Old Steinhart Aquarium exhibits evoke memories
Updated 5:48 pm, Wednesday, December 4, 2013
If you're feeling nostalgic for the old Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco, imagine how it feels to be Methuselah the Australian lungfish.
The oldest living creature in the building traveled from Australia to San Francisco in 1938 on a Matson liner, and now shares a tank with two other lungfish, including a youthful 1952 companion named after Herb Caen. Methuselah remains on display - one of several carryovers that survived the redesign of the California Academy of Sciences.
In the two years I've been mining local nostalgia on The Chronicle's pop culture blog The Big Event, the old Steinhart Aquarium is one of the most passionately discussed topics. After we posted a gallery of old aquarium photos last week, more than 100 readers commented, many asking the whereabouts of old exhibits.
Since Methuselah isn't chatty, we met instead with the next best thing: John McCosker, who was hired as director of the Steinhart Aquarium in 1973, and 40 years later is a senior scientist and chairman of the Department of Aquatic Biology.
It quickly became apparent this was the right guy to ask about aquarium lore - the artifacts on his desk and wall include a framed shark's tooth from Sandy, the first great white shark to survive in captivity. The shark lasted 3 1/2 days in 1980 at the aquarium's circular fish roundabout before it was released back to the Farallon Islands.
McCosker had good news. While the physical design of the new academy may look completely different from the old, with its skylight-filled roof replacing dark museum hallways, history remains in some unexpected places.
"We moved a lot of fish out of here," McCosker says. "And a lot of animals came back."
The old Steinhart Aquarium, planetarium and other museum buildings were torn down in 2005, after they were damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. When the new academy opened in 2008, several high-profile carryover exhibits returned, including the Foucault Pendulum and the aquarium's colony of African penguins.
But there were fewer fish and considerably fewer reptiles and amphibians on display. The hall of gems and anthropological exhibits from the Wattis Hall of Man were seemingly gone as well. The memorable 1952 star projector was missing from the Morrison Planetarium.
McCosker knows the answer to almost every question, discussing former residents of the aquarium like a parent whose kids went away to college.
The Pacific white-sided dolphins, playful in their tank, had been sent in the 1990s to Sea World in San Antonio. Most of the large inhabitants of the popular fish roundabout ended up at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, with others sent to the Aquarium of the Bay at Pier 39. The alligators were sold to a variety of buyers. Others moved to the aquarium's temporary home on Howard Street near downtown San Francisco.
"Historically, there was a time when aquariums that were going to renovate would just throw (the fish) away and then get new ones," McCosker says. "We moved so many of them to Howard. Didn't drop a single one."
The lungfish came back, as did other living history, including the aquarium's freshwater alligator gars.
McCosker says that the gars, currently located near the albino alligator, were driven to the aquarium from Oklahoma more than 40 years ago in the back of a pickup truck. All are underneath a brass seahorse railing - originally installed when the Steinhart Aquarium opened in 1923, and carried over in the new museum.
Specimens in storage
Cal Academy spokeswoman Kelly Mendez says there are 28 million specimens in storage, from tiny insects to higher-profile academy residents, including stuffed grizzly bear Monarch, captured for an 1889 William Randolph Hearst publicity stunt and the model for the California state flag. The star projector, which looked like the head of a multi-eyed mechanical beast in the middle of the old Morrison Planetarium, also survives in storage.
New exhibits at the academy often include blasts from the past. The current earthquake exhibit on the west end of the museum includes vintage 1906 earthquake photos. An enormous globe, apparently repurposed from the old academy, offers a lesson in plate tectonics. There's also an updated "shake table," much like the one UC Berkeley professor and seismic expert Bruce Bolt invented for the academy in the 1980s.
(Trivia for California Academy of Sciences superfans: It was Bolt's voice that said, "We must be prepared. It will happen again," as he narrated the shaking of the 1906 quake.)
There are other surprise carryovers that enter and exit the exhibit floor. One of the all-time favorite academy exhibits for The Big Event readers was the two-headed snake: Until recently, the academy displayed the remains in the underground aquarium - until its burial jar was moved back into storage to make room for the new Animal Attraction exhibit.
McCosker does miss a few things since the move.
"I wish we had more of the remarkable reptiles and amphibians," he says, referring to the built-in cabinets big and small that ringed the alligator pit. When McCosker arrived at the academy, visitors were still allowed to throw spare change at the alligators, a tradition he's glad ended years ago.
Behind the scientist are several enormous jars filled with pickled remains. A squid tentacle? The entrails of a shark? A chew toy for Methuselah and Herb?
I think about asking, but decide against it. It's better if one or two things remain a mystery.
Where are they now?
What do you miss about the old Steinhart Aquarium and California Academy of Sciences? We'll try to track down the whereabouts of your favorite former exhibits. E-mail requests to Peter Hartlaub at email@example.com with "Aquarium" in the subject line.