the entrance to Golden Gate Park, they turned into San Francisco, and took the long sweep of the descending hills at a rate that caused pedestrians to turn and watch them anxiously. Through the city streets the bright sweaters flew, turning and twisting to escape climbing the steeper hills, and, when the steep hills were unavoidable, doing stunts to see which would first gain the top. ”

“ When we have once sated ourselves with the general effect, there still remains a number of details, picturesque, interesting, or quaint. There is the Golden Gate Park, the cypresses and eucalypti at one end of which testify to the balminess of the climate, while the sand-dunes at its other end show the original condition of the whole surface of the peninsula, and add to our admiration of nature a sense of respectful awe for the transforming energy of man. ”

“ We spent the afternoon at Golden Gate Park, which was the great sight of San Francisco, four miles long, laid out as an immense garden or succession of gardens, with conservatories and aviaries, tropical trees, winding roads and paths in all directions. The first thing to attract my attention before entering the museum was a statue of Padre Junipero Serra, the intrepid founder of so many missions along the coast of California. ”

“ On Sundays he would put on a red-striped silk shirt and a blue serge suit and take a car to Golden Gate Park. There he would sit for hours in the sun, impassively watching the hundreds of picnic parties, the squirrels, or a piece of paper retreating before the breeze. Or perhaps he would walk west to the ocean, stopping for a few minutes at each of the animal pens, and take a car home from the Cliff House.
For two years the days came and passed on in monotonous reduplication, the casual hay-fever cure circulars supplying the only touches of novelty. ”

“ There is a strong, chilly wind blowing, and we do not tarry long on the bluff outside that overlooks the bay and seals.{103}
NEW CLIFF HOUSE AND SEAL ROCKS, SAN FRANCISCO.
It is twenty minutes past two as we get aboard a train on the Park and Ocean Railroad that will convey us to Golden Gate Park. We do not find this world-famed park very different in appearance from other parks we have seen. It is all nice—very nice; beautiful trees and plants and shrubbery, velvety green grass and bright blooming flowers, fine fountains and lakes of shimmering water. ”

“ In all of the California cities, one finds no better dressed people and no more cosmopolitan people in appearance than are to be seen on the San Francisco streets. It is more nearly a great city in its spirit and atmosphere than any other metropolis of the State.
The drive through the Golden Gate Park is interesting because of the blooming shrubs, and the lovely foliage. I have never before seen my favorite golden broom blooming in any part of the United States. Here it grows luxuriantly. The Presidio, the site of the military post, is a very beautiful park, and is well worth seeing. ”

“ The sites most favored were Lake Merced, Golden Gate Park and Harbor View. Lake Merced was opposed as inaccessible for the transportation both of building materials and of people, and, through its inland position, as an unwise choice for an Exposition on the Pacific Coast, in its nature supposed to be maritime. The use of the park, it was argued, would desecrate the peoples recreation ground and entail a heavy cost in leveling and in restoring.
Harbor View and the Presidio had several advantages. ”

“ Thousands frequent this favoured spot annually, and especially on Saturday afternoons is it thronged. You can reach the Cliff either by the street cars going by Golden Gate Park, or by the electric railway which skirts the rocky heights of the Golden Gate. This last was our route, and the return journey was by the street railway. A Mr. Black and a Mr. Norton, two of San Francisco's prosperous business-men, were going thither also, and, seeing that we were strangers, they with true California courtesy gave us much information and showed us favours which we valued highly. ”

“ The bathers are here all times of the year.
I can't tell of Golden Gate Park, with its beautiful drives, its statuary, museum, its herds of buffaloes and deer; of [213] the Presidio, the Government reservation of over 1,500 acres, which has been beautified until it may be included among the parks of San Francisco.
CHINATOWN, covering twelve squares of the city, where nobody lives but Chinese, is a place of great interest. Many visitors employ guides and take in the town at night, which, I am told, is the best time to see it at its worst. ”

“ What a delight a permanent reproduction of that fountain would be if placed against the side of one of the green hills out at Golden Gate Park - say near the Children's Playground - with a pool at its base. It is only by concerted action that we will ever get these works among us. ”

“ Emerging from this Golden Gate, I looked about me with surprise, as the narrow walls of the ravine gave place to a plateau surrounded everywhere by snow-capped mountains, from which the Indians believed one could obtain a view of Paradise. Across this area, like a railroad traversing a prairie, stretched the driveway for our carriages.
"Do tourists usually seem delighted with the park?" ”

“ THE GOLDEN GATE, YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK.—The Golden Gate is the favorite entrance to the park, and it has been photographed and pictured in many ways and from every point of view. The glimpse of the park caught through its portals is an entrancingly lovely one, and quickens the imagination with the expectation of greater things to be seen on the inside. ”

“ To induce the loan of its priceless contents, the building had to be fireproof. But the construction is not permanent. The splendid colonnade, a thing of exquisite and manifold beauty, is only plaster, and can last but a season or two. Even were the building solid enough to endure, its location is impossible after the Exposition closes.
It should be duplicated in permanent form. No doubt a proper site, with a setting of water and trees, can best be found in Golden Gate Park. The steel frame and roof of the main gallery could easily be transferred there and set up again. ”

“ Golden Gate is another of the exquisite spots every visitor to Yellowstone Park seeks and finds. To reach the Golden Gate one must be a great climber, for it is high up, and the road to it is built along the edge of a cliff, which, in places, seems to be absolutely perpendicular. ”

