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User:Aloysius Patacsil

Aloysius Patacsil is my pen name. I currently live in Honolulu, Hawaii after having lived in Boston, Dallas, Fort Worth and San Francisco.

I am rather reclusive and enjoy reading and writing. My current interests include: the contemporary history and politics of Roman Catholicism in the Western United States, and most especially the Hawaiian Islands; the mathematics of natural language; Indo-Pacific languages; and Christian liturgy.

Some of my contributions to Wikipedia can be found as follows:

Aloysius Patacsil 01:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Thalia Fortescue Massie, around whom a seminal event shaped the future of Hawaii politics and race relations in the 50th State
 * Honolulu Catholic Cemetery, an oasis for prayer and meditation in communion with the church triumphant in the concrete jungle of metropolitan Honolulu; there's a lot of history in this cemetery - replete with photographs!
 * Sub tuum praesidium, the oldest Marian antiphon, dating from the 3rd century
 * Quinquennial Visit Ad Limina, an episcopal obligation
 * Institut Catholique de Paris, known world-wide for its eclessiastical faculties and famous alumni
 * Msgr. Alvaro del Portillo, first prelate and other clergy in the Work of God
 * The Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross and the Work of God
 * University of Navarre in Pamplona, Spain
 * The Marian Shrine of Torreciudad in Aragon, Spain
 * St. Stephen Seminary, Honolulu, closed in 1970, and now the Saint Stephen Diocesan Center and the residence of the Bishop of Honolulu
 * Kona District, Hawaii, where world-renowned Kona coffee is cultivated
 * Msgr. Charles Kekumano, J.C.D., the first native Hawaiian priest named as papal chamberlain by Pope John XXIII
 * Msgr. Francis Marzen, educated at the Pontifical College Josephinum, he became the editor of the Hawaii Catholic Herald and a critic of the diocesan administration of Bishop Joseph Ferrario of Honolulu. He later worked for the cabinet of Honolulu mayor and political gadfly, Frank Fasi
 * Rt. Rev. Msgr. Benedict M. Vierra, P.A., the first prothonotary apostolic (P.A.) of the diocese of Honolulu, and former vicar general and pastor emeritus of the Co-Cathedral of Saint Theresa - a deeply spiritual man
 * Most. Rev. Clarence Silva and other clergy and institutions in the diocese of Honolulu
 * Most. Rev. William J. Levada, Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
 * Venerable Eustache van Lieshout, ss.cc., Dutch priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, who ministered to the faithful of Brazil - following in the footsteps of Blessed Damien de Veuster
 * Archdioceses of Portland, San Antonio, and Galveston-Houston
 * Most Holy Redeemer Church, a predominantly gay and lesbian parish in the San Francisco archdiocese
 * Saint Patrick Archdiocesan Seminary in Menlo Park, California, recently controversial
 * Archdiocese of Samoa-Apia formerly, the Vicariate Apostolic of the Navigators' Archipelago
 * Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, founder of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary, a Philippines-based order of nuns
 * Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Hawi, a beautiful cruciform church in Kohala, once cared for by Blessed Damien de Veuster, SS.CC.

title: User:Aloysius Patacsil


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Guy of Anderlecht

Saint Guy of Anderlecht (also, Guido, Guidon, Wye of Láken) (ca. 950–1012) was a Catholic saint from before the Great Schism of 1054. He is therefore venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church. He was known as the Poor Man of Anderlecht.

Life and legend
Born to poor parents, he lived a simple agricultural life until at the age of fourteen, he became assistant sacristan at the Sanctuary of Our Lady at Laken, where his duties included sweeping the church, dressing the altars, taking care of the vestments and altar linens, ringing the bell for mass and vespers, and providing flowers and other decorations which were used in that church.

He shared his meager wages with the poor, and went to Brussels, having been persuaded by a merchant that he could earn more to give to the poor. Eventually, he became involved in a trading venture. When the ship carrying the cargo in which he had invested sank in the harbour, Guy believed he was being punished for being greedy and went on a pilgrimage, first to Rome as penance, and then to Jerusalem where he spent seven years visiting the holy places. On his return, he met in Rome, Wondulf, dean of the church of Anderlecht, and although not in robust health himself, agreed to guide the dean and his party on their pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

He died on his return home.

Veneration
Saint Guy is the patron saint of Anderlecht, animals with horns, bachelors, people with epilepsy, labourers, protection of outbuildings, protection of sheds, protection of stables, sacristans, sextons, work horses; and is invoked against epilepsy, against rabies, against infantile convulsions, and against mad dogs. In iconography, he is represented as a peasant praying with an angel ploughing a nearby field or as a pilgrim with a book or with a hat, staff, rosary, and an ox at his feet.

