"Like everything else fashioned by the mind and taste of the late Mr. Sutro, it was a thing of complicated and amazing ugliness."
--The Argonaut, September 14, 1907. Vol. LXI, No. 1590.

And a letter writer in the same issue...

"Of the thousands who, on last Sunday morning, opened their paper and read 'Famous Cliff House Is Totally Destroyed by Fire,' were there, do you think, a score who did not ejaculate 'Thank Heaven!'?

"It's tawdry architecture, its ungainly proportions, its dirty corridors and opaque windows, its wretched cuisine, its musical instruments of torture, its approaches lined with either cheap or deserted booths---all have made hideous a spot which Nature meant to be beautiful."

"Showing how the beauty of the most picturesque and romantic spot on the Pacific Coast has been heightened by the erection of a wooden bird cage and a half-gross assortment of triangles."

Part of a whole page of Victorian architecture similarly ridiculed. ("Chaos Avenue: An Architect's Nightmare") From "The Wave", March 20, 1897, pg. 6.