Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park of 1,017 acres (412 ha) of public land. It is managed by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began to oversee the construction of Golden Gate Park in 1871. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in form to but 20 percent larger than New York City's Central Park, which is sometimes compared to. It is three miles (4.8 km) long, east to west, and about half a mile (0.8 km) north to south. With 24 million visitors a year, Golden Gate is the third most visited city park in the United States after Central Park and the Lincoln Memorial.
Just as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was called "The Bridge That Couldn't Be Built" the 1,000+ acres of land once known as the "Outside Lands" was not a promising sight for the park. In 1871, field engineer William Hammond Hill and master gardener John McLaren sculpted an urban oasis later called Golden Gate Park.
Today, the park is home to a wealth of San Francisco's most popular attractions, including the Japanese Tea Garden, the San Francisco Botanical Garden, the De Young Museum, and the California Academy of Sciences. Golden Gate Park has more than 24 million visitors a year, making it the third most visited city park in the United States.
Top Attractions
De Young Museum
It's named after M. H. De Young, the San Francisco newspaper's magnate, the De Young Museum is a fine arts museum that opened in January 1921. Its original structure, the Fine Arts Building, was part of the Midwinter Exhibition of 1894, of which Mr. de Young was the curator. The Fine Arts Building featured a variety of artists, twenty-eight of them female. One of these revolutionaries was Helen Hyde, who is currently in the De Young Museum. By the close of the fair, the Egyptian-styled building remained open, "brimful and running over with art." Most of these objects were paintings and sculptures bought by De Young himself, and some were gifts of household antiques from the older generation, which were "more sentimental than artistic." By 1916, the Fine Arts Building's collection had expanded to 1,000,000 items and a more fitting musée.
Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences was established in 1853, just three years after California became a state, making it the oldest scientific institution in the western United States. The evolutionist Charles Darwin corresponded to the initial organisation of the early institution. The original museum consisted of eleven buildings constructed between 1916 and 1976 on the site of the 1894 Midwinter Fair Mechanical Arts Building in Golden Gate Park. The structure was completely demolished by the earthquake of 1989 and only three of the original buildings were retained for the new construction: the African Hall, the North American Hall and the Steinhart Aquarium. The new building was opened in 2008 at the same location in the park. The present building spans 37,000 square meters and contains displays of natural history, marine life, astronomy, gems and minerals and earthquakes.
Conservatory of Flowers
The Conservatory of Flowers opened in 1879 and is now the oldest building in Golden Gate Park. The Conservatory of Flowers is one of the largest conservatories in the United States and one of the few major Victorian greenhouses in the United States. Designed from conventional wood and glass panels, the Conservatory stands at 12,000 square feet and houses 1,700 species of tropical, rare and aquatic plants. Although it was not originally designed, William Hammond Hall included the idea of a conservatory in his initial design plan for the park. The idea was later realized with the aid of twenty-seven of San Francisco's richest business owners.
This amazing kid-friendly park is just one of the many must-see sights you don’t want to miss in San Francisco, California:
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Alamo Square Park
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Mission Dolores Park
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USS San Francisco Memorial
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San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
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Washington Square
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Pioneer Park
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Corona Heights Park
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Lafayette Park
All of these wonderful parks are located just a short distance from our location located at 100 Pine St #1250 in San Francisco! Stop by for a visit anytime!
