Aquatic Park Bathhouse - A Building Shaped Like a Ship
Photo: Almonroth, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
The white building shaped like an ocean liner, at the foot of Polk Street, was a Depression project. The Works Progress Administration built it as a public bathhouse that opened in 1939, with rounded decks, porthole windows and railings that make it look ready to sail. Artist Hilaire Hiler covered the main hall with a dreamlike underwater world of sea creatures and the lost continents of legend.
The bathhouse never worked out as planned, and the Army used it during World War II. Since 1951 it has housed a maritime museum, now part of San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park; check the park's website for hours.
Out front, the curving beach and the long municipal pier shelter Aquatic Park cove, where members of two rowing and swimming clubs founded in the 1870s still swim in the cold bay year-round.
More on Wikipedia: Aquatic Park Historic District · Hilaire Hiler · Works Progress Administration
Stops on this tour
- Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
- Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
- Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
- North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
- Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
- Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
- The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
- Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
- Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
- Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
- The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
- The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
- Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
- South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom