Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres (412 ha) of public grounds. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape but 20 percent larger than Central Park in New York, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles (4.8 km) long east to west, and about half a mile (0.8 km) north to south. With 13 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the fifth most-visited city park in the United States after Central Park in New York City, Lincoln Park in Chicago, and Balboa Park and Mission Bay Park in San Diego.
In the 1860s, San Franciscans began to feel the need for a spacious public park similar to Central Park, which was then taking shape in New York City. Golden Gate Park was carved out of unpromising sand and shore dunes that were known as the Outside Lands, in an unincorporated area west of San Francisco’s then-current borders. Conceived ostensibly for recreation, the underlying purpose of the park was housing development and the westward expansion of the city. The tireless field engineer William Hammond Hall prepared a survey and topographic map of the park site in 1870 and became its commissioner in 1871. He was later named California's first state engineer and developed an integrated flood control system for the Sacramento Valley. The park drew its name from nearby Golden Gate Strait.
The plan and planting were developed by Hall and his assistant, John McLaren, who had apprenticed in Scotland, home of many of the 19th-century’s best professional gardeners. The initial plan called for grade separations of transverse roadways through the park, as Frederick Law Olmsted had provided for Central Park, but budget constraints and the positioning of the Arboretum and the Concourse ended the plan. In 1876, the plan was almost replaced by one for a racetrack, favored by “the Big Four” millionaires: Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Charles Crocker. Hall resigned, and the remaining park commissioners followed. The original plan, however, was back on track by 1886, when streetcars delivered over 47,000 people to Golden Gate Park on one weekend afternoon (out of a population of 250,000 in the city). Hall selected McLaren as his successor in 1887.
Music Concourse Area
The Music Concourse is a sunken, oval-shaped open-air plaza originally excavated for the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. Its focal point is the Spreckels Temple of Music, also called the "Bandshell," where numerous music performances have been staged. It includes a number of statues of various historic figures, four fountains, and a regular grid array of heavily pollarded trees. Since 2003, the Music Concourse has undergone a series of improvements to include an underground 800-car parking garage and pedestrianization of the plaza itself. It is surrounded by various cultural attractions, including:
De Young Museum
Named for M. H. de Young, the San Francisco newspaper magnate, the De Young Museum is a fine arts museum that was opened in January 1921. Its original building had been part of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition, of which Mr. de Young was the director. The de Young was completely rebuilt, and the new building opened in 2005.
Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences is the "largest public Platinum-rated building in the World, and also the world’s greenest museum", and also houses the Steinhart Aquarium and the Morrison Planetarium. The Academy of Sciences carries exhibits of reptiles and amphibians, astronomy, prehistoric life, various gems and minerals, earthquakes, and aquatic life. A completely new building for the Museum opened in September 2008 designed by Renzo Piano.
Many more naturalistically landscaped lakes are placed throughout the park: several are linked together into chains, with pumped water creating flowing creeks. There is a short trail lined with large tree ferns adjacent to a small lake near the Conservatory of Flowers. An ornate carousel displaying a fantastic bestiary is housed in a circular building near the children's playground. The carousel was built in 1914 by the Allan Herschell Company.