Presidio of San Francisco

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Site Description

3D Point Cloud of Building 1204

California's beautiful Presidio, located within the Golden Gate Recreation Area at the entry to San Francisco Bay, saw continuous use as a military base by the Spanish, Mexican, and American armies over the course of 218 years. It has retained numerous examples of standing architecture from these different periods, providing for an invaluable glimpse into the architectural traditions of several different militaries during California's modern history. Designated a national park since 1994, the Presidio draws thousands of visitors each year with its natural beauty, historic significance, and new uses for such purposes as film studios and sets; in this capacity, it is the only economically self-sustaining national park in the United States. Even with current use, the Presidio Trust (administrators of the site) have placed a premium on conservation, and the park today looks very much as it did when the base was finally decommissioned 15 years ago.
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History

Photo-textured 3D Point Cloud of Building 42

The Presidio of San Francisco has a long and illustrious history. Archaeological evidence indicates settlement from the Ohlone/Costanoan people at least as far back as the 8th century C.E., and their way of life seems to have remained relatively unchanged for centuries. In 1776, however, a major shift came to the region with the arrival of Spanish military forces, who had come to the San Francisco Bay to establish a presence as the northernmost outpost of the Spanish empire in response to the threat of Russian and English colonization of America's west coast. Under the command of Juan Batista De Anza, El Presidio (which means "the garrison" in Spanish) and the nearby Mission Dolores were quickly established in order to regulate maritime access to San Francisco Bay. The Mission and Presidio were also used to pacify, control, and forcibly conscript the local Ohlone/Costanoan peoples into labor to help build and maintain these new institutions, and by the early 1800s these native populations had been decimated by introduced disease, displacement, and military actions by the colonists. This demographic shift also transformed the natural landscape, with a host of introduced (domesticated) plant and animal species largely replacing the native marshland and scrubgrass/sand dune habitat. During this time the new architecture built by the colonists also went through a number of changes and expansions, as El Presidio took the shape of what was essentially a military settlement, with a large number of civilians dwelling within its boundaries along with the garrison soldiers themselves.

The Spanish controlled the region for 46 years until the Mexican Revolution of 1822, when administration passed to the newly-founded Mexican government, who maintained a military presence for another 22 years during the Californiano period. In 1846, following the Mexican-American War, the United States military occupied El Presidio as part of the territory of California, and it remained a vital military base protecting San Francisco Bay and its burgeoning cities. The U.S. military remained in control of the Presidio area as a primary west coast base for most of its major actions in the state and beyond, from wars of native suppression to protecting the new national parks from exploitation to serving as a training ground for scores of soldiers shipping off to foreign wars. The base was decommissioned in 1994 and turned into a National Park, with control passing to the National Park Service and, in 1998, the Presidio Trust. Due to its continuous usage for military purposes, the Presidio was insulated from the ever-expanding urban development that surrounds it, and has retained much of its basic form. With some of the oldest buildings in the state, El Presidio serves as a well-preserved snapshot of several important eras of military architecture during California's history.

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Project Narrative

Photo-textured 3D Point Cloud of Mesa Room

The digital preservation of the Presidio began with pilot project to document the Mesa Room of the Officer's Club. Following the success of this project, a larger documentation of the Historic Plaza de Armas was conducted. The documentation of Fort Scott took place several months later as part of a year long internship program being taught at UC Berkeley's CyArk Visualization Lab. The internship taught students how to capture, create, manage and share High Definition Documentation data. The internship students, along with professionals from the Presidio Trust, CyArk, CHI and SVLS preformed a High Definition Documentation of one of the barracks of Fort Scott in March of 2007. Following the collection of raw data in the field, students worked to produce content that could be geographically referenced to a map of the fort.
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Area Descriptions

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Fort Winfield Scott Description:

