San Francisco Ballet Building like the American Ballet Theatre, were also housed in rented spaces and buildings shared with other performing arts groups. In 1983, the San Francisco Ballet Association became “the first American ballet company and school to break this pattern by constructing new quarters for itself." Beverly Willis performed exhaustive research into the function of a ballet building, conducting numerous interviews with dancers on their needs and visiting the studios of major European ballet companies.The building includes facilities to support all of the activities of the company and school with the exception of set storage. The eight rehearsal and classroom studios have
Ferries of San Francisco Bay Jack London Square is today, fronting on what is today called the Oakland Estuary, an inlet of San Francisco Bay. The estuary, which in the 1800s included what is today's Lake Merritt, was the "creek". In 1851, Captain Thomas Gray, grandfather of the famous dancer Isadora Duncan, began the first regular ferry service to San Francisco from the East Bay. The first railroad ferries on San Francisco Bay were established by the San Francisco and Oakland Railroad and the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad (SF&A) which were taken over by the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) in 1870 to become an