Presidio Housing Development

The Presidio covers a huge part of the city, and there are parts of the former army base you may not know about: Such as the former Public Health Service Hospital, which must easily be the most massive structure on the Presidio.

From the Presidio website:
"In the post-Gold Rush days of the mid-1800s, San Francisco was a booming city and port. In 1853, a Marine Hospital opened in the city to care at no charge for merchant seamen from all over the world. In 1875, a new Marine Hospital opened on the Presidio, with an expanded mission to serve immigrants, the U.S. Coast Guard, Native Americans, and patients with leprosy.

"In 1902, the Marine Hospital was renamed the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, and its mission was again expanded to include public health efforts such as plague eradication campaigns. In 1931, the old hospital was demolished and replaced with a 480-bed hospital and support buildings, all designed in the Georgian Revival style. In 1952, two new wings were added to the front of the hospital."

SF architectural blog SF Curbed reveals that the Presidio Trust has plans to turn the hospital into condos.

The developer Forest City will have to be very creative to make a silk purse out of this sows ear. Ideally the 1950's wings would be demolished, but Forest City insists that the project is only economically feasible with a minimum of 230 units. Plans had been scaled back from 350 units because of objections from Outer Richmond neighbours concerned about the additional traffic. And though they've reduced the number of units, each unit will now be proportionally larger to use all the available space, and the larger units will sell for more. Existing hospital parking should be adequate.


More than 200 very cool photos of the hospital on Flickr.






Thanks Curbed SF

Categories:San Francisco Architecture








Update January 24th,2009:
Work is underway to convert the old Marine Hospital into apartments. The two modern additions have been demolished, and I can see that minimal damage was done to the original building when the additions were added in 1952.