This white shaft is symbolic of the opportunity offered to the world to educate its youth in San Francisco. Within short motor rides from the city are three big universities. In addition to the University of California at Berkeley, which has one of the largest enrollments of any institution of its kind in the United States, there is Stanford University at Palo Alto, a privately endowed seat of learning with notably high standards of scholarship and a rigid limit on the number of its students, and the University of Santa Clara, which has trained many of California’s public men and members of the bench and bar. California and Stanford are co-educational.
The University of California maintains in San Francisco the Hastings College of Law, the Medical School, the California School of Fine Arts, the George William Hooper Foundation for Medical Research, the California College of Pharmacy and the Museum of Anthropology, the latter being one of the buildings of the Affiliated Colleges, overlooking Golden Gate Park. The Hearst Greek Theatre at Berkeley has done much to make the name of the University familiar abroad. Sarah Bernhardt, Maude Adams, Ben Greet and Margaret Anglin have been among the notables to appear on its open air stage.
Stanford University, which numbers Herbert Hoover and many other famous men among its alumni, maintains in San Francisco the Medical School and Stanford and Lane hospitals. The campus in the Santa Clara Valley is well worth seeing. The sandstone quadrangles, arcades and red tile roofs, which reproduce the feeling of the early Mission buildings, are finely achieved examples of period motifs applied to collegiate architecture. The Stanford Memorial Church is especially interesting for its richly carved stone and colored Italian mosaics, on the exterior as well as within.
The University of Santa Clara, conducted by the Jesuits, is located on the site of one of the Missions established by the Franciscans under Junipero Serra, and its modern buildings incorporate the ancient structure.
In addition to these universities is Mills College in Oakland, an institution for women of the type of Wellesley, Vassar and Bryn Mawr. The list of private schools and academies offering specialized instruction is a long one.
Building bridges of understanding across the seas, students attending the universities and other institutions in the San Francisco Bay region are playing roles in international relations that are just beginning to be realized. H. G. Wells should study them in drafting his outlines for world amity.
Cliffs and Beaches
From Fort Scott west to Fort Miley and south to Fort Funston, a distance of something over eight miles, there is a line of cliffs and beach that is the ocean front of San Francisco. Driving up from the eucalyptus-lined avenues of the Presidio along a road that reveals perspectives of bay and hills, you come out upon the cliffs that form the southern post of the Golden Gate and extend above the eastern and southern shore of the outer harbor, with yellow beaches at their feet and with homes, gardens and parks set along their edge.