New Cliff House Exhibit Embraces the Mysteries Behind San Francisco's Lost Landmarks

A new exhibit at the Museum at The Cliff, also known as the Cliff House, invites visitors to look back at three landmarks that once defined the western edge of Lands End in San Francisco, and to accept that some of their history may never be fully settled.

The show, called Naiad Cove, takes its name from the small bay at the foot of the Sutro Baths ruins. According to local history, American settlers may have named the cove after the water nymphs of Greek lore, known as naiads, because a spring-fed creek runs into the sea there. The exhibit also draws on Greek mythology for inspiration.

It was curated by Nicole Meldahl, executive director of the nonprofit Western Neighborhoods Project, and John Lindsey, director of The Great Highway gallery. ACT Art Conservation was a partner, with support from the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's Park Archives and Records Center and the Global Museum at SF State. The exhibit covers Sutro Baths, the Cliff House and Playland-at-the-Beach.

Visitors will find photographic prints and reproductions alongside dozens of artifacts that the Western Neighborhoods Project bought at auction to preserve them after the Cliff House restaurant closed at the end of 2020. Among the highlights are an early 20th-century wooden bear sculpture from Germany's Black Forest region that once greeted restaurant guests, the Playland cowboy known as Sheriff C.U. Soon, hand-painted Playland signs by artist Reino Niemela, and a pair of porcelain ladies that hung in the Sutro Baths.

Many of these objects have uncertain pasts. A carousel horse is only "attributed" to Playland. Meldahl said it has been neither confirmed nor ruled out, noting that it was donated to the Hountalas family, which ran the Cliff House property from the 1970s until the restaurant's end, and that there is no paperwork or documented provenance. She argues that the stories attached to an object matter too. "The things that people have come to feel about these pieces, factually correct or not, are part of its history now," she said.

Meldahl has a theory about the sheriff, which once stood on a Playland rooftop and could be seen from the Great Highway. She believes it was made by ride designer Laurence "Laurie" N. Hollings, because it resembles his drawings for San Jose's defunct Frontier Village and because he worked for the Whitney family, who once owned Playland. "I can't prove it, but it feels right," she said. The sheriff undergoes public conservation treatment every Saturday.

The porcelain ladies were long thought to be Greek muses commissioned for Adolph Sutro in the 1890s. Meldahl said the figures lack the identifying attributes, such as a harp, that would mark them as the nine muses, and that Sutro tended to buy from auctions or catalogs. The conservator found the materials and methods consistent with the 1890s, but the earliest photographs of the figures in the baths date to the 1940s.

To fill in the gaps, the exhibit uses immersive audio by Andrew Roth that evokes swimmers at the baths, cutlery clinking in the restaurant and roller coaster screams at Playland. Visitors can "ride" Playland's Diving Bell inside the Cliff House's kitchen freezer, or sit at a recreated bar and imagine dining in eras from the 1910s to the post-World War II years. A maître d' bib autographed by actor Cary Grant is on view.

Families can browse photo books, play with food to recreate a Cliff House meal, write postcards or make art inspired by the landscape. Lindsey's selection of contemporary Lands End photographs is also on display, along with an illuminated work by the studio of Jim Campbell, the artist behind the LED display atop Salesforce Tower.

Naiad Cove is open Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Aug. 21. Admission is free, and timed tickets can be reserved online through Eventbrite. "The land and this special cove, this Naiad Cove, it will outlast us all," Meldahl said.