Once A Forefront For Wars And Peace While It Was Being Conquered And Built Between The Spanish, Mexicans, And Ultimately The U.S.
The Presidio Trust was formed up in 1998 with a pretty simple mandate. Run the Presidio and make it solvent. More than 800 buildings, in various states of disrepair, were handed over to the Trust and the staff got off to business. Whether the place would become a long-term national park would depend on one thing: Whether the crew managing the plot could balance the budget without federal support in a short 15 years.
In 1994, the U.S. Congress had to figure out what to do with the place, which overlooks one of the most iconic bridges on the planet and abuts one of the most highly-valued pieces of real estate in the Western Hemisphere: Namely, San Francisco.
“People were trying to figure out how to make a great national park out of this place…
and leverage the assets – the buildings – that wouldn’t cost the tax payers forever,” said Eric Blind, the director of Heritage Programs and Sites at the Presidio Trust explains. “So basically, Congress was willing to give us startup money.”
Of course, that’s easier said than done, but the folks at Presidio had the good fortune of being in one of the most dynamic modern metropolitan areas in the nation. As old industry rustbelt towns like Pittsburgh and Detroit were struggling with massive population outflows and plummeting real estate prices, San Francisco experienced a meteoric rise in rents, talent, and tech firms that would come to be valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
“In the beginning it seemed like a long shot – but as we did our work, basically our confidence rose. The more work we did the more confidence we had to saving this place,” Blind continues. “Around year 13 or 14 we were confident we would break even – and even confident we could do some great things.”
The officer’s club at the El Presidio, a passion of Blind’s, is literally a patchwork that was woven together in a myriad of materials, over two centuries, a maze of historic proportions.
As officers spent their final days stateside before charging off to wars in the Pacific and in lands beyond, this incredible building was often the final place for a final toast. Some of those men returned, but others were gunned down on the beaches of places like Tarawa, Guadalcanal, and Guam. The dangers they faced in those treacherous days surely made the wine all the tastier on dark, San Francisco nights.
“There’s kind of like a mystique to this place, Blind continues. “It is formed from the history and the old buildings that you aren’t quite sure what they were used for. Then there’s the fog that clouds in the forest – and you kind of feel like it is not just you, but you are not quite sure who else is there. You wonder who else used to be here.”
Today the officer’s club and every other building in the sprawling 1,500 acre complex is part of a U.S. National Park. But it was not without great effort and some good fortune that this site was preserved. The BRAC commission – the Pentagon’s base shuttering arm – selected the Army base at Presidio for closure in 1989, when it was clear the Cold War had been won. The strategic location as a Western defense from nuclear arms was no longer justifiable, and the place would have to put the boards up.
But what a difference a few years can make…
Blind was put in charge of restoring the officer’s club, a project he started in 2010 and finished three years later.
The building, having been in constant use for more than 200 years, had numerous kinds of materials to work with, from wooden sticks, to mud bricks, to reinforced concrete. Blind’s job was to fix up the old building. Some of the original buildings were ensconced in its old framework.
“I was trying to deal with every part of the building and make them into a unified whole,” Blind said. Noting that big names like Bob Hope and Abbot and Costello had visited the officer’s club during the War, Blind said it was really his charge to “Turn it from a very exclusive place to a very inclusive place.” His contribution to the metallurgic mix of building materials would be steel.
The officer club is now the site of public events like dances and lectures and films, and every summer outside its doors archaeologists continue to excavate what remains of the original Presidio colony.
So how did the Presidio Trust get out of the grasp of Washington D.C.’s every tightening budget? The short answer is rent. The buildings were restored on the property and people from adjacent San Francisco, which was getting tight on space, started to move in. More than 3,000 people live on the property today, in buildings that were designed to protect the Western shore of North America from attacks by horse, cannon, or nukes.
And in those buildings are some pretty choice names. For instance, Lucasfilm, the creator of the “Star Wars movies”, holds an office there. There are mixed-use developments, where folks living on the property can buy their daily goods or shop for clothes. And every morning, thousands of workers in creative and technology firms flood into the Presidio to go about their business of transforming the world.
But in all of this hustle and bustle – and in making it to even with the federal government – one piece was still missing: A visitor’s center.
“The Presidio has not yet had a true Visitor Center like what you see in other national parks,” explains Lisa Petrie, Presidio Trust Spokesperson. “The new William Penn Mott, Jr. Visitor Center will serve as the front door of the Presidio, planned to demystify the Park by orienting visitors to the features and activities of its four sections: the Golden Gate, the Main Post, the Southern Wild and Crissy Field.
Petrie said the new visitor center is another good example of the continued transformation of the land from old army base to brand new national park. The former guard house, she points out, was built in 1900 as a jail. When its renovation is done, it will serve as a welcome space for the public coming to visit Presidio.
This is all very exciting for the visitors and locals of San Francisco, who can spend the day hiking trails around the beautiful bluff, gazing at the Pacific, and standing in awe of the Golden Gate Bridge. But there may be one contingent that has had it with all this redevelopment.
“We started the project in 2010 – and the Officer’s Club is kind of one of those storied buildings that as soon as I got here in ‘97 we all started eying it and saying, ‘What’s the future of that building going to be?” Blind said.
“There are a lot of ghost stories around the this club in particular. It has become a hot spot for folks that are into that sort of thing,” Blind said, noting that one popular activity around Halloween is for people to talk about their ghost encounters at El Presidio. Indeed, thousands of people have lived and died here, or had their final drink in these hallowed rooms before shipping off to foreign lands.
Blind admits, “Some of my colleagues have reported that since we renovated the building, the ghosts must have gone somewhere else.”
With the history of El Presidio and the surrounding national park, the stories, both historical and ethereal, will likely continue for centuries to come.
David Irvin
A graduate with a Masters Of Science from the University Of North Texas, David has written on many beats including crime and business for such outlets as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Montgomery Advertiser & USA. He enjoys RVing and surfing the Internet.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Skyline Wilderness Park; Enjoy All The Activities We Have To Offer To The Public From The Martha Walker Native Plants Garden, Disc Golf Course, Camping And Picnicing, And Our Many Fabulous Trails For Hiking, Biking And Horseback Riding.