Quick answer
Sutro Baths opened in 1896 at the western edge of San Francisco as the largest indoor swimming establishment in the world: seven pools at different temperatures under a glass roof, with 20,000 bathing suits and 40,000 towels for rent and room for 10,000 people at once. Fire destroyed the closed building in June 1966. The concrete ruins are open and free.
Full transcript
The Dream
Adolph Sutro was the twenty fourth mayor of San Francisco, a mining engineer who made a fortune from the Comstock Lode, and a man who believed the working class deserved what the rich had. In 1896 he opened the largest indoor swimming facility in the world, right here — seven pools at different temperatures, a museum, an amphitheater, a concert hall, and 20,000 bathing suits and 40,000 towels available for rent. It could hold 10,000 people at once. The building was a glass and iron cage, 499.5 feet long and 254.1 feet wide, perched at the edge of the Pacific. High tide filled the pools with ocean water, turning over the whole volume in about an hour; the pumps, working against the tide, took five.
The Fire
On a June evening in 1966, as demolition crews were preparing to tear the closed-down bathhouse down, a fire broke out. By morning the glass roof had collapsed and the iron frame stood bare against the sky. Investigators put the cause down to arson. What remains is a ruin that looks centuries older than it is — crumbling concrete walls, rusted steel, a rectangular basin that fills with the tide. The National Park Service now maintains it as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Walk through the foundation, stand where the pools were, and look out at the same ocean Sutro wanted every San Franciscan to swim in.
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