Garden & Landscaping Walking Tour of SF’s Golden Gate Park

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join CGLHS and our guest speaker Christopher Pollock, Historian in Residence for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, as he conducts a springtime walking tour in Golden Gate Park.

The itinerary for the walking tour will cover a wide variety of historic sites located in the east end of the Golden Gate Park, including: the Conservatory of Flowers (1877), the earliest public building in the park; the Sharon Quarters for Children (1888), the first public playground in the United States; and the AIDS Memorial Grove (1991), a National Historic Monument. We’ll stroll through the Music Concourse, where the spatial organization of the racetrack-shaped bowl, created by man and beasts of burden, will be discussed. And after visiting sites in the Stow Lake area, the tour will end at one of the park’s newer gardens, the de Young Museum Children’s Garden (2003) by Walter Hood. See below for a full list of anticipated stops.

The walk will be easy-to-moderate, in both pace and topography. Registration is limited to ensure attendees may hear and see during each tour stop. Questions and discussion are encouraged. After the tour, we hope participants will stay for an informal picnic in the park or visit the local restaurants along the 9th Avenue corridor of the Inner Sunset neighborhood (many have out-door seating options).

We look forward to seeing you at our first event of 2022!

A few notes regarding registration:

– Meeting place and other details will be emailed to registrants about one week before the event.
– Masks and social distancing are encouraged.
– Garage parking is available under the music concourse; street parking is available in the park and along both Lincoln and Fulton Streets.
– Registrants will be notified asap if the event must be cancelled or rescheduled due to COVID restrictions or rain. A rain date is being held on May 7th.
– If you are unable to attend this event due to concerns over in-person events, regular scheduling issues, or the registration limit, please reach out! We’d love to hear from you as we begin to schedule in-person events again.

Tour stops will include:
Conservatory of Flowers (1877)

Rockery (1891)

Sharon Building (1888)

National AIDS Memorial Grove (1991)

Rhododendron Dell (1945)

Music Concourse (1894)

Shakespeare Garden (1929)

Huntington Falls, Stow Lake (1893)

Rose Garden (1963)

Heroes Grove (1919)

de Young Garden (2003)

About our speaker:

In 2020, Christopher Pollock published an update to his 2001 book San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: A Thousand and Seventeen Acres of Stories in celebration of the park’s 150 anniversary. He spoke with CGLHS about his book and the history of the park in an online lecture last year.

Pollock has also contributed several articles to EDEN in recent years including: “Floral Plaques in Golden Gate Park’s Conservatory Valley” Winter 2019, “Sand into Gold: 150 Years of Golden Gate Park” Winter 2020, “William Hammond Hall: Still the Unsung Father of Golden Gate Park” Fall 2020 and an upcoming piece for the Spring 2022 issue titled “The Rustic Landscape in California.”

He practiced interior architecture before uncovering his talent for historical research and writing, and becoming the San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department’s first Historian in Residence.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.