25 - West Side Gardens

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 features two columns on the top half and an image with text to the right on the bottom half. The bottom half also has a large background image. The first column has text and a quote and the second column has two images.  

FIRST COLUMN: 

TEXT: West Side Gardens: Build and tended by inmates. After the federal penitentiary opened in 1934, inmates only left the prison walls for the short walk to work in the industries building.  

The first warden’s secretary, Fred Reichel, had to gain permission for a few inmates to work outside. He supplied plants and training, and eventually inmate gardeners terraced and planted every area within sight of the guard towers. Prisoners passing through the gardens sometimes picked the flowers to brighten their cells, sacrificing their drinking glasses to use as vases. 

QUOTE:

“The hillside provided a refuge from disturbances of the prison, the work a release, and it became an obsession. This one thing I would do well.” - Elliot Michener, AZ #578, 1941 - 50  

SECOND COLUMN:  

DESCRIPTION #1: Colored photograph looking out from the guard tower. A guard in uniform, is standing on the balcony looking towards the left. In the near background, the gardens can be seen below, with bright green and colored foliage. The bay and Bay Bridge can be seen in the background.  

CAPTION: Guards kept an eye on inmates working in the west side gardens, 1950s.  

DESCRIPTION #2: Colored photograph looking down onto the gardens as a line of prisoners walks through on the created paths.  

CAPTION: In the 1940’s, inmate gardeners built and planted gardens below the recreation yard, along the route taken by fellow prisoners on their way to work.  

BOTTOM HALF:  

DESCRIPTION: Colored photograph of two men posing in front of a bright green hedge. They are dressed in coveralls and are wearing hats. One man is holding a rake.  

CAPTION: Inmate gardeners during the federal penitentiary years, 1940’s. 

TEXT: Through gardening, inmates found a way to free their minds from prison life. Dick Franseen admitted to forgetting that he was in prison while tending to his plants, and his friend Elliot Michener found “a lasting interest in creativity.” After parole, both Michener and Franseen found good jobs on a large farm in Wisconsin.  

LOGO: At the bottom of the panel are two logos, The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the Garden Conservancy logos with text below that reads, “Garden interpretive signs funded by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.” 

DESCRIPTION: In the background is a faded image of a large plant. It covers the bottom half of the panel.