A graffiti-tagged shell reborn as a vibrant event space and award-winning jewel. A tale.
Setting: San Francisco
Timeline: a decade of advocacy and inventive can-do spirit, with flashbacks to 1898, 1907, 1970
Protagonists: a few neighborhood residents, smitten with an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling of entering another world
Quest: restore a 100 year-old Conservatory and garden
Special Ingredients: more optimism than warranted, diplomacy, persistence and patience, and a wonderful in-house press photographer
Photography: Bill Wilson, billwilsonphotos.com
The Friends of Sunnyside Conservatory began with a few neighborhood residents, each discovering the Conservatory and having that Alice-in-Wonderland feeling of entering another world.
In 1999, I saw a small notice in the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association newsletter from Arnold Levine inviting neighbors to start a Friends group. Arnold and I served as the Friends’ Co-Chairs from 1999-2013. Our advocacy + stewardship success could never have happened without our dedicated steering committee. Collectively the Friends leveraged ingenuity, pluck, and professional skills to make our neighborhood better: event planning, design, writing, public relations, lighting, cost estimation, teaching, photography, and gardening. Thank you to all of our volunteers and to the neighborhood for embracing the project.
William Augustus Merralls, a British engineer and inventor, built this Victorian oasis and companion Observatory next to his home on an old dairy farm, in the new Sunnyside District in 1898. Merralls’s vision was to gather up exotic botanical treasures for his own private delight. The original octagonal Conservatory had two wings and was set within a carriage turn-around.
The story of the restoration interweaves the Friends' decade of advocacy with Merralls’s original vision. Our primary task in the early years was to inspire others to see the potential of this blighted shell as a vibrant public space. On a shoestring-budget, we hosted gardening days, a free series of art classes, and an almost-annual Bring-Your-Own-Pumpkin Carving. Through these events we found many allies: our pro-bono landscape architect Vera Gates, the metalsmith who created our back gate, dedicated volunteers, and local politicians.
We built a coalition of disparate constituencies including immediate neighbors, area residents, elected officials, and the city-employed design team. As the Friends, we educated ourselves about public works funding and the design process—from the conceptual design (drawn by Vera) through the development of the construction documents. We learned how to scrutinize site, grading, and planting plans, view elevations, work with story poles, and think hard about material specifications, ADA accessibility, and hardscape/landscape proportions. We honored key architectural features of the original Conservatory in the restoration: the original skylights (daylighted during renovation) and bentwood truss arches; a glazed concrete floor design that mimics the original planting areas; double-glazed, double-height row of operable windows; and an interior trimmed out in salvaged old-growth redwood from Sonoma. More broadly, we learned about adaptive reuse and community building.
And did we say meetings—over the back fence, out on the street, in the community, with RPD, with our pro-bono angels, in city hall, before the Board of Supervisors, its various subcommittees, the Recreation + Park Commission, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. We shared our vision, lobbied for our cause, and bent every ear we could find. Our work stands on that of earlier generation of activists in the 1970s, and a local arborist who cared for the Conservatory garden for many years of his own good will.
What makes us happiest—creating community. And brining it back full circle to health, 2016-17 has brought an ongoing community yoga class to the Conservatory.
The Conservatory was awarded Project of the Year Award 2009 for Historic Restorations (under $5 million) by the Northern California chapter of the American Public Works Association covering 11 counties. In 2011, the Friends also received a coveted San Francisco Beautiful Award.