Red brick barracks and wood officers houses around a parade ground, plus the cemetery where the film The Presidio shot in 1988.
What The Presidio looks like
A wide lawn on the Main Post is ringed by paved roads, with a long row of white two storey former Army barracks along one side. Their red tile roofs run unbroken from one end of the block to the other, and cars line the road along the grass.
Wood frame officers houses line Funston Avenue on the parade ground's west side, with bay windows, dormers and wraparound porches behind palm trees. Red brick barracks on Montgomery Street, two storeys with mess halls on the ground floor, stand a block over.
The is a smaller lawn near Graham Street, apart from the Main Post's larger green. Picnic tables sit across its grass, with fewer roads around it than the parade ground by the barracks.
On the bluffs above the Golden Gate Bridge, concrete coastal gun batteries survive in a row, their round emplacements and stairways fenced off and empty. The bay and the Marin headlands fill the view behind them, and Marine Drive runs below along the shoreline past 's brick fortification.
The sits on rising ground nearby, its rows of white marble headstones facing Alcatraz Island across the water. The cemetery covers 28 acres, with forested slopes climbing above it.
Shot in The Presidio
The Presidio is a 1988 crime drama starring Sean Connery and Mark Harmon and was filmed at real locations across the post. The , the San Francisco National Cemetery, Fort Point and the Presidio Museum all appear alongside the Main Post parade ground. Marine Drive is the shoreline road between Fort Point and Torpedo Wharf. It appears in two earlier films as well, Vertigo's 1958 bay plunge scene and Star Trek IV's 1986 walk between Kirk and Spock.
The Presidio, 1988
The National Cemetery
The murder investigation in The Presidio opens at the San Francisco National Cemetery, one of several real Presidio locations the production used along with the Officers' Club, Fort Point and the Museum. The cemetery's rows of headstones face Alcatraz Island across the bay. Street View
What The Presidio can double for
Nolan Park in Governors Island, New York
Nolan Park's mix of brick and wood Colonial Revival officers houses grouped around a landscaped green is close to the Presidio's own barracks and Funston Avenue houses. Both grew out of the same Army Quartermaster building programs of the period. Keep the Manhattan skyline out of wide shots to hold the illusion, since it reads nothing like the Presidio's own hills. Try searching colonial revival officers houses now.
Fort Hancock in Sandy Hook, New Jersey
Fort Hancock's Officers Row is a run of buff brick Colonial Revival houses from the same Army building programs as the Presidio's Montgomery Street barracks, with matching porches and window trim. The row faces the bay directly rather than a parade ground, which is the main difference in plan. Keep open water out of a wide shot, since the Presidio's own houses face inland toward lawns rather than the shore. Try searching brick officers row houses now.
Fort Casey in Whidbey Island, Washington
Fort Casey's concrete gun batteries were built under the same Endicott program as , with the same round emplacements and stairways set into a bluff. Both look out over open water toward a strait. Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains fill the background here, so a tight frame on the concrete itself avoids giving away the coastline. Try searching concrete gun battery bluff now.
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