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This artistic phenomenon, camera obscura, is created by using a completely darkened room, a sunny day, and a simple pin hole. By putting a hole in the material that keeps sunlight out, a reflected image of the view in front of the hole will be projected behind you, only upside down. A man named Floyd Jennings took this idea and created a building in 1946 that you could walk into to view the magnified and projected image, reflected from a mirror on top of the building and passed through two lenses. In 1957, he modified the exterior to resemble a giant camera. While Jennings created at least three camera obscura buildings (the others were in Colorado and Tennessee), this is the only one that survives. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and is thought to be the largest camera obscura in the nation in its original location.


Camera Obscura building (1946, with new exterior 1957) behind Cliff House in 2008 photo (Sanfranman59)

Dome, Dome

Camera Obscura building atop cliff above Pacific Ocean; iconic Seal Rocks in background (Bradley 2001)

Monochrome photography, Black, Sea, Monochrome

Closer view of Camera Obscura building in 2001 photo (Bradley)

Monochrome photography, Monochrome, Black and white, Dome

Sketch map of the floor plan of Camera Obscura building in 2001 (Bradley)

Diagram, Plan, Schematic, Line art

Diagram of the setup: mirror above 2 lenses; parabolic disk/screen inside Camera Obscura building (Bradley 2001)

Diagram, Plan, Science

Another side of "Camera Obscura and Holograph Gallery" building (Bradley 2001)

Photograph, Monochrome photography, Black and white, Monochrome

The Camera Obscura, a Latin term that means, "this dark room," has been a phenomenon that many of the world's greatest minds -- Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, and the Arabian scholar Alhazen of Basrahave - studied and improved. The basis for the camera obscura is a room with very heavy darkened curtains to block out the light, a sunny day outside, and a pin. To create the effect of the camera obscura you simply put a hole in the heavy material. With the hole in the material, you can see the outside world normally, but on the flat horizontal surface behind you the image is projected upside down, but just as clearly as looking through the pinhole. This was the level of simplicity to it until the 16th century when inventions like the mirror and lenses came into play. The camera obscura phenomenon made inventions that we all know today possible. One inventor placed a thin material that reacted to bright light. When a button was pressed, the light came through the lenses and burned an image that you want captured onto the light reactant paper. This was the basic blueprint of the camera in the late 17th century.

A man named Floyd Jennings had also heard of this artistic phenomenon and took it upon himself to make the camera obscura idea into a building. Jennings, an engineer, was not the first to build a camera obscura building. In fact, there was a previous camera obscura near the location where Jennings made his, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. The prior one was added in 1896 when Adolph Sutro rebuilt the Cliff House restaurant; the camera obscura, on the fourth floor, was one of the tourist attractions that was destroyed in a fire along with the Cliff House on September 7th, 1907. When a Sutro heir (Emma Sutro Merritt) rebuilt the Cliff House in 1909, no camera obscura was included.

In 1946, Jennings placed his building right off of the Playland-at-the-Beach at Ocean Beach, behind the Cliff House, to get more tourist traffic to see this artistic wonder. The device - and its detailed images of sea lions on the nearby rocks - was featured in a short article and fold-out page in Life magazine in 1954, including a portable version of a camera obscura that Jennings intended to use to take detailed images of national monuments. In this Camera Obscura, a mirror inside a copper pyramid on the roof reflects an image through two condensing lenses below the mirror. This produces a panoramic image that is magnified seven times and projected onto a six-foot-wide parabolic screen inside the building. The mirror slowly rotates, giving a 360-degree view of the surroundings.

In 1957, Jennings modified the building's exterior to resemble a giant camera like a tourist might carry. Two black spools on the front represented film-advance knobs; the building was then called "Giant Camera." This type of architecture is known as "duck," a style where the unique shape invites exploration of the inside. This Camera Obscura is the only intact building in place from Playland, which closed in 1972. The National Park Service purchased the adjacent Cliff House in 1977; the Camera Obscura was part of the property conveyed. A collection of holographic images was added inside in the late 1970s. The NPS announced plans in 1980 to demolish the Camera Obscura to give a better view of the ocean and Seal Rock. Public outcry saved the structure.

Accardi, Catherine. San Francisco Landmarks. Images of America. Charleston, SC. Arcadia Publishing, 2012.

Anonymous. Speaking of Pictures. Life. March 1st, 1954. 11 - 13.

Bradley, Denise. "Camera Obscura." National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form. National Park Service, Washington, DC. April 20th, 2001. https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/16c4c2d5-958c-42d8-a1fd-4148dd72a8bd.

Hountalas, Mary Germain. Silva, Sharon. The San Francisco Cliff House. New York, NY. Ten Speed Press, 2009.

McDougall, Marina. Anker, Steve. Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945 - 2000. Berkeley, CA. University of California Press, 2010.

National Park Service. Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods National Monument, Draft General Management Plan/ Environmental Impact Statement. Volume II. Washington, DC. National Park Service, 2011.

NoeHill. "Camera Obscura." Accessed February 2nd, 2015. http://noehill.com/sf/landmarks/nat2001000522.asp.

Woods, Arnold. Camera Obscura: A Closer Look, Western Neighborhoods Project. January 8th, 2023. Accessed May 14th, 2025. https://www.opensfhistory.org/osfhcrucible/2023/01/08/camera-obscura-a-closer-look/.

Image Sources(Click to expand)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_Obscura_(San_Francisco,_California)#/media/File:Camera_Obscura_(San_Francisco).JPG

National Park Service (NPS): https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/01000522

NPS: https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/01000522

NPS: https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/01000522

NPS: https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/01000522

NPS: https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/01000522