Former Residents of Alcatraz To Stabilize 1910 Social Hall
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | May 19, 2008
Aerial view of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay
Credit: National Park Service
San Francisco's Alcatraz Island wasn't just home for prisoners; it was a de facto hometown for 60 families who were employees of the federal prison until it closed in 1963.
Now the people who grew up on Alcatraz want to raise money to stabilize and rebuild its social hall, built in 1910 and gutted by fire in June 1970. (The fires, which were started during the 19-month period that Native Americans lived on the island, destroyed several other buildings.)
Earlier this month, the National Park Service's Golden Gate National Recreation Area gave the Alcatraz Alumni Association permission to stabilize and seal the former social hall.
"We have expressed our support for this first phase of stabilization and have given them the green light to go ahead with their treatment plan for the restoration," says Craig Kinkel, chief of cultural resources and historical architect at Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
The stabilization project, estimated to cost the nonprofit $250,000, could begin as early as October, when bird-nesting season ends. The association plans to apply for a grant from Save America's Treasures.
"We're hoping we can get in this year because we don't have a lot more time," says Phil Dollison, president of the Alcatraz Alumni Association, Inc., which formed in 1965 and meets every August for a reunion.
Only a shell of the Social Hall, or Post Exchange, remains on Alcatraz Island.
Credit: Alcatraz Alumni Association
The group wants to rebuild the ruin as a museum about Alcatraz's residents. "We have some remarkable artifacts that we really have no place to put. That would be a place for us to meet and put our collections," Dollison says.
At the park service's request, the association submitted a cost analysis and engineering survey of the social hall. San Francisco-based TR&A Inc., conducted the pro bono survey, calling for a steel structure to shore up the concrete shell.
But the association's hope of creating a museum may not happen until the park service completes its general management plan for the national recreation area.
"It's premature for us to decide what kind of resource stewardship and visitor experience we might be prescribing for the social hall," Kinkel says. "As a ruin, it does represent the American Indian occupation period."
The building, which had a two-lane bowling alley, pool tables, a dance floor, dining hall, snack bar, and a movie theater, was essential to the families on the island. "This is what we did at Alcatraz. If we weren't fishing or studying we were at the social hall," Dollison says. "It was a little town."
Despite the fire and 1.4 million tourists each year, Dollison says, the island still feels like home.
"From the dockside, it looks exactly the same," he says. "Nothing has changed since the days we were there."
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