explore

object	source	topics
	Raffel, Burton, translator. Poems From the Old English. 2nd ed., University of Nebraska Press, 1964.	ruins, ancient history, fire, baths, empire, time
	Menu from the restaurant occupying the final major Cliff House renovation prior to the burning of the baths, sourced from Ebay seller 1salmon	sutro heights, cliff house, ocean beach, seal rocks, 20th century san francisco
	Joel Springer and the outsidelands.org Western Neighborhoods Project c/o Mark Adams	fire, san francisco history, ephemeral cinema, sutro baths, heraclitus
	Personal video archive	san francisco history, sutro heights, 21st century san francisco, ephemeral cinema, gardens, light
	Carson, Anne. Short Talks. Brick Books, 1992.	ruins, empire, travel, light, time

One of the more famous surviving poems from the Old English. Its authorship is unknown and the manuscript marred by fire, leaving the poem's final stanzas pocked by empty space. It is, ironically, a ruin of a poem, one whose ruination is inextricable from its surviving meaning.

THE RUIN
(Ancient Roman wreckage, perhaps Bath. Lines 12-19a and 126.
49 are framentary; the MS was partly destroyed by fire.)
Fate has smashed these wonderful walls, This broken city, has crumbled the work Of giants. The roofs are gutted, the towers Fallen, the gates ripped off, frost In the mortar, everything moulded, gaping, Collapsed. The earth has clutched at rulers And builders, a hundred generations rotting In its rigid hands. These red-stained stones, Streaked with grey, stood while governors, And kingdoms dissolved into dust, and storms
Crashed over them; they were broad and high, and they fell.
...
...
... strong hearted men hung
The walls together with beaten wire.
It was a shining city, filled with bath-houses, With towering gables, with the shouts of soldiers, With dozens of rousing drinking-halls,
Until Fate's strength was swung against it.
The riches dried away, pestilence
Came, the crowds of soldiers were dead;
Their forts and camps crumbled to the ground, And the city, with all its idols and temples, Decayed to these ruins, its bwildings rotted,
Its red-stoned arches splitting brick From brick, And the ruined site sank To a heap of tumbled stones, where once Cheerful, strutting warriors flocked,
Golden armor gleaming, giddy With wine; here was wealth, silver,
Gems, cattle, land, in the crowning
City of a far-flung kingdom. There were buildings Of stone, where steaming currents threw up
Surging heat; a wall encircled
That brightness, with the baths inside at the glowing Heart. Life was easy and lush.
They'd make the warm streams pour over
Old grey stones...
...until
The rounded pools grew hot...
...
...
A house
... a kingly thing, ... a city...

an animated image switching back and forth between the front and back cover and the interior of a 1953 restaurant menu featuring airbrushed illustrations of the seal rocks at ocean beach and other san francisco landmarks. steak minute and potatoes special priced at $2.50!

The first Cliff House was a stately wood-framed mansion that loomed over the edge of the cliffs at Land's End. It was built in 1863 by zealous real estate developers as a resort destination for California's new elite. In the 1880s the estate along with a parcel of land surrounding it was purchased by Adolph Sutro, a Prussian-Jewish immigrant silver mining engineer turned real-estate magnate, and the eventual first and only candidate elected mayor of San Francisco on the Populist party ticket.

It was destroyed by fire in 1894, after Sutro had turned the surrouding land into his own private estate along with a public sculpture garden and what was at the time the largest indoor bathing complex in the world, the Sutro Baths. Sutro remodeled the property in 2 years, but 11 years after that, in 1907, the second Cliff House was destroyed, also by fire. Sutro's daughter rebuilt the cliff house without a wood frame and at a more economical scale, and 2 years later it was once again open to the public.

In 1937 the Sutro family sold the third Cliff House, and in the 40 years between the sale and the Cliff House's acquisition by the National Parks Service, its ownership changed several times and it underwent multiple renovations.

This menu comes from the 1953 Cliff House restaurant, whose owners had leaned in to the location and its history to brand the Cliff House as a tourist attraction. On the left hand side of the exterior cover, you'll see renderings of the four previous Cliff House iterations.

Sutro Baths burned on June 26, 1966. This footage was shot by Joel Springer, and comes courtesy of our friend and WNP member Mark Adams. Mr. Springer chased and filmed many San Francisco fires, and we're indebted to his son for transferring the old 8mm to DVD.¹

The world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.²

¹ "Sutro Baths Burning, 1966," Western Neighborhoods Project, outsidelands.org.

² Heraclitus quoted in Burnet, John. Early Greek Philosophy. United Kingdom, A. & C. Black, 1963.

The mansion of turn of the century multimillionaire Adolph Sutro used to sit on these grounds, with the white limestone lookout patio its only remaining trace. In February of 2022 I watched the light pass over it.

SHORT TALK ON WHERE TO TRAVEL
I went travelling to a wreck of a place. There were three gates standing ajar and a fence that broke off. It was not the wreck of anything else in particular. A place came there and crashed. After that it remained the wreck of a place. Light fell on it.