We're big fans of the Presidio and Crissy Field here at Curbed SF. Welcome to In the Presidio, a weekly series covering what's going on at what may be the country's most far-ranging and complex examples of adaptive re-use.
Most of what we see at the Presidio today is 19th and 20th Century military construction. The c. 1815 walls of Spain's El Presidio were discovered in the '90s when underground fuel tanks for the houses along Mason Street were removed, and now the Trust is re-building low versions of the eastern wall in a form of "interpretive landscaping" along Mason Street to Moraga Street, where the wall's location has been laid out in front of the Inn at The Presidio. Much of the restoration work was undertaken by Egyptian archaeology intern Nabil Fahmy, who works regularly with his archaeologist father on the Shunet El Zebib, a site in Abydos, Egypt, the oldest known mud brick (adobe) building in the world and the only surviving standing structure of a series of funerary complexes, built in the area between 3000 and 2750 BC. Part of an international exchange program, Nabil developed the formulation of local sand and soil that's now being formed into adobe blocks in Arizona and will eventually be laid on stone rubble foundations. The Chronicle also had a look earlier this week.
Nearby, work is restoration work continues on the Officer's Club, a part of the 1776 El Presidio and the last surviving bit of adobe structure from that period, as well as the dig at MacArthur Meadow at the bottom of the Tennessee Valley Watershed and downhill from El Polin Spring, sites from the Mexican Era considered to be San Francisco's first suburb.
· Presidio Trust Rebuilding SF History [SFGate]
· Making History Visible at El Presidio [Presidio Trust]
· Goats Chew Up The Presidio Golf Course While Archaologists Dig Up 1830s Suburbia in MacArthur Meadow (2nd Item) [Curbed SF]