The oldest remaining municipal wooden conservatory in the United States

The Conservatory of Flowers is a greenhouse and botanical garden that houses a collection of rare and exotic plants in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. With construction having been completed in 1879, it is the oldest building in the park. It is the oldest remaining municipal wooden conservatory in the country and was one of the first municipal conservatories constructed in the United States.

The Conservatory of Flowers is now one of the three locations of the Gardens of Golden Gate Park, along with the Japanese Tea Garden and the San Francisco Botanical Garden. The building is an elaborate Victorian greenhouse with a central dome rising nearly 60 feet high and arch-shaped wings extending from it for an overall length of 240 feet. It sits atop a gentle slope overlooking Conservatory Valley and features structural members articulated through a four-centered or Tudor arch.

The structure consists of a wood structural skeleton with glass walls set on a raised masonry foundation, following a shallow E-shaped plan oriented along an east-west axis. The Potted Plants Gallery follows Victorian architecture and the 19th-century idea of displaying tropical plants in non-tropical parts of the world. The Lowlands Gallery contains plants from the tropics of South America and is kept at 70 °F with a high level of humidity produced by a frequent system of misters.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons