Maritime Museum - May 18th, 2023
By James Salazar | Examiner staff writer
Aug 11, 2025 Updated 13 hrs ago
The Aquatic Park Bathhouse, pictured above, is the subject of a forthcoming KQED documentary.
An upcoming film elevates the history of the Aquatic Park Bathhouse, the 1939 bayfront building erected by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration that now houses the museum at the heart of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
“A Balcony on the World” — which premieres Aug. 22 at 8 p.m. on KQED-TV before reairing at 2 a.m. the following day and at 6 p.m. Aug. 30— highlights the artists, architects and leaders behind the Aquatic Park Bathhouse. The structure originally opened as a public gathering space for residents before a brief stint as a World War II-era U.S. Army command center and housing a local senior center after the war.
John Rogers’ documentary highlights the building’s early-1950s transformation into a museum, as well as restoration projects throughout the 2010s that unearthed and touched up artwork found around the property. Darlene Plumtree, the CEO of the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, said she commissioned the documentary in the hopes the film makes “the public aware of the rich history of the building,” as well as the bathhouse’s art and architecture.
The bathhouse is “the jewel in the crown of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park,” she said.
Then-President Franklin Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration, a work-relief program that provided financial support to people in exchange for them building public infrastructure, in 1935. The WPA constructed the Aquatic Park Bathhouse from 1936 to ‘39, and the documentary highlights many of the program’s participants.
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