Trocadero at Stern Grove
Historical Essay
by Woody LaBounty
Originally published at San Francisco Story, March 12, 2025. Reposted with permission.
Trocadero Inn, Sigmund Stern Grove, San Francisco, August 18, 1936.
Historic American Buildings Survey Robert W. Kerrigan, Photographer, HABS_CAL,38-SANFRA,2-1
Trocadero Inn in San Francisco's Stern Grove, March 2025.
Photo: Woody LaBounty
Each year millions of people drive past it, a few hundred feet away, and never see it.
Down the long slope from busy 19th Avenue in Stern Grove, hidden behind a stand of redwoods, is the Trocadero Inn, perhaps the oldest standing structure in southwest San Francisco, a beautiful gabled building with wrap-around porch, decorative shingles, and a central tower.
Constructed in 1892 in the Stick-Eastlake style, the Trocadero is the last intact survivor of a string of early roadhouses that once stretched across the western and southern parts of the city. It was only in 2022, after lobbying by neighborhood residents and local nonprofits (including the one I lead), that the historic and beautiful building was designated a city landmark.
Trocadero Clubhouse, 1930s.
Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp26.1604
Less than a year after that designation, during a storm in March 2023, an 85-foot eucalyptus tree fell and ripped through the building’s roof. The Trocadero’s sprinkler system activated and soaked the historic interior.
North side of the Trocadero Inn where an 85-foot eucalyptus tree fell into it on March 11, 2023.
Photo: Woody LaBounty
The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department seemed prepared to give up the 131-year-old roadhouse as a total loss. The San Francisco Chronicle headlined the news with the disconcerting word "destroyed."
Roadhouse Resort
Although now surrounded by concrete city streets, the Trocadero started life as a roadhouse built in a countryside setting, a Victorian get-away in a wooded gully.
A family resort and meals served at all hours? Hmmm... A postcard ad for the Trocadero from the early 1920s.
Photo: OpenSFHistory, wnp37.03678
Roadhouses are still with us today, situated on popular highways and country roads, providing temptation to Sunday drivers to stop for a meal or a drink. The Pelican Inn of west Marin County or The Mountain House in Woodside are both good examples.
In the 1890s, large sections of the west and southern parts of San Francisco were open land. Day-trippers to Ocean Beach or Lake Merced had a number of roadhouses to visit, including the Trocadero.
The Trocadero’s origins start with one family. The Green brothers from New Brunswick—William Henry, Daniel, George, John, Robert, and Alfred—first settled on land north of Lake Merced in the 1850s. There they farmed and, as side businesses, ran small bars and larger roadhouses.
After his brothers sold most of their land to the private Spring Valley Water Company in the 1870s, William Henry and his sons, Leopold and George W. Green, continued farming around today’s Pine Lake and Stern Grove. It was supposedly George W. Green who had the idea of building the Trocadero about 1892.
The setting was secluded and picturesque. The gulch was filled with eucalyptus, pine trees, and ferns planted by the Greens over the decades. The family originally had grand designs for the Trocadero as the centerpiece of a true resort with weekend rental cabins, a deer park, and trout stocked in Pine Lake for anglers.
In 1897, the Wave lauded the turtle soup served by the Trocadero and described how the shelled reptiles were caught and raised in the grove.
Families in fine carriages traveling between the city and estates down the peninsula in Atherton and Belmont may have been the target, but roadhouse clientele usually consisted of groups of less-refined men out for a day of drinking, dining, and perhaps gambling.
Green ended up leasing out the Trocadero to a series of operators who were experienced liquor dealers and familiar with the world of “sporting men.” Beer gardens, dance pavilions, and couple of tame bears were installed for entertainment at different times. Early bicycle clubs made the Trocadero the location for post-ride parties.
It was at the Trocadero on March 8, 1907 that political boss Abe Ruef was arrested during the wide-ranging corruption trials that took place after the city’s massive earthquake and fires. Ruef, who had been hiding out with a stack of magazines, was captured peacefully, despite stories passed down that the bullet holes in the Trocadero’s front door originated from the arrest.
After years of being primarily a spot for drinking men, the Trocadero property became a rare recreational enclave for women in the 1910s.
Mabel M. Hawkins, who had her own estate and home across the street on the northeast corner of 19th Avenue and Sloat Boulevard, leased the Trocadero and land around it in February 1910 to establish a “Women’s Outdoor Club.”
n 1912, a group called the “Girl Pioneers of America” ran a summer camp in the valley, with campers picking strawberries, pitching tents, and taking 18-mile (!) hikes. Also hosted at the Trocadero in this era was a “School of Employment” for women, respectable neighborhood dances, and suffragette meetings.
Proposals to build country clubs on the site came and went through the 1920s. In 1931, the Greens sold their Trocadero property to the Sigmund Stern Recreation Fund, which granted it to the city’s recreation and park department.
The meadow west of the Trocadero became the site of a popular free annual concert series, which still runs today.
Amadou & Mariam, a blind musical couple from Mali, rock the crowd at the Stern Grove Music Festival, 2007.
Photo: Chris Carlsson
The Trocadero itself was remodeled in the 1930s by architect Bernard Maybeck. It became a beautiful venue for wedding receptions, including that of my sister-in-law, who married my old (and I do mean old) clown friend Frisco in 1992.
Rebirth
I remember watching Phil Ginsberg, head of Rec and Park, on the morning news segment describing how the tree crashed through the roof. I was waiting for the words “We will do everything we can to save it,” but instead heard something vague and disturbing like the “Trocadero is gone.”
The city landmark designation we had fought for just a year earlier may have tipped the balance. Money was found to do the restoration work with reimbursement from a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant.
Now Ginsburg says “The clubhouse is a vital part of San Francisco’s cultural heritage and ensuring we could restore it to its former glory was critical.” I honor him for that.
Work is complete, an apparently excellent job done by Architectural Resources Group, and reservations are being taken for events starting April 1, 2025.
Fun Days At Trocadero
Trocadero was the most popular place for all the children of Parkside to go for adventure and fun. Trocadero is now called Sigmund Stern Grove. The property was given to the City of San Francisco in the early 1930's and was dedicated on June 5, 1932. The Grove now has many lovely plays and concerts, but in the old days, the children would go fishing in Mud Lake, catch frogs and imagine themselves in far-away places and great adventure.
—Mary Ada Williams, North Scale Institute, San Francisco