Golden Gate Park: Conservatory

The Conservatory in Golden Gate Park, built in 1879, is the oldest municipal wooden conservatory in the U.S.

• Detroit 8119 shows gardeners at work on the decorative foliage in front of the Conservatory, which appears to spell out "Welcome". The embankment just below them, decorated in the other cards shown here, is unadorned. The image © 1904 is the earliest image on this page. The postcard is postmarked 5/05/1906 in Michigan, about two weeks after the 1906 earthquake and fire; the sender remarks "In this park thousands of homeless slept."
• Mitchell 37 gives a good view of foliage spelling out "Welcome G.A.R. 1903". A fraternal organization of Civil War veterans, The Grand Army of the Republic held commemorative "encampment" events throughout the U.S. The postmark year has been blacked out, but the divided back implies that card dates from 1907 or later. Another Mitchell 37 uses the same stock number for a different image.
• Owl Drug 37 shows the same image with the same stock number. It's likely that Mitchell printed this card for Owl Drugs.

The foliage on this Weidner image matches the Mitchell and Owl cards above. The shadows imply that the the image shows an afternoon view.

• Weidner 134, AutoChrom logo, postmarked SF 10/07/1904.
• Weidner 134, same image, post-quake caption added, no AutoChrom logo, postmarked SF 6/08/1908.

• Behrendt 8, postmarked SF 7/17/1907, is very similar to the Weidner cards, but the shadows imply that this is a morning view.
• Behrendt, same image.
• Britton & Rey 614 is a similar view, but showing different decorative foliage.
• Müller 22, b+w, looks directly north to the entrance, so it shows steps not seen on the other cards on this page.

Steve's SF postcard pages:

• Next: Ferry Building: 1915
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