Sutro Heights Park - San Francisco
Sutro Heights Park was terraformed by Adolph Sutro -- from the dunes into a Victorian estate with gardens, a conservatory, and hundreds of European statues.
As you stroll through Sutro Heights, you'll find a few ruins and remnants of statuary. With a bit of imagination, and with the help of descriptive diagrams throughout the park, you'll be able to reconstruct a visual of what once stood on Adolph Sutro's beautiful property above the Pacific.
About Adolph Sutro
Adolph Sutro was an engineer who became Mayor of San Francisco for a short stint in the 1880s. He helped design the ventilation and drainage at Comstock Lode silver mine, and a significant landowner in San Francisco.
In a profile at the Western Neighborhoods Project, Adolph Sutro is described as a generous man who believed in sharing his wealth -- and his property. The public was permitted to stroll on Sutro's grounds, and he made it easier for people to access the beach areas by building a railroad that charged half as much as the Southern Pacific line.
The Western Neighborhoods Project has an interesting and in-depth piece on Adolph Sutro, as well as historical information about the Outer Richmond.