Street cars, Nos. 6 or 7, will take you to Haight and Broderick streets, from which point many paths lead to the top of the hill. At every turn there is an effective view. Through a tunnel-like alley of shrubbery the towers of St. Ignatius, with crosses pointing to the sky, loom like spires from one of the cathedral towns of France. As you swing 'round you obtain glimpses from different angles of the skyscrapers of San Francisco, with every now and then a stretch of glistening water. From the summit of Buena Vista you see, on three sides, expanses of ocean and bay. To the left is the diamond of Lake Merced in its setting of bluegreen eucalyptus and its surrounding waves of sand, ribboned with roads extending to the ocean beach. Beyond is the emerald stretch of Golden Gate Park, with buildings in demi-outline through the changing tones of foliage. Above and beyond are the rolling hills of the Presidio, and in the distance Tamalpais rears its friendly bulk, a dark blue shadow against a cerulean mantle, crowned at times with filmy gonfalons of cloud like a color print by Hokusai. Lone Mountain and its cross, visible far out at sea, is here in conspicuous range.
To see San Francisco in a series of highly colored pictures suggestive of Maxfield Parrish or Dulac go to the scenic boulevard that winds over Twin Peaks. You may motor there, walk or take a street car to the foot of this city mountain, the ascent either way being easy. You may scale Twin Peaks from the flank within view of Market street, climbing along the side and over the shoulder by way of the boulevard. Or if you prefer, you may climb up from Sloat Boulevard via Portola Drive through one of the city's restricted residence sections. On the summit of Twin Peaks you feel at the top of the world, and you see San Francisco spread out below you as multicolored as a rug of Kermanshah. No other city in the two Americas, not excepting Quebec or Rio de Janeiro, so overwhelms the beholder with its vistas—with its luminous enchantments. At night the lights of the city zigzag in patterns of distracting loveliness, and Market street reaches from the foot of the mountain to the Embarcadero like the tail of some flaming comet athwart a sea of stars.
Parks and Open Spaces
Surmounted by a freighted galleon, with streaming pennant and wind-filled sails, a granite pedestal "remembers" Robert Louis Stevenson in Portsmouth Square, cradle of San Francisco's civic history. This square, the Plaza of the early city, was the forerunner of a chain of parks, children's playgrounds and open spaces that checkers San Francisco with refreshing green.
Farther uptown is Union Square, in the center of the hotel and retail district. Over on the other side toward North Beach, at the foot of Telegraph Hill, is Washington Square, one of the recreation spots of the Latin Quarter, with church spires outlined above its willows. A park that will command the entire harbor is being built on top of Telegraph Hill.
In the Western Addition, Richmond, Sunset and Mission districts are many parks that provide resting places for mothers, their infants in go-carts, and romping children.
Golden Gate Park is the aureole of San Francisco's recreational haunts.
It was saved to the city in the beginning by Frank McCoppin and C. R.
Dempster and made an area of living beauty by John McLaren, Scotch
landscape engineer, who is Superintendent of Parks.
From the panhandle at Baker street to the Ocean Beach, the park stretches like a massive gold-green buckler enameled with lustrous gems. There are 1013 acres in the park, its Main Drive, including the panhandle, being 4 1/2 miles long.
Whether you loiter along tree-shaded alleys, or stroll through rhododendron dells in the late Spring, when the landscape fairly quivers with color, there is an ineffable loveliness about Golden Gate Park. Its opulence is heightened by its contrasts, as are all well-considered landscape designs. Treading the expanse of daisy-starred emerald lawns, loitering under the elms in the Band Concourse, or wandering through the dwarf trees patterned against humpback bridges in the Japanese Tea Garden, you find new lures in Golden Gate Park with each successive visit.
The de Young Memorial Museum, the Academy of Sciences, the Steinhart Aquarium, Stow Lake, the Dutch windmills, Huntington Falls, the aviary, the buffalo paddock, the bear pit, the children's playground with its goats and donkeys, the tennis courts, the harness racing in the Stadium, the bowling on the green—almost every rod of the thousand odd acres in the park unfolds unexpected allurements.