Conservatory of Flowers Golden Gate Park

The Conservatory of Flowers exists today because of a wealthy eccentric named James Lick who never saw his own creation completed. In the mid nineteenth century, Lick ordered two massive, prefabricated greenhouse kits from the East Coast, intending to assemble them on his private estate in Santa Clara. He died in 1876 with the structures still sitting in their original shipping crates, leaving trustees to auction off thirty-three tons of glass and iron materials. A group of prominent San Francisco businessmen eventually purchased these crates and donated them to the city with a strict condition that the building be erected in Golden Gate Park within eighteen months.