Alcatraz Island Citadel Virtual Tour

Alcatraz Island is located off the coast of San Francisco, California. Many people are unaware that beneath the prison block on the island sits the foundation of a U.S. Army fortification built in the 1850s. Once four stories tall and surrounded by a dry moat, the fort was razed to the foundation in 1909 to make way for the current prison building. The new cellhouse, built in 1912, was constructed directly over the first level of the Civil War-era citadel. The “dungeon,” as it is now called, is what remains of the original 1859 fort. From servant’s quarters, to storage to solitary confinement cells, this space was repurposed numerous times throughout the many eras of Alcatraz Island.

Project Information

Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) documented the Citadel during summer 2016. The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) field team was HABS architect Paul Davidson and summer architectural intern Avidan Fernandez. They used a combination of laser scanning and photogrammetry to record the site. Avidan Fernandez, a summer intern from Cal Poly Pomona, produced the animation. The project was sponsored by a Cultural Resources Preservation Program Grant administered by National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT), Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and HDP. The prison exterior and cellblock data was provided by the Texas A&M University College of Architecture. The student internship position was funded jointly through the National Park Service Youth Programs and the Hispanic Access Foundation's Latino Heritage Internship Program designed to engage the next generation of Latino conservation stewards.

Update: Update: As of May 2025, the virtual tour and point cloud viewer are no longer supported on nps.gov. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Animation

Animated video of 3D point cloud data

HABS Documentation

Archival documentation at the Library of Congress

Virtual Tour

Panoramic tour of the Citadel at Alcatraz Island

Point Cloud

Interactive 3D point cloud viewer

Where this belongs

• Alcatraz Island
• Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Where this page came from

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