About Us
Fort Mason Center is waterfront destination for thought provoking programs, events and organizations which support and reflect the evolving cultural fabric of the Bay Area. The 13 acre campus, formerly a Port of Embarkation for the United States Military, is now a partner of the Golden Gate National Parks. At no time is anyone permitted to carry a firearm on the Fort Mason Center campus.
The Center has 23 venues for rent totaling over 130,000 square feet providing much needed raw, flexible meeting, conference and exhibit space. The rooms can be easily transformed for events of every type and interest imaginable, including; wine tastings, gala parties, film festivals, product launches, weddings and conferences. Fort Mason Center stands in contrast to more polished rental venues like the deYoung Museum, Ferry Building, or the California Academy of Sciences for example, all wonderful in their own right but not as uniquely San Francisco.
Fort Mason Center hosts thousands of public events each year, produced by close to 2,000 different organizations and individuals, in a broad range of conference, classroom, theater, and pavilion-style spaces available for rent by both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Many cities have a symphony, an opera, museums and a zoo, but only San Francisco has Fort Mason Center, where the magnificent diversity of the Bay Area is so well represented.
The Fort Mason Center campus also serves as home to resident nonprofit organizations which provide a stable source of public programs. Current resident organizations include: BATS Improv, Blue Bear School of Music, SFMOMA Artists Gallery, Long Now Museum & Gallery, Magic Theatre, California Lawyers for the Arts, Book Bay Bookstore, Greens Restaurant, the Mexican Museum, City College of San Francisco Art Campus, Lily Cai Dance Company, On the Commons, Environmental Traveling Companions, Ploughshares Fund, World Arts West, San Francisco Children’s Art Center, Young Performer’s Theatre and the Museo ItaloAmericano.
The Golden Gate National Parks
One of the largest and most popular urban national parks in the world, the Golden Gate National Parks were established in 1972, as part of efforts to make national parks more accessible to city dwellers and bring “parks to the people.” The parks’ 75,500 acres of land and water extend north across the Golden Gate Bridge to Tomales Bay in Marin County and south to San Mateo County.
The parks contain many historical and cultural sites in addition to Fort Mason Center - among them, Alcatraz, Muir Woods National Monument and the Presidio of San Francisco. With 19 unique ecosystems in seven distinct watersheds, five National Historic Landmarks and 61 archeological sites the parks preserve a wealth of natural and historic treasures.
