Cliff House

The first Cliff House was built in 1863, a one-storey wood-frame structure on top of the cliff overlooking Seal Rocks, reached by a private road built for the purpose, Point Lobos Avenue, and from the 1860s by a Sunday horse-drawn stagecoach from downtown. Adolph Sutro bought it in 1881, and fire destroyed the wood-frame building on Christmas Day 1894. The second Cliff House opened in 1896 at a cost of $75,000, an eight-storey castle-like structure with turrets, decorative spires, roof dormers and an observation tower; it survived the earthquake of 1906 and fire destroyed it in September 1907. The Sutro family sold the property in 1937. The National Park Service acquired it in 1977 and rehabilitated the building in 2005 to return it to its original neoclassical design, adding an adjacent Sutro Wing.