San Francisco - Alison Bing [68]
SWEDENBORGIAN CHURCH Map
415-346-6466; www.sfswedenborgian.org; 2107 Lyon St; admission free; hours vary; 1, 24, 43
Radical ideals in the form of distinctive buildings make beloved SF landmarks; this standout 1894 example is the collaborative effort of 19th-century Bay Area progressive thinkers, such as naturalist John Muir, California Arts and Crafts leader Bernard Maybeck and architect Arthur Page Brown.
Church founder Emanuel Swedenborg was an 18th-century Swedish theologian, a scientist and an occasional conversationalist with angels, who believed that humans are spirits in a material world unified by nature, love and luminous intelligence – a lovely concept, embodied in an even lovelier building. Enter the church through a modest brick archway, and pass into a garden sheltered by trees from around the world. Inside, nature is everywhere, in the hewn-maple chairs, mighty madrone trees that support the roof, and the scenes of Northern California that took muralist William Keith 40 years to complete.
CHURCH OF ST MARY THE VIRGIN Map
415-921-3665; www.smvsf.org; 2325 Union St; admission free; 9am-5pm Sun-Fri; 23, 43, 45
You might expect to see this rustic Arts and Crafts building on the slopes of Tahoe instead of Pacific Heights, but this Episcopal church is full of surprises. The structure dates from 1891, but the church has kept pace with its progressive-minded parish, with homeless community outreach and ‘Unplugged’ all-acoustic Sunday services led by hip young reverend Jennifer Hornbeck.
VEDANTA SOCIETY Map
415-922-2323; www.sfvedanta.org; 2963 Webster St; 41, 45, 47, 49, 76
Meandering through the Marina, you’ll pass Mexican-inspired art deco, Victorian mansions, generic bay-windowed boxes – and hello, what’s this? A riotous 1905 mishmash of architectural styles, with red turrets representing major world religions and the Hindu-inspired Vedanta Society’s organizing principle: ‘the oneness of existence.’ The society founded a new temple in 1959, but its architectural conundrum remains. The only thing missing is a finger pointing at the moon, with a caption reading ‘Thou art that.’
OCTAGON HOUSE Map
415-441-7512; 2645 Gough St; admission $3 (donation appreciated); noon-3pm on 2nd & 4th Thu & 2nd Sun of month, closed Jan; 45
Crafty architects are always trying to cut corners on their clients, and here architect William C McElroy succeeded. This is one of the last examples of a brief San Franciscan vogue for octagonal houses in the 1860s, when it was believed that houses catching direct sunlight from eight angles were good for your health. Three afternoons a month you can peruse the collection of colonial antiques and peek inside a time capsule McElroy hid under the stairs.
Return to beginning of chapter
THE PRESIDIO
The Presidio is a quintessentially San Franciscan playland of nude beaches, free Shakespeare and spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge (right), but it wasn’t always so welcoming. After it became a Spanish military harbor in 1776, any boat entering the San Francisco Bay would have to pass the Presidio’s trigger-happy cannons and gunboats. News of peace treaties took a long time to reach this distant outpost, so ships that failed to hoist a known friendly flag or a white one of surrender could expect to be boarded and seized, if not blown up.
During the Gold Rush the US naval presence in the Presidio seems to have been more concerned with unofficial toll-collecting than keeping the peace, largely ignoring even direct orders from Washington, DC, to impose order on a city increasingly run by vigilantes and corrupt cops. To be fair, it was hard enough keeping sailors from going AWOL and joining the Gold Rush themselves, let alone ordering them to risk their lives in civil strife soon overshadowed by the US Civil War. Relics from the Civil War can be seen at Fort Point, the three-story fort that took eight years to build and had 126 cannons