The house so nice they built it twice. And then after both of those burned down, they built it a third time.
After the first fire, which decimated the Cliff House on Christmas day 1894, The Examiner wrote “Visitors rake the ashes all day in search for relics of the old house.”
The Cliff House is a legacy of The City’s gold-studded inception, perched along the Great Highway and overlooking Seal Rocks and the horizon beyond — where the water often dissolves into the fog, merging the sea with San Francisco’s sky.
The relics raked and rescued by visitors (if any were indeed rescued) following that fateful Christmas, and artifacts from the years following, were saved from auction by the Western Neighborhoods Project (WNP) in 2021, along with Alexandra Mitchell of ACT Art Conservation LLC and John Lindsey of The Great Highway gallery.
Now, the historic memorabilia is on display to the public, coupled with an immersive experience and innovative ambiance design, as part of The Museum at The Cliff special exhibition, "Naiad Cove." Located in the old Cliff House Gift Shop, the museum’s collection includes WNP’s Cliff House Collection, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Park Archives collection and the Global Museum at SF State — juxtaposed for this exhibit with the work of contemporary artists, like projections by Ben Wood and soundscapes by Andrew Roth.
“Being in this space is super special. And it almost feels like a cathedral to a time past. It's really been triggering a lot of memories,” says Nicole Meldhal, executive director of the Western Neighborhoods Project.
“People are coming in and they're telling us about the time they came here, what their experience with this place is. They're staying here for hours. They're sitting down on the benches that we've staged with binoculars, they're taking in the view. And they're sharing this really unique moment in Cliff House history that will probably never come again, right?”
Naiad Cove got its name from early American settlers.
The initial Cliff House was constructed in 1863 as a stomping ground for those elite enough to trapeze their way to the edge of the Earth. By the 1870s, the resort was more accessible, but its reputation had started to deteriorate. Booze challenged the views as the major draw. Gambling ran rampant.
Enter Adolph Sutro.
Sutro, who made his fortune in the Comstock Lode's silver mines, purchased the Cliff House in 1881.
The Examiner wrote on January 21 of that year:
“The fact is that as soon as the title deeds to the property were placed in Sutro’s hands he at once ordered the preparation of plans for the improvement of the place, and at the present time has fully sixty men with twenty teams at work grading and terracing the lots, planting trees, building fences, and performing the large amounts of rough work necessary to prepare the grounds for the building of the magnificent hotel he has decided to erect.”
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Following the fire, Sutro’s taste for glamour came to full fruition in the building’s second rendition: a Victorian Chateau, seven stories completed in 1896, the same year the Sutro Baths were completed. Tragically, after astonishingly surviving the 1906 earthquake, the castle was engulfed in flames in 1907. Sutro’s daughter, in charge of the estate at that time, reconstructed the cliff dwelling in a more modern style — stout and square. The house changed hands during the Great Depression, and served a slew of purposes in the years to follow. But during those transitions, the grandeur of the Cliff House was unchanging.
“The point that we're trying to make is that many things have changed here along Point Lobos Avenue — which used to have so many different businesses, and they're all gone now — but people still come to the spot and can experience the same view that people that San Franciscans have had for generations,” says Meldahl.
“So there's a continuity to the landscape here. That's really beautiful. It keeps pulling people this way, despite the lack of man-made businesses.”
The Cliff House restaurant closed its doors at the end of 2020, a victim of the pandemic and a lease dispute.
The National Park Service, which owns the site as a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, hopes to find a new tenant that that will restore the Cliff House as a restaurant. Until then, the museum is offering up a menu of memories.
“That's what makes this so special,” says Meldahl of serving up nostalgia. “It's the power of history in place, and being able to make it approachable, and doing it in a way that feels really natural and organic.”
IF YOU GO
Naiad Cove at The Museum at The Cliff
Where: The Museum at The Cliff, 1090 Point Lobos Avenue, San Francisco
When: Saturdays and Sundays, 11:00am to 5:00pm, from June 25, 2022 until August 21, 2022.
Tickets: Admission is free, but it is requested that you reserve tickets in advance.
Contact: View Eventbrite for more details.
