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Presidio Officers’ Club

Walls of the Spanish fort where Rezanov proposed to Concepción, the story behind the opera Juno and Avos

Local name: Presidio Officers' Club

Collection: San Francisco · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

The Presidio Officers’ Club
The Presidio Officers’ Club · Tobias Kleinlercher / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is the Presidio Officers’ Club. The Presidio is a former military post at the entrance to the bay. In 1776 the Spanish lieutenant José Joaquín Moraga founded a fort here, the northernmost Spanish settlement in the New World. Inside the club, adobe walls from the Spanish era survive; in the Mesa Room they are exposed, and they are about two hundred years old. In April 1806 the Russian ship Juno sailed into the bay. On board, from Sitka in Alaska, came Nikolai Rezanov, chamberlain to Tsar Alexander the First. The Russians in Sitka were starving, and Rezanov hoped to buy grain from the Spanish. But the Spanish were forbidden to trade with foreigners. Here, by the fort, lived the family of the commandant, José Darío Argüello. His daughter Concepción was fifteen; Rezanov was about forty. For several weeks they walked the Presidio and made plans. Before sailing, Rezanov asked for her hand. Her parents feared the difference in faith and the long journey, but they agreed. Rezanov set off for Saint Petersburg to get permission for the wedding. On the twenty-first of May 1806 the Juno sailed north. In March 1807, crossing Siberia, Rezanov fell from his horse; he was carried to Krasnoyarsk and died there. Concepción learned of it years later. She never married, later joined a convent, and died in 1857. Their story inspired the Russian rock opera Juno and Avos.

Visiting

50 Moraga Avenue, at the Main Post of the Presidio. The Presidio history exhibition is open Friday to Sunday, 11:00–16:00, free admission. Take Muni bus 43 or the free PresidioGo shuttle to the Presidio Transit Center.

Photos

The Spanish Presidio after a drawing by Louis Choris, artist of the Russian expedition on the Rurik
The Spanish Presidio after a drawing by Louis Choris, artist of the Russian expedition on the Rurik · Victor Adam / Louis Choris / Adam Cuerden, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Sources

This text was written by AI from open sources. An expert will still check it. Found a mistake? Write to us. Support

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