The San Francisco Maritime Museum building was built as a bathhouse in 1936 by the WPA; its interior is decorated with fantastic and colorful murals. The Steamship Room illustrates the evolution of maritime technology from wind to steam, and there are displays of lithographic stones, scrimshaw, and whaling guns and photo-murals of San Francisco’s early waterfront. A visiting-attractions gallery hosts such exhibition as Sparks (2005), which showcased shipboard radio, radiotelephone, and radioteletype equipment from over the years.
In front of the Maritime Museum is a man-made lagoon on the site of the former Black Point Cove. To the west is the horseshoe-shaped Municipal Pier, which was voted SF Weekly’s Best Place to Go Fish 2009. The lagoon is fronted by a sandy beach and a stepped concrete seawall. To the south is a grassy area known as Victorian Park, which contains the Hyde Street cable car turnaround. Hyde Street Pier, though part of the