Saint Guy's grave was said to have been found when a horse kicked it. Cabdrivers of Brabant led an annual pilgrimage to Anderlecht until the beginning of World War I in 1914. They and their horses headed the procession followed by farmers, grooms, and stable boys, all leading their animals to be blessed. The village fair that ended the religious procession was celebrated by various games, music, and feasting, followed by a competition to ride the carthorses bareback. The winner entered the church on bareback to receive a hat made of roses from the parish pastor.

The Collegiate Church of St. Peter and St. Guido in Anderlecht, which contains the grave in its crypt, is dedicated in his honour.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Guy of Anderlecht


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De Tomaso

De Tomaso Automobili Ltd. (previously known as De Tomaso Modena SpA) is an Italian car-manufacturing company. It was founded 1959 by Alejandro de Tomaso in Modena. It originally produced various sports prototypes and auto racing vehicles, including a Formula One car for Frank Williams Racing Cars in 1970. Most of the funding for the automaker came from Amory Haskell Jr.

In 1971 Ford Motor Company acquired an 84 percent stake in De Tomaso with Alejandro de Tomaso himself holding the balance. Ford sold back their stake in the automaker in 1974. The De Tomaso brand was acquired in 2014 by Hong Kong based Ideal Team Ventures and in 2019 the newly formed company presented their first product, a retro-styled sports car called the De Tomaso P72.

History
The company went on to develop and produce both sports cars and luxury vehicles, most notably the Ford-powered Italian-bodied Mangusta and Pantera. From 1976 to 1993, De Tomaso owned Italian sports car maker Maserati, and was responsible for producing cars including the Biturbo, the Kyalami, Quattroporte III, Karif and the Chrysler TC. De Tomaso also owned motorcycle company Moto Guzzi from 1973 to 1993.

De Tomaso went into liquidation in 2004, although production of new cars continued after this date. By 2008, a buyer was being sought for the De Tomaso factory and trademarks, per the court-appointed liquidators. In 2009, Gian Mario Rossignolo bought the De Tomaso trademark and founded a new company named "De Tomaso Automobili SpA". Rossignolo planned to assemble chassis and bodies in one of Delphi Automotive's old production facilities in Livorno and to fit bodywork, paint and finish its cars in the former Pininfarina factory in Grugliasco.

In May 2012 De Tomaso was again for sale after their business plan failed to gather sufficient financial backing. In July 2012, Rossignolo was arrested following allegations that he misused 7.5 million Euro worth of government funds. In September 2012, speculation emerged that BMW might be interested in the brand factory to produce new BMW models.

In 2014 the original workshop in Modena was in abandonment.

In April 2015 an Italian bankruptcy court approved the sale of the company to Hong Kong–based Consolidated Ideal Team Ventures, for €1.05 million. Per that sale report "A lawyer for the buyer announced that Ideal Team Venture plans to produce cars in China bearing the De Tomaso name."

Vallelunga
De Tomaso's first road-going production model was the Vallelunga (named after the racing circuit) introduced in 1963. This mid-engine sports car had a 104 hp (78 kW) 4 cylinder engine shared with the Ford Cortina, and was able to attain a top speed of 215 km/h (134 mph). It had a fabricated steel backbone chassis, which was to become a common feature of De Tomaso cars. The aluminium coupé body was designed and several built by Fissore before production was moved to Ghia in 1965 where they were assembled with fibreglass bodies. In all, approximately 60 were produced.

Mangusta

The Mangusta, introduced in 1966 was the first De Tomaso produced in significant numbers. With the Mangusta, De Tomaso moved from European to American Ford engines. The car had a 4.7-litre iron-block V8 engine and steel and aluminium coupé bodywork from Ghia—an Italian coachbuilder also controlled by Alejandro de Tomaso. About 400 Mangustas were built before production ended in 1971.

Pantera
The Mangusta was succeeded by the Pantera. It appeared in 1971 with a 351 Cleveland Ford V8 and a low, wedge-shaped body designed by Ghia's Tom Tjaarda. Through an agreement with Ford, De Tomaso sold Panteras in the USA through Ford's Lincoln and Mercury dealers. Between 1971 and 1973, 6,128 Panteras were produced in Modena, the largest number of cars De Tomaso produced. The 1973 oil crisis and other factors compelled Ford to pull out of the Pantera deal at the end of 1973, a few months after buying all of De Tomaso's shares and getting control of the entire production process in the three factories that shared the workload in northern Italy.

But De Tomaso retained from Ford the right to produce the car for the "rest of the world" market, so he continued Pantera production at a greatly reduced scale of fewer than 100 cars per year during the 1970s and 1980s. From then on, the cars were largely hand-built, even more than before.

