The Beach Chalet faces Ocean Beach from the far western end of Golden Gate Park. San Francisco Recreation and Parks says architect Willis Polk designed the 1925 Spanish Revival building. It first held a lounge and changing rooms for Ocean Beach swimmers on the ground floor and a restaurant upstairs.
The frescoes
Rec and Park says the ground floor’s frescoes, mosaics and wood carvings were added in 1936 and 1937 with Works Progress Administration funding. French-born painter and clothing designer Lucien Labaudt painted the frescoes, which show Depression-era San Francisco, including residents at play in Golden Gate Park and Lands End. Labaudt used friends and family as models. Well-known figures appear too, among them longtime park superintendent John McLaren. Wikipedia says the mural wraps around all four walls of the lobby in nine sections, covering about 1,500 square feet. It lists carved wooden sea creature panels on the staircase by Michael von Meyer, and mosaics designed by Labaudt and made by Primo Caredio.
Decline and revival
During World War II the Army took over the building for coastal defense forces, Rec and Park says. The Veterans of Foreign Wars leased it as a social hall in 1947, and over time the building deteriorated and the bar got a bad reputation. The VFW moved out in 1979. Restoration began in 1981, the year the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it reopened in 1996.
Today
Rec and Park says the ground floor houses the Golden Gate Park visitor center and the Park Chalet restaurant. Upstairs, the Beach Chalet restaurant has wide Pacific views. The restaurant’s website notes that 2026 marks 30 years since the reopening and that the building is City Landmark No. 179.
The Dutch Windmill is next door. See our windmills guide and our Ocean Beach guide.