Sutro Baths - Lands End Tour

Sutro Baths with Sutro's Cliff House in the distance.

Below are the ruins of the once mighty Sutro Baths, the public ocean water bathhouse envisioned and financed by Adolph Sutro in the late 1800s.

Adolph Sutro, self-made millionaire and San Francisco mayor developed the lavish Sutro Baths in 1894. With his special interest in natural history and marine studies, he constructed an ocean pool aquarium among the rocks north of the Cliff House. Sutro then expanded his ocean front complex by constructing a massive public bathhouse that covered three acres and boasted impressive engineering and artistic details.

Sutro sought to provide a healthy, recreational and inexpensive swimming facility for thousands of San Franciscans. A railroad provided transportation to Lands End by the late 1890s, so a visit to Sutro Baths became a feasible all-day family excursion.

The baths weren't just any swimming hole. Inside a massive glass enclosure were seven swimming pools kept at various temperatures. Not to mention slides, trapezes, springboards and a high dive. During high tide, the Pacific Ocean could fill the 1.7 million gallons of water required for all the pools in one hour. The baths could accommodate 10,000 people at once, offered 20,000 bathing suits and 40,000 towels for rent. But no flip flops.

The baths also provided a cultural education component focused on natural history exhibits, sculptures, paintings, tapestries and artifacts from Mexico, China, Asia, and the Middle East, including Egyptian mummies. Sutro Baths was also a venue for concerts, talent shows and restaurants.

The baths had the power to bestow a restorative effect on visitors, if the following excerpt from a letter is to be believed. A letter from Tennessee Volunteer, 1898, 

"We all went to the Sutro bath house out on the coast about three miles and went in, which made us all feel like new boys. We all put on bathing suits and some of the boys went in 9 foot water, some in 6 and some in four, but I couldn't hardly swim in four foot, so I just contented myself by buying something good."