Sutro Bathhouses

What the bath house site looks like today. All pics taken from the wiki article.

It's something that I remember as a kid that we often drove by the site of the Sutro bathhouse ruins along the coast in the Bay Area, and even had a few opportunities to wander the ruins a few times. It is nothing short of a shame that the buildings have never been reconstructed. 

Adolph Sutro started construction of the bathhouse in 1894 and it was a massive undertaking. It required 100,000 square feet (9,300 square meters) of glass, 600 tons of iron, 3.5 million board feet (8,300 m3) of lumber, and 10,000 cubic yards (7,600 cubic meters) of concrete to complete. on the saltwater bath house, and opened it to the public in 1896. 

A picture of the facility on the year of it's opening.

Once opened, it was the largest indoor pool in the world and required massive upkeep and operating costs to keep running. It featured Six saltwater pools and one freshwater pool. The baths were 499.5 feet long and 254.1 feet wide for a capacity of 1.805 million US gallons. They were equipped with seven slides, 30 swinging rings, and one springboard.

It also featured a museum with an extensive collection of stuffed and mounted animals, historic artifacts, and artwork, much of which Sutro acquired himself from the Woodward's Gardens estate sale in 1894.  There was also a 2700-seat amphitheater, and club rooms with capacity for 1100, 517 private dressing rooms, and an ice skating rink in the southernmost section of the building.

A vintage picture of the interior which changed quite a bit over the structure's lifetime.

That is of course until 1964, when it closed it's doors for good and it was sold to developers for a high-rise apartment complex. That wasn't to be, as in 1966 during the demolition of the building, an arsonist started the fire that ultimately destroyed the site and left it what it is today. Currently, it is a part of the Golden Gate Park and is managed by the National Park Service.