17 - Staff Housing

WAYSIDE LAYOUT: Cream colored, horizontally oriented panel with a dark banner running across the top. The banner reads “Golden Gate National Recreation Area” on the left and the National Park Service logo on the right. The panel has two rows. The first row has text and one image. The second row has three images and a quote.  

FIRST ROW:  

TEXT: Staff Housing: Growing up on Alcatraz. Once upon a time, boys and girls rode bikes and ran after balls on the cement below. They did normal things kids do, while their fathers guarded the nation's most incorrigible criminals and their mothers made homes of their Alcatraz apartments.  

When the whistle blew for the boat each morning, the children headed to school on the mainland. Each afternoon they came home to the island, where they played games outside with the other children.  

DESCRIPTION: Black and white photograph looking down onto the apartment building on the right and another housing building on the left with a large open space in between. The water of the bay is directly behind the buildings and the city looms in the distance.  

CAPTION: All that remains of apartments, cottages, and a duplex that stood on this end of the island are mounds of rubble overgrown with plants. The federal government had the buildings demolished in 1972.  

SECOND ROW:  

DESCRIPTION #1: Black and white photograph of children lined up, ready to go to school. A large building is on the right, and the guard tower is seen in the background.  

CAPTION: While children elsewhere were hopping onto school busses, the boys and girls who lived on Alcatraz filed onto the island boat.  

DESCRIPTION #2: A colored photo showing two young boys playing baseball. One is swinging a bat (on the right) while the other is crouched behind him, ready to catch the ball in his mitt.  

DESCRIPTION #3: Colored photograph of children playing in an area enclosed by a short barrier on three sides and a building on the right. There is a swing set in area with a child mid swing, and surrounding it are more children playing on the ground. In the foreground is a bench with two little girls sitting and talking.  

QUOTE: “This two-acre slab of concrete was our batting field, our skating rink, our tennis court and touch football gridiron...It was a cement prairie on which the winds played furiously.” - Jolene Babyak, Alcatraz resident, Eyewitness on Alcatraz.