The building was designed by architect Willis Polk, and opened in 1925 as a city-run restaurant and included changing rooms for beach visitors.[6] The Beach Chalet is located near the Dutch Windmill in Golden Gate Park.[7] It replaced an older building called the Golden Gate Park Chalet, built in 1892, that had stood on the opposite side of the Great Highway.[8]
Derelict
The building was taken over by the United States Army as a coastal defense headquarters during World War II. After the war, the city leased the Beach Chalet to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) for $50 a month.[9] The VFW moved out after the city bumped the rent to $500 a month in 1979.[9]
The location, remote from downtown San Francisco, drew complaints regarding "rotten performances and nauseating spectacles". A "smoker" party held there in 1952 featured gambling, strippers and lewd films; Salvatore (Tarbaby) Terrano of the Waxey Gordon narcotics ring was arrested following the event.[9] After the VFW moved out, the derelict Beach Chalet was occupied by homeless people and cats and nearly was destroyed by fire before a padlocked fence was erected.[9]
Restaurant
After several years of closure and following a renovation completed in 1996, the building now houses the Beach Chalet Brewery and Restaurant on the second floor, opened by Lara and Gar Truppelli and Timon Malloy. Its sister restaurant, the Park Chalet, is located to the back of the Beach Chalet with a dining room facing the park and outdoor dining on a terrace and lawn area.
Art
Upstairs monochrome mural (Labaudt)
Sea Creatures (von Meyer)
Mosaic (Caredio)
The Beach Chalet has three major works of art added in 1936 and 1937 as Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects
San Francisco Life, a major mural by Lucien Labaudt at the entrance hall;[10] Labaudt also painted monochrome frescoes in the stairwell and restroom hallway.[11]
Sea Creatures, a series of carved magnolia wood panels for the staircase by Michael von Meyer[12]
Lucien Labaudt painted the elaborate San Francisco Life fresco mural in 1936 and 1937.[5] The mural extends from the top of the wainscot to the ceiling of the first floor entrance lobby and wraps around all four walls, split into nine sections, each approximately 9 ft (2.7 m) tall and covering an aggregate area of 1,500 sq ft (140 m2).[10] It depicts real people and scenes from San Francisco in the 1930s, encompassing the beach, Golden Gate Park, Fisherman's Wharf, and the Marina District.[14]
Many of the figures depicted are artists, patrons, and WPA administrators that Labaudt knew; unlike the more radical murals at Coit Tower, art history professor Anthony Lee wrote "The Beach Chalet only confirmed [Labaudt's] return to the fold. Its rigorous symmetry and compositional concision, its playful but unabashed kowtowing, its scenes of relaxed pleasure and unproblematic display of the city's entertainment spots, its purposeful omission of any Artists' Union painters — all these run counter to the visual language of his Coit Tower mural."[15]: 167–172 There are four quotations from local poets painted over each doorway.[10]
Depicts Labaudt's nephew, Bill Chamberlain (walking a dog) and daughters Yliane (playing guitar) and Alwyne (cutting watermelon); also shows fresco assistants Arnold Bray and Farrell Dwyer with sculptor Robert Howard (playing harmonica). Includes self-portrait of Labaudt (seated, studying paper) and his wife (receiving potato salad and again, in green bathing suit).
In 1981, Restoration Associates pledged to restore the mural as part of a thirty-year lease on the property.[20] The mural room is now the San Francisco Visitor's Center.[21] The Beach Chalet murals appear in the Michael Apted film, Class Action (1991).[22]
Details of Lucien Labaudt's San Francisco Life mural at Beach Chalet
Labaudt (seated, studying paper) at Baker Beach(north end of east wall)
^Eichelbaum, Stanley (February 4, 1997). "Dining: Great new places around the Bay Area". Sausalito Marin Scope. Retrieved 3 January 2023. The ground floor, with colorful murals painted in 1936 by Lucien Labaudt, has become the Golden Gate Park Visitor Center.