Sutro’s Aquarium 

In another day or two Mr. Sutro’s aquarium, opposite the Seal rocks, will be completed. It will be 100 feet in diameter, cut out of the solid rock, and will be filled with ocean water through a tunnel. Its distance from the Cliff house will be about 500 feet, and between the two Mr. Sutro proposes to establish a bathing station in a cover about two acres in extent, which is admirably adapted for the purpose. Of course the bathing place will be provided with all the modern improvements, and persons who are not afraid of a plunge in cold water may get a bath there every day of the year. This is an improvement which is calculated to be beneficial to the city, and which is likely to make Mr. Sutro’s name as widely known throughout the United States as the Sutro Tunnel itself.
We cannot too often impress upon people the necessity of doing more than they are doing to make the city attractive to visitors. We do not make half enough of our natural advantages and our opportunities. Here is a city which has neither summer nor winter. It is spring all the time. We grow roses at Christmas and sleep under blankets in July. Yet if we except the park, we are doing little toward helping nature to make San Francisco beautiful. Even the park might be lovelier than it is. Compare it with the flower grounds at the Presidio, which are tenderly cared for by officers of the army, and it will easily be seen what room there is for improvement. The Seal rocks are left as nature made them, and perhaps this was best. Still, a pleasure steamer to cruse round the, and to give visitors a chance of seeing the uncouth creatures at close quarters, might be so navigated as not to frighten the seals, and it would be full all the time.
Mr. Sutro’s new departure will add a charm to the locality. No such aquariums as the one he is constructing exists anywhere in the world. It will contain the queerest fish that swim. It will be an epitome of the Pacific ocean, and ultimately it will be a place for marine monsters collected from all parts. It will surpass the famous Brighton aquariums as far as that interesting institution surpassed the Chinese glass bowls of our ancestors. Then the bathing station will itself be a striking novelty for Eastern visitors. The bathing places of the East open about July 1st and close on September 1st. Here there will be no opening and no closing. It will be open all the year round, and quite often the wager will be as warm in January as in July. This feature alone should draw Eastern visitors. When the new attractions are supplemented by a modern first-class monster hotel capable of accommodating a couple of thousand guests, the attractions of that portion of the city should be irresistible.
We must get over the idea that providence is going to do everything for us, and that all we have to do is to sit on our chairs and brag about our climate. We must help providence; other cities have had to do so. They have zoological gardens, and jardins des plantes, and free menageries and picture galleries, and free concerts, and bearpits, and all sorts of other attractions which draw the crowd; and the consequence is that thriving cities thrive more than ever, and decaying cities have the pleasure of seeing the progress of decay arrested. We must follow the example. We possess no royal patent of prosperity. If we want to become a metropolis, we must pursue the course which experience teaches us to recognize as the road to metropolitan honors. We must regard our natural advantages as a mere foundation upon which we should build If we do, and our improvements are conducted with taste and judgment, it will not be long before we see a million people housed in San Francisco.
San Francisco Morning Call - 14 May 1887