TRESPASSING FOR TREASURES
When Jon Haeber looks at an abandoned building, he doesn’t just see cobwebs and rotting wood. He doesn’t focus on the broken glass and faded graffiti that are the hallmarks of places deserted long ago. For Haeber, dilapidated structures aren’t a blight or a blemish — they’re forbidden adventures waiting to be explored, time capsules ready to be discovered.
Take, for instance, the Fleishhacker Pool House, which once stood facing the Pacific opposite the San Francisco Zoo. After it was closed to the public in 1971, the building was seen as a scar on the cityscape. To many, it simply had no value, eventually being left to serve as a makeshift home for transients and a stone canvas for the spray-painted screeds of vandals.
But to Haeber, the site was enticing and rich with history. The Fleishhacker Pool House once served as the entrance to the largest heated outdoor swimming pool in the world. There was also the narrative of the building’s namesake, Herbert Fleishhacker, a local philanthropist who would later assist with the building of San Francisco’s iconic Coit Tower. There was something fascinating about a place that once was celebrated as a crown jewel of the city but now was regarded as little more than a gravestone of a bygone era.
Before the structure was destroyed by fire in 2012, Haeber, now 37, snuck into the pool house several times to photograph its remains. His visits were not sanctioned — in all likelihood, his actions constituted illegal trespassing — but the images he captured serve as some of the only visual proof of what
