Woodward's Gardens, an urban jungle

By Katherin McInnis

Filmmaker/artist Katherin McInnis takes SF360’s Found on a filmic tour of Woodward’s Gardens (which once occupied two city blocks near Valencia and Duboce) to match the actual audio-visual expedition she was conducted there March 3, 2007.

The Woodward’s Gardens tour is part of Alternate Soundtrack City Tours, a series of artist-led audio explorations of different parts of San Francisco, a project of Neighborhood Public Radio and Southern Exposure. The tours are also a kind of social event, bringing together a mix of people with different perspectives, all interacting with the site and each other. An audio tour of Woodward’s Gardens was an interesting challenge because there are so few traces of it left at its former site. Woodward’s granddaughter wrote a particularly vivid description of what it was like to visit the Gardens, and I also used the Edward Muybridge and Carleton Watkins stereographs to visualize what the park was like. The audio tour is constructed from some archival sounds, early recordings from the Library of Congress, and snippets from amusement park movies in the Prelinger Archives, as well as layers of sound effects. A visitor to Woodward’s Gardens would have heard totally unusual sounds — strange birds, the new record player, touring "exotic" performers — over an everyday ambience totally different from ours; no freeways, overhead planes, or car alarms. Hearing the re-created audio as you move through the space really helps to imagine the 19th-century experience, and suggests that most sites within the city have layers of history, invisible past and future incarnations.

The site of Woodward’s Gardens, the epitome of 19th century public pleasures, is now a place of satellites, surveillance, and cyber-sex. In these two city blocks, the contrast is clear between the communal (albeit somewhat colonial) modes of entertainment in the late 19th-century and our current embrace of privacy and virtuality.

R.B. Woodward made a fortune with his Gold Rush-era hotel, the What Cheer House. In 1866, Woodward opened his mansion at 14th and Mission to the public, and built a garden, museum, zoo, aquarium, and miniature boat ride, expanding to the two city blocks between Mission, Valencia, Duboce and 15th Streets.

When Woodward died, the park was not well-maintained, and closed in 1892, to the relief of neighbors who had complained about the sounds (and smells) of the unhappy animals. All that remains today of Woodward’s Gardens is one-block Woodward St., a plaque on Mission (next to the restaurant which borrowed its name), and many stereographs by Carleton Watkins and Edward Muybridge in UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library collection.

Long before dishes and wifi, Woodward’s Gardens featured the first record player in San Francisco, and provided much live entertainment, although some of the "Barnum of the West’s" attractions — midgets, a Warm Springs Indian tribe in a recreated village, and a bear pit — would not be acceptable today.

Woodward’s museum is gone, but there is still some public art in the area – in the form of murals on Clinton Park and Caledonia Alley. Jack Hanley Gallery is around the corner on Valencia.

The Native American Healing Center on Julian Street has a tiny park: the most green in the former Gardens is gated and walled, with three visible surveillance cameras.

The Armory, built in 1912 from recycled earthquake bricks, stood empty from 1976 until it was recently bought by Kink.com for use as a web porn studio. While the Armory still looks desolate (with broken, boarded-up windows), and homeless people still camp outside, the interior is a pristine, state-of-the-art film facility.

Recently re-built Valencia Gardens, across the street from the site, resembles the lifestyle lofts that transformed the Mission once again 100 years after the heyday of Woodward’s Gardens.

The Alternate Soundtrack City Tour of Woodward’s Gardens (a SouthernExposure/Neighborhood Public Radio- sponsored project by Katherin McInnis) took place on March 3, 2007. Different audio tours take place on the first Saturday of each month through June. A podcast of the Woodward’s Gardens tour (with a thematic map) will be available soon on Neighborhood Public Radio (yes, NPR).

03.14.2007