Wow Place #291: Presidio Tunnel Tops, San Francisco, CA
Nostalgia is a funny thing. We have a tendency to look back fondly on the “golden years” of our favorite cities — the 1930s, 40s and 50s – a more glamorous time when men were guys and women were dolls … when hard-boiled, dressier, pre- and post-war men and women wore hats and gloves and exchanged snappy banter like Tracy and Hepburn or Bogart and Bacall. But were our cities, themselves, really all that nice during the middle of the 20th century?
Take San Francisco, for example. The home of Sam Spade and the Maltese Falcon was also host to a pair of extremely blunt, ugly expressways: the Doyle Drive Highway and the Embarcadero Freeway. Built in 1937, Doyle Drive was an unattractive, grey, elevated highway that spanned the Presidio, connecting San Francisco to the Golden Gate Bridge. Constructed a couple of decades later in the early 1960s, the equally ugly Embarcadero Freeway ran along the bay from the Ferry Building to Fisherman’s Wharf. Interestingly, the two unsightly expressways never met; there was an unbuilt section stretched from the Wharf to Van Ness.
The two unsightly highways might still be there, blighting our waterfront views, if it wasn’t for one of San Francisco’s biggest natural disasters: the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Not only did the 6.9 quake heavily damage the Embarcadero Freeway, it also made it abundantly clear that Doyle Drive was seismically unsafe and needed to be replaced. Yay! The Embarcadero stretch of highway was completely demolished and Doyle Drive was soon replaced by a graceful roadway – the Presidio Parkway – characterized by a series of tunnels that rendered large sections of the highway out of sight.
These two roadway upgrades, alone, have significantly improved the San Francisco waterfront experience. However, the City planners weren’t done. Significantly, someone in the department asked, “What do you think about putting a park on top of the tunnels? And so Presidio Tunnel Tops was born.
One of the enjoyable and surprising things about Tunnel Tops is that, when you’re actually standing there, you have no idea there’s a freeway beneath you. The fact that there’s no rumbling and no noise is something of a miracle. What you have instead is two perfectly manicured lawns, one an oval the other the shape of a dog bone, dotted with a variety of different kinds of chairs and benches, affording stunning views of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. A stone’s throw away is a lovely café, and down below at bay level is a fantastic children’s playground. On a warm day (say in September or October), Tunnel Tops is an exceedingly pleasant, warm, peaceful and QUIET place to while some time, reveling in the beautiful, scenic views that only San Francisco can offer on a clear day.
And to think this little urban oasis was once an ugly, stunted freeway. Three cheers for city planners (and a big, nasty earthquake).
(What’s your relationship with nostalgia? It’s hard to let go of it sometimes, isn’t it? I’m chastened to admit that I still have a fair number of nostalgia items in my possession that commemorate not only my own youth, but my Dad’s as well. In a big box upstairs, I can still find my childhood stamp and coin collections, a few of my firecracker labels, and three or four old TV guides. I’ve got my Dad’s old coin collection as well, plus some real classics like a pamphlet from the 1939 New York World’s Fair that my Dad, Walter, attended when he was 12 years old. I keep thinking I’ll sell the collections and throw away all the paperwork…but I never do. It still gives me pleasure, from time to time, to go through it all. I guess that’s the balance we all have to strike with nostalgia. How much do we ferret away and indulge out of enjoyment and reflection, and how much is just TOO much, cluttering both our minds AND our closets?)