Located within San Francisco's Presidio, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, lies Fort Winfield Scott. Originally constructed between 1910 and 1915, the structures of Fort Scott represent one of the finest examples of the Mission Revival Style. The horseshoe building arrangement and use of the natural topography also evidence change in 20th century plaenning concepts by the integration of setting, architecture and landscape. Although always physically a part of the Presidio of San Francisco, located overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Winfield Scott sometimes functioned as a separate military command. In 1912 Fort Scott was established as an independent coast artillery post and the headquarters of the Artillery District of San Francisco. The Fort had responsibility for all the seacoast defense batteries, torpedo or mine facilities and other supporting structures elsewhere in the Presidio.
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Building 1204 Description:

Originally constructed between 1910 and 1915, the structures of Fort Scott represent one of the finest examples of the Mission Revival Style. Although always physically a part of the Presidio of San Francisco, located overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Winfield Scott sometimes functioned as a separate military command. In 1912 Fort Scott was established as an independent coast artillery post and the headquarters of the Artillery District of San Francisco. The Fort had responsibility for all the seacoast defense batteries, torpedo or mine facilities and other supporting structures elsewhere in the Presidio.
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Historic El Presidio (Plaza de las Armas) Description:

Originally known as the Plaza de las Armas, this area was the location of the central quadrangle of El Presidio de San Francisco, the Spanish fort designed by Lt. Jose Joaquin Moraga in 1776 and built with forced labor from local native populations. The fort was Spain's northernmost colonial outpost, designed to control the local native populations, guard nearby Mission Dolores, and regulate the comings and goings of foreign ship traffic into the San Francisco bay. Its fortifications were built primarily from adobe, and went through a number of reconstructions and repairs from 1779 until 1815 following a series of devastating storms and earthquakes. As a remote outpost of Spain and, later, Mexico, El Presidio fell into disrepair in the mid-19th century, and was in poor condition with only a small care-taking regiment of soldiers when the Americans took control of the territory following the Mexican-American War in 1847. The fort's quadrangle area was redesigned and expanded by the American military over different construction phases since that time up until the 1970s; however, much of the basic layout was retained and certain buildings, such as the Officer's Club, were built around and on top of existing adobe structures in lieu of their demolition.
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Officer's Club Description:

Due to the nature of El Presidio always being a military base, much of the underlying foundational structures and archaeological remains from its earliest periods remain intact under the present constructions and grounds. The present-day Officer's Club, 188 feet by 119 feet in plan, is located in the southwest corner of the Plaza de las Armas, the central quadrangle of the original Spanish fort. The old adobe fort, currently the oldest surviving Spanish colonial military building in California, was never demolished to make room for new construction. Rather, the American military built upon it in layers over two construction periods; first in 1847, the year of the takeover from Mexico (which had controlled the fort since 1821 following their war of independence), then later in 1884-1885 when the central assembly hall was built. Today, the appearance of the front facade of the fort primarily reflects additional remodeling from the 1930s in the Colonial Revival style, with original adobe walls enclosed under metal lath and plaster. A large rear addition to the building was built during the 1970s in the Mission Revival style seen at Fort Winfield Scott.
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Mesa Room Description:

The Mesa Room is the east wing of the Officer's Club, and, along with the west wing (the de Anza Room), was probably constructed during the rebuilding and expansion of the Spanish fort's central quadrangle between 1812-1815, following the earthquake of 1812. The remains of the quadrangle share the distinction, along with Mission Dolores further to the south, of being San Francisco's oldest standing Colonial-era constructions. Currently, the Mesa Room contains exhibits from the current archaeological excavation efforts at El Presidio. Following the takeover of California by the United States in 1847, the American military elaborated and revised the fort but left earlier portions of architecture largely intact under new walls. In 2005, archaeologists peeled back sections of the modern drywall, revealing stenciled wall fabric from the 1930s, which was then peeled back to reveal woodwork from the early American period that was designed to make the thick adobe walls look like a wood frame building. Underneath the wood were the Spanish colonial adobe walls themselves, some of which possibly date as far back as 1791.
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External Links:

• Presidio's walls speak of past

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