All-new South Park beckons to everyone
Like much of San Francisco, South Park has lived multiple lives. It’s been a posh address and a warehouse zone, an African American neighborhood in one era and the crossroads of Multimedia Gulch in another.
Now the small oval that gives South Park its name has been remade as thoroughly as at any time in its 160-year existence. The update is steeped in the values of today’s city, down to six benches with armrests that double as laptop tables. The play structure could be a computer-generated optical illusion.
But here’s the good news: The design isn’t simply streamlined or hip. The makeover of the unusual green within the block bounded by Second, Third, Brannan and Bryant streets also seeks to be inclusive — a philosophy that adds substance to the style and helps make the “new” South Park into one of San Francisco’s most satisfying public spaces.
Almost all that’s left of the old South Park are rounded curbs that date back to when it was surrounded by stylish brick town houses — they perished in the 1906 earthquake — and 18 aged elm and sycamore trees planted afterward. Last year, 30 trees were removed along with wood benches and rotting play structures dating to the 1970s, replaced by a playful string of experiences linked by a single ambling path.
There are large lawns on the east side and a grassy hillock toward the center. Angled walls provide seating as well as protection from outside traffic. The play structure is an
expressive pair of enormous metal hoops that are linked but seemingly want to fly apart, with netting draped between the swooping curves for young and old to climb on.
As for the walkway, it typifies the meticulous imagination of landscape architect David Fletcher’s approach to a space first conceived in the 1850s. That’s when South Park was built to attract wealthy homeowners — a plan thwarted when Nob Hill instead became the address of choice.
The snaking concrete path resembles a procession of oversize Popsicle sticks intended to mimic the park’s silhouette. At points along the way, it flares out to create communal spaces.
All this makes for an easy stroll — and an angled journey that continually reorients your view within the oval and the low buildings that enclose it. Every few steps offers a slightly different take: Sometimes the near horizon is a seating area, then it shifts to a thatch of landscape. Or a lift of your head reveals the tall new towers of Transbay and Rincon Hill, peeking down on the promenade.
The meander also serves as a fully accessible path, through a space that is 18 feet higher on the east than on the west. Along the way, the wide spots with tables or extra benches flatten so that a wheelchair can park with ease.
“We really wanted to create one shared path,” said David Fletcher, whose studio is based in Dogpatch.
Most of Fletcher’s work has been at a smaller scale, such as his courtyard for a Hayes Valley condo complex that won an award in 2015 from the American Society of Landscape Architects. He started on the oval in 2010, when the South Park Improvement Association hired him to look at how a beloved but tattered space could be reborn with care.
Once the effort was embraced by the city’s Recreation and Park Department, work began in earnest. The association raised more than $250,000, while fees and contributions from area development projects accounted for nearly $2 million. A crucial piece came from city residents, with $1.2 million from two park bonds. Rec and Park began construction last January, and the ribbon-cutting was March 7.
Throughout, Fletcher held to the desire to make a space that functions and to do so with flair. His other aim, to bring different publics together, translates to such design elements as the all-in-one play structure.
“Most new playgrounds have to have separate areas for different ages, with a fence around each one to keep dogs out. We didn’t want to do that, and Rec and Park showed a lot of trust,” said Fletcher, who has two young boys. “South Park is a big space but a tiny space ... we were determined to accommodate all of its weird adjacencies and hidden constraints.”
Even the selection of the benches, designed by Yves Behar, fits into the larger message.
It’s not only that several have the armrests that can support a computer. Or that the flat “standard” armrests are wide enough for a coffee cup. It’s that there are no obstructions within the seating area of each bench — nothing to prevent an indigent person from stretching out at night after other park users have left.
In San Francisco’s economically stratified South of Market, this is an almost radically civic gesture.
And who spends time in South Park? You’d be surprised.
During lunchtime the oval can be a caricature of self-absorbed techdom, with debates over dashboards and database servers pinging earnestly through the air. Aggressively fit men stride by in clusters, venture capitalists on the prowl for their next unicorn.
Yet the buildings around South Park include three single-room-occupancy hotels, home to 100 or so men and women. Many are African American or Filipino, the two populations that for decades shared the block with the bluecollar workers who made their livings at the machine shops and warehouses where fine homes once stood.
That mix began to shift in the 1980s, when architects and photographers were drawn to the intimate scale and cheap rent — one of San Francisco’s first beachheads of gentrification.
Some of the “creatives,” drawn to what then was the edge, never left. But the ’80s are also when nonprofits purchased what then were decrepit rooming houses, ensuring a social mix that endures despite the dot-com boom of the late ’90s and the ongoing tech ascendance.
“I was torn when they cut down so many trees, but I’m happy for the new park,” said Kimberly, who has lived for eight years in low-income housing above Caffe Centro. She and several friends were gathered one morning last week near the play structure, which includes a tire “hammock” on which Kimberly took a few swings. “And it’s really nice on weekends. We all brought pizza and barbecue out last Saturday.”
We’ll never return to the days when a laundry filled the storefront where Caffe Centro does brisk business, but it’s heartening to see South Park remade in a way that seeks to serve all economic classes. The test now is whether the city, and South Park’s users, care enough to allow the new space to fulfill its promise as it matures.