“ Stretching from South Park to Black Point, and running back to the Mission Dolores and the Presidio, we are building up a metropolis, sir, worthy to be placed beside the Golden Gate that opens to the broad Pacific and the shores of far Cathay! When the Pacific Railroad is built we shall be the natural terminus of the Pathway of Nations! ”

“ If you go to the Disneyland California Adventure park, there's a replica of it just past the gates, with a monorail running over it.
So naturally I assumed that if you were going to blow up a bridge in San Francisco, that's the one you'd blow.
"They probably got scared off by all the cameras and stuff," Jolu said. "The National Guard's always checking cars at both ends and there's all those suicide fences and junk all along it." People have been jumping off the Golden Gate since it opened in 1937 -- they stopped counting after the thousandth suicide in 1995. ”

“ The congested capitals of Europe had already learnt this lesson; traveled Americans, like William Cullen Bryant, brought it home; and Central Park, planned in 1853, was the first of the great landscape parks to serve as a people’s pleasance. Conceived in contrast to the deflowered landscape and the muddled city, the park alone re-created the traditions of civilization—of man naturalized, and therefore at home, of nature humanized, and therefore enriched. And even today our parks are what our cities should be, and are not. ”

“ It verified all my predictions—men who shoot chickens belong in a stage-coach—they are a “scrubby wagon outfit,” as the cowboys say.
Posed on the trestled road, I looked back at the Golden Gate Pass. It is one of those marvellous vistas of mountain scenery utterly beyond the pen or brush of any man. Paint cannot touch it, and words are wasted. War, storms at sea, and mountain scenery are bigger than any expression little man has ever developed. ”

“ That some actually are so and yet command the admiration of people of taste is an indication of their essential qualities and fundamental differences from parks proper. Few cities have anywhere near as many ornamental squares as they should. It ls particularly desirable that a city should have several of its principal public buildings facing upon a large public square, as the new custom house in New York faces upon the Bowling Green, not occupying it as the postoffice and municipal buildings occupy the City Hall Park. ”

“ She gives them breathing-room in a dozen civic parks, the largest of which both Nature and Art destine to be the noblest popular pleasure-ground of the civilized world, as it is the amplest of all save the Bois de Boulogne. Central Park covers an area of 843 acres, and, though only in the fifth year of its existence, already contains twelve miles of beautifully planned and scientifically constructed carriage-road, seven miles of similar bridle-path, four sub-ways for the passage of trade-vehicles across the Park, with an aggregate length of two miles, and twenty-one miles of walk. ”

“ The wonderful advance made in the last few years, in creating four national parks in the West, and thirty forest reservations, embracing nearly forty million acres; and in the planting of the borders of streets and highways and spacious parks in all the great cities, to satisfy the natural taste and hunger for landscape beauty and righteousness that God has put, in some measure, into every human being and animal, shows the trend of awakening public opinion. The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity ”

“ It looks down on the city with its innumerable homes, on the cemeteries within its shadow, on the Presidio with its tents and munitions of war, on the Golden Gate and on the waters of the Pacific, and it brings a blessing to all with its message of love and peace. It is a guide too, to the sailor coming over the seas from distant lands. As he strains his eyes to catch a glimpse of the coast the Cross stands out in bold relief against the eastern sky, and it tells him that he will find a hospitable welcome and safe harbourage within the Golden Gate. ”

“ For the purposes of the avenue, the American elm naturally suggests itself at once as the tree to be used; and it is to be hoped that the fine effect this produces, when planted in regular lines, may in a few years be realized in the Central Park.
There is no other part of the plan in which the planting calls for particular mention, except to the south of the skating pond; an opportunity is there offered for an exhibition of semi-tropical trees, and it is intended to treat that portion of the park in the manner suggested in the study. ”

“ The most expensive large parks, Central Park and Prospect Park, were located without taking advantage of the magnificent natural landscapes of the rivers and bays which distinguish New York and Brooklyn. There are many similar cases. Formerly people built with the backs of their houses upon the rivers and lakes, thus not only excluding the public from continuous access to them but ruining their beauty. Where land along the banks of rivers or along the shores of a lake can, in a city, be fairly well spared from commercial uses, public squares, parks and parkways should be located upon them. ”

“ These parks are all connected by broad boulevards, some of which are not yet fully developed, thus forming a continuous park drive, with enough of nature and enough of varied architecture for variety, unsurpassed, I should say, in the world within any city limits. Washington Park, with a slightly rolling surface and beautiful landscape-gardening, has not only fine drive-ways, but a splendid road set apart for horsemen. This is a dirt road, always well sprinkled, and the equestrian has a chance besides of a gallop over springy turf. ”

“ Other more private footpaths are introduced, but it is hardly thought that any plan would be popular in New York, that did not allow of a continuous promenade along the line of the drives, so that pedestrians may have ample opportunity to look at the equipages and their inmates.
It will be perceived that no long straight drive has been provided on the plan; this feature has been studiously avoided, because it would offer opportunities for trotting matches. The popular idea of the park is a beautiful open space, in which quiet drives, rides, and strolls may be had. ”

“ Only twenty years ago, Union Square was “out of town;” twenty years hence, the town will have enclosed the Central Park. Let us consider, therefore, what will at that time be satisfactory, for it is then that the design will have to be really judged.
No longer an open suburb, our ground will have around it a continuous high wall of brick, stone, and marble. The adjoining shores will be lined with commercial docks and warehouses; steamboat and ferry landings, railroad stations, hotels, theatres, factories, will be on all sides of it and above it; all which our park must be made to fit. ”