Treasure Island San Francisco
Treasure Island is an artificial island in the San Francisco Bay and a neighborhood in the City and County of San Francisco. Built in 1936–37 for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, the island's World's Fair site is a California Historical Landmark. Buildings there have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the historical Naval Station Treasure Island, an auxiliary air facility (for airships, blimps, dirigibles, planes and seaplanes), are designated in the Geographic Names Information System.
Geography
The San Francisco census tract that includes Treasure Island extends up and down the San Francisco Bay and includes a small uninhabited tip of western Alameda Island. Yerba Buena and Treasure islands together have a land area of 576.7 acres (233.4 ha) with – in 2010 – a total population of 2,500. Treasure Island is connected by a 900 ft (270 m) causeway to Yerba Buena Island, which in turn has on- and off-ramps to Interstate 80 on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
The island has a marina and a bikeway connecting to the newly completed Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. Raised walkways circumscribe nearly the entire island along five streets (Avenue of the Palms, Perimeter Road, Avenue N, Pan American World Airways Esplanade and Clipper Cove Way, formerly known as 1st Street).
History
Prior to the island's construction by the United States government, "Yerba Buena Shoals" of rock[1] north of the transbay island had less than 27 ft (8.2 m) clearance and were a shipping hazard The 400-acre (1.6 km2) island was constructed by emplacing 287,000 short tons (260,000 t) of quarried rock in the shoals for the island/causeway perimeter rock walls (a freshwater reservoir was quarried in the rock of Yerba Buena Island).[9] Approximately 23 feet (7.0 m) of dredged bay sand filled the interior, was mitigated from salt, and then 50,000 cubic yards (38,000 m3) topsoil was used for planting 4,000 trees, 70,000 shrubs, and 700,000 flowering plants. Facility construction had begun by March 4, 1937, when two hangars were being built.
On February 18, 1939, the 'Magic City'[10] opened with a "walled city" of several fairground courts: a central Court of Honor, a Court of the East, a Port of Trade Winds on the south and on the north: a Court of Pacifica, a 12,000-car parking lot, and the adjacent National Building, the $1.5M Federal Building, the Hall of Western States, the $800K administration building, various exhibit halls for industries (e.g., "Machinery, Science, and Vacationland"), and two 335-by-78-foot (102 m × 24 m) hangars planned for post-exposition use by Pan Am flying boats (e.g., the China Clipper through 1944[6]) using the Port of Trade Winds Harbor later referred to as Clipper Cove between the two islands. In addition to Building 2 (Hangar 2) and Building 3 (Hangar 3), remaining exposition buildings include Building 1 (Streamline Modern architecture) intended after the expo as the Pan American World Airways terminal. The expo's Magic Carpet Great Lawn also remains.)
A couplet from the song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady", in the Marx Brothers' 1939 film, At The Circus, reads "Here is Grover Whalen unveilin' the Trylon/Over on the West Coast we have Treasure Island", citing, in the Trylon and Treasure Island, two prominent features of international civic events happening that year (as the 1939 New York World's Fair vied for tourist patrons with the Golden Gate International Expo).
