GROWING UP IN SAN FRANCISCO
SUTRO BATHS
Located near the Cliff House, Sutro Baths was San Francisco's wonderful place to swim. The large pool at the left later had a waterwheel.
Below the photo is my story of what it was like to swim there in the 1930s. The San Francisco Chronicle published it as a letter to the editor.
A letter to the Editor - San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, October 17, 1998
THE LAST FINE TIME
Editor -- Growing up in San Francisco in the 1930s was wonderful. So there was the Depression. So my mother and I had to live with my grandfather in his house on Herman Street, with my aunt and my balmy uncle, where arguments were a way of life. So what? I could always escape to Sutro Baths.
For five cents, I rode the 22 line north on Fillmore to Sutter and transferred to a number 1 or 2, which went out to the beach. The last mile passed through countryside and then we pulled into an old wooden terminal. The first things that assailed our senses were the sea air and a peanut machine that whistled.
I went outside and walked a few feet to Sutro Baths, a massive Victorian structure that was beginning to show its age. I think I paid 25 cents admission. I was given a swim suit (we could not bring our own) and a meager towel. The suits were not trunks. They covered all of my puny body with straps that went over my shoulders, and they were made of wool with ``Sutro Baths'' across the front in white letters. As if anybody would have wanted to steal one!
Suit in hand, I went down the stairs through Sutro's museum of tropical plants and stuffed bears, gorillas and lions, all which looked moth-eaten, to get to the lockers, miles of them, stacked in tiers. An attendant guided me down to one, unlocked the door, and gave me a metal number tag on a cord, which I put on my wrist.
I changed into my woolen suit and raced down the stairs to the baths. There were eight or nine pools with temperatures ranging from hot to ice cold. The biggest pool had a waterwheel. My friends and I climbed stairs to reach it, and then laid down on it while it slowly revolved, dumping us into the pool. Sometimes we got tangled up with girls and they'd start screaming.
The hard part came when I had to leave. I climbed back up to the rows of lockers, went to mine and stood by it, yelling to the attendant to come. You don't know what torture is until you've stood shivering in a wet, cold, wool bathing suit at Sutro Baths.
Gee, it was fun.
BILL RODDY
Mission Viejo
Thanks Jim Smith for putting my Sutro Baths story in your wonderful book,
San Francisco's Lost Landmarks.