Consists of correspondence; financial records and reports; planing committee minutes; San Francisco Recreation Commission records; concert records, programs, and posters; scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings and ephemera; and photographs, all of which were created or collected by the Stern Grove Festival Association (SGFA) between the years 1931 and 1984. Collection materials document the inception, administration, and activities of the SGFA, and the history of the open-air concerts produced by the organization in San Francisco since 1932. Significant figures represented include past SGFA presidents Rosalie Meyer Stern, Elise S. Haas, and Rhoda H. Goldman; San Francisco Superintendent of Recreation Josephine D. Randall; and conductor Arthur Fielder. The collection also contains professional photographs of performances by groups such as the San Francisco Ballet and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, some of which were taken by Gabriel Moulin Studios.

In 1931 Rosalie Meyer Stern purchased a historic parcel of land situated at the intersection of Sloat Boulevard and 19th Avenue in the southwestern portion of San Francisco. This twelve-acre tract was the only undeveloped area left on the former 160-acre Greene family ranch, homesteaded in 1849. Located on the property was the Trocadero Inn, built in 1892. The inn enjoyed a reputation during the 1890s as a fashionable recreation and picnic spot for prominent San Franciscans. The Trocadero, as it was then called, offered such diversions as fishing and boating on a spring-fed lake, as well as food and lodging. By 1906, however, the inn began to lose its appeal and gradually acquired an unsavory reputation. The inn finally closed in 1916 and it was not until Rosalie Stern purchased the ranch that the inn regained its original splendor.

26 boxes, 17 oversize boxes (16 linear feet)

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