The Music Concourse, completed in 1900, is an open-air plaza within Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The depressed elevation provides protection from summer winds, and terraces around the perimeter were designed to seat an anticipated capacity of 20,000. Free concerts are held there on Sundays during the summer. The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and the bandshell were the first structures in the plaza; the California Academy of Sciences was added in 1916, and the central fountain, Rideout Fountain, in 1924. A monument dedicated to Francis Scott Key was moved from its original location in 1967. The plaza is planted with many trees laid out in a regular grid array; mostly London planes and Scotch elms with some maples and walnuts, they are heavily pollarded (severely pruned) to provide a very regular, formal appearance. The oval basin was excavated in 1893 to create the Grand Court for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition, and statuary and other relics from the exposition can still be found there. It then underwent a significant redesign as a venue for public performances. Its focal point, Spreckels Temple of Music (the "Bandshell"), built in 1899, was given to the city by sugar magnate Claus Spreckels. (His son Adolph would give the city its other major museum, the Legion of Honor, formerly The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, a few years later.)
The Music Concourse, completed in 1900, is an open-air plaza within Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The depressed elevation provides protection from summer winds, and terraces around the perimeter were designed to seat an anticipated capacity of 20,000. Free concerts are held there on Sundays during the summer. The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and the bandshell were the first structures in the plaza; the California Academy of Sciences was added in 1916, and the central fountain, Rideout Fountain, in 1924. A monument dedicated to Francis Scott Key was moved from its original location in 1967. The plaza is planted with many trees laid out in a regular grid array; mostly London planes and Scotch elms with some maples and walnuts, they are heavily pollarded (severely pruned) to provide a very regular, formal appearance. The oval basin was excavated in 1893 to create the Grand Court for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition, and statuary and other relics from the exposition can still be found there. It then underwent a significant redesign as a venue for public performances. Its focal point, Spreckels Temple of Music (the "Bandshell"), built in 1899, was given to the city by sugar magnate Claus Spreckels. (His son Adolph would give the city its other major museum, the Legion of Honor, formerly The California Palace of the Legion of Honor, a few years later.)
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