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More than 120 years ago, a lavish swimming and entertainment complex sat on the site of this sunset live stream. Adolph Sutro, a wealthy entrepreneur and former San Francisco Mayor, developed a massive glass bathhouse that featured seven pools of varying temperatures and could accommodate up to 10,000 bathers at a time.
The mining tycoon started construction on the three-acre Sutro Baths complex with an ocean pool aquarium before expanding it into a venue that hosted concerts and talent shows and housed art and natural history exhibits and restaurants, according to the National Park Service.
Though Sutro dreamed of providing an inexpensive, recreational swimming experience for thousands of San Franciscans, the bathhouse was not profitable over the longterm. Sutro died in 1898 and his family eventually converted the baths into an ice-skating rink to try and keep the operation afloat.
In the 1960s, developers bought the land and planned to build high-rise apartments that never materialized after a fire destroyed the remnants of the site in 1966. Today the concrete ruins located north of the Cliff House are what remain of the Sutro Baths, which became part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area in 1973.
