The Cliff House

I don't know what it is exactly but this place haunts me. I originally found out about it in a coffee table book I have called Anonymous. It was a big, beautiful, victorian building that used to adorn a piece of the San Franciscan Coast. In 1863 it began as a smaller building, still calling itself The Cliff House, only to burn down in 1894. Soon afterward it was rebuilt. Except this time, it was more opulent and impressive, reaching seven stories tall. Like its father before him, this building lived in short glory, again burning down in 1907. Afterwards, The Cliff House was rebuilt a few more times for various reasons, none of the later designs even coming close to the beauty of the 1895-1907 Victorian Chateau. Most of the surviving pictures of this place are taken from the beach down below, often finding families in mid-speak, mid-smile, children in mid-step. And in the background, sometimes blurry, would be this HUGE structure looking like it housed kings and ready to teeter into the ocean right below. I love looking at these, these moments where the people in them have no idea what is to come. Of what would change around them, or imagining what their next moment looked like, the moment after the shutter closed. I know the past is littered with the ugly things just like our present is, but sometimes, just sometimes, there are these pieces of life that you wish you could go back and experience. Like being a woman on the beach in an impractical dress, playing with your child with the Cliff House in the background. I don't really want that, but I do too. Just to know what that felt like. Barely noticing what would be gone forever only a couple years later.

I told you this place haunts me, and I really have no idea why. What can I say, I am drawn to beautiful architecture of the vintage sort, especially when it is overly large and promises something like a ocean view. And then when I know that it has burnt down and disappeared a hundred times over and I never can know it? It leaves me wanting.

**To see more pictures of this amazing place, check out this site.