Landmark Status Sought for Music Concourse

By George McConnell

The SF Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board voted Feb. 16 to continue discussions about granting landmark status to Golden Gate Park's Music Concourse and the surrounding grid of trees.

Present at the landmarks meeting, held at City Hall, were the SF Planning Department, SF Recreation and Park Department and the neighborhood advocacy groups Friends of the Music Concourse and SPEAK (Sunset Parkside Education Action Committee). At issue in the landmark's application are the number, size, shape and care of the trees at the Music Concourse and the architectural integrity of the concourse's bandshell, pathways, benches and fountains.

"We'll do our best to pull together all the elements during this time," said Katherine Howard, co-chair of Friends of the Music Concourse.

The landmarking proposal was first presented to the board Jan. 5. The board agreed at the meeting that the concourse should be landmarked and a discussion ensued about the best conditions for preserving the concourse's grid of trees.

Granting landmark status for a landscape is rare. Washington Square Park in North Beach is the only park to receive landmark status in San Francisco.

When a building is landmarked, any proposed changes must first be reviewed by the Planning Department. Landscapes, however, are not afforded this protection. To guarantee protection, a supplement to the landmark application, termed Attachment G, must be filed.

Landmarking the area would mean that anything that changes the look or feel of the site must go through the Landmark Preservation Board. As part of its landmark application, a list of any future changes that require board overview must be decided on, Howard said.

Friends of the Music Concourse support a modification to the concourse's landmark application to protect the grid of trees. Some of the additions to the application include: ensuring the size of any replacement trees; making sure the trees match and are kept pruned to match; and requiring a public process whenever a tree is to be removed.  If a tree is removed, a suitable replacement must be planted within a reasonable amount of time.

If landmark status is granted as expected, any future changes will require a permit, or Certificate of Appropriateness, from the advisory board based on public input.

According to Howard, the Recreation and Park Department is ultimately responsible for the area's maintenance and objects to the codification of maintenance and upkeep procedures. 

"We will be meeting with the Recreation and Park Department to arrive at solutions," she said.

Howard and co-chair Margaret Mori formed Friends of the Music Concourse last summer in response to changes being proposed as part of the concourse renovation project.

Both are landscape architects and members of the American Society of Landscape Architects Historic Preservation Interest Group. The group is comprised of more than 100 volunteers.

Some of the early proposals for the area included removing part or even the entire tree grid and turning the area into a meadow.

Other groups and individuals supporting landmarking the area and the proposed attachment modifications include: Friends of the Urban Forest, Coalition for San Francisco Neighborhoods, San Francisco Tree Council and supervisors Tom Ammiano, Bevan Dufty and Chris Daly.

San Francisco business magnate, Claus Spreckels, donated the Temple of Music, popularly known as the bandshell, to the City in 1900. When the surrounding concourse area was built, hundreds of trees were planted in a grid pattern for the purpose of providing shade for concertgoers. 

The concourse area is an example of a French formal garden design, according to Howard, a lecturer in Historic Garden Design at UC Berkeley.

The concourse's grid of sycamore and elm trees now contains approximately 200 trees that range from 70 to 100 years old. Over the years, trees have been lost due to lack of funding, vehicular damage and other reasons. The Friends of the Music Concourse advocates replacing missing trees to ensure a full grid.

Improvements to the Music Concourse are part of the Park Revitalization Act, known as Proposition J, passed by San Francisco voters in 1998.  Some of the renovation projects from that proposition include adding an 800-space underground parking garage, replacing the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the SF Academy of Sciences buildings, and repairing the paved pathways, tunnels and fountains in the area. Renovations to the concourse area are scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2005. 

The next meeting of the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board is scheduled for March 2 in Room 400 at City Hall. For more information, call (415) 710-2402 or visit the website at www.musicconcourse.org.