After the library work day ended, I walked into nearby Golden Gate Park. From the corner of Stanyan and Fulton I followed a footpath through groves of live oaks, cypresses and eucalyptus until I reached the Conservatory of Flowers – a vast Victorian greenhouse from the 1870s. I first knew it as a crumbling relic in the 1970s. Since then, it has been expensively restored and reinforced.