Incorporating a Marcello Gandini facelift, suspension redesign, partial chassis redesign and a new, smaller Ford engine, the Pantera 90 Si model (the i standing for iniezione – Italian for fuel injection) was introduced in 1990. There were 41 90 Si models manufactured with 2 crash tested, 38 sold, and 1 example going directly into a museum before the Pantera was finally phased out in 1993 to make way for the radical, carbon-fibre-bodied Guarà.

Guarà
The Guarà succeeded the Pantera and began production in 1993. The Guarà was designed by Carlo Gaino of Synthesis design, an Italian design house; Gaino also designed the Maserati Barchetta. Based on a Maserati competition car from 1991, using Ford and BMW parts in a composite body, the Guarà was available in coupé and barchetta versions. As with all De Tomasos except the Pantera, production was both limited and sporadic.

Biguà and off-road vehicles
In the early 2000s two other cars were planned by De Tomaso, but both proved abortive. A two-seat Gandini-styled convertible, the Biguà, was developed from a 1996 Geneva concept in partnership with Qvale, an American firm which had long imported European sports cars into the USA. But as production of the Biguà—renamed the Mangusta—began, the relationship between De Tomaso and Qvale soured; Qvale took over the car and rebadged it as the Qvale Mangusta. Production was short-lived, and Qvale's Italian factory was bought in 2003 by MG Rover and the Mangusta's mechanicals were then used as the basis of the MG XPower SV. In April 2002, De Tomaso began a project to build off-road vehicles in a new factory in Calabria in partnership with the Russian company UAZ, but this too floundered. The deal projected a production rate of 10,000 cars a year by 2006: however, no cars were built and De Tomaso went into voluntary liquidation in June 2004 after the death of Alejandro de Tomaso in 2003. The Guarà remained available in some markets in 2005 and 2006, but it appears that no cars were built after 2004.

P72

The P72 is a retro-styled sports car introduced at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed under the newly reformed DeTomaso brand. Designed by Jowyn Wong, the car is a homage to the P70, a race car built by Carroll Shelby and styled by Peter Brock for De Tomaso, introduced in the late 1960s. The design of the car is meant to be hailing back to the LeMans race cars of the 1960s. The interior of the car is meant to have a modern outlook with opulent instrumentation. The chassis built to LMP1 standards is shared with the sister company Apollo Automobil's Intensa Emozione.

De Tomaso luxury cars
Although De Tomaso is principally known as a maker of high-performance sports cars, the firm also produced luxury coupés and saloons in tiny number throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

The 1971 Deauville was an effort to rival contemporary Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz saloons. With the same engine as the Pantera mounted in the front, the Deauville was clothed in an angular Tjaarda/Ghia four-door body. The Deauville did not compete with its rivals, especially those from Germany, on the perspective of build quality. Despite remaining on De Tomaso's offerings until 1985, only 244 were ever made. A single example of an estate was built for Alejandro de Tomaso's wife, the American racing driver Isabelle Haskell.

In 1972 De Tomaso introduced a coupé based on the Deauville with a slightly shortened Deauville chassis and the same Ford V8 engine, called the Longchamp. Its body design, however, was substantially different, and influenced by the Lancia Marica prototype, also designed by Tom Tjaarda. A total of 409 cars of all variations were built by the time the production ended in 1989.

Maserati
With the assistance of the Italian government, De Tomaso took over Maserati in 1976 after its owner, Citroën, declared that it would no longer support the loss-making company. The first Maserati De Tomaso introduced, the Kyalami, was a Longchamp redesigned by Frua, with the Ford engine replaced by Maserati's own 4.2-litre V8. The Kyalami remained in production until 1983, when it was superseded by the Biturbo, introduced two years earlier. Other cars Introduced under the De Tomaso ownership included the Quattroporte III/Royale and IV, the Barchetta, the Ghibli and the Shamal. All of the latter cars other than the Quattroporte III were based on the Biturbo while the Quattroporte was based on the Kyalami platform. De Tomaso introduced this concept of platform sharing to save development costs on new models. In 1993, De Tomaso sold Maserati to Fiat S.p.A. due to slumping sales and low profitability.

Innocenti
In 1976 Innocenti passed to Alejandro de Tomaso and was reorganised by the De Tomaso Group under the name Nuova Innocenti.

From 1976 to 1987 the top of the range Innocenti was the Innocenti Mini de Tomaso, a sport version of the Innocenti Mini developed by De Tomaso, initially equipped with the BLMC 1275 cc engine, and from 1982 to 1987 with a 1.0-litre 3-cylinder turbocharged Daihatsu engine.

De Tomaso sold Innocenti to Fiat S.p.A. in 1993.

2009 acquisition
In 2009 the De Tomaso trademark was bought by Former Fiat executive Gian Mario Rossignolo who founded a new company named "De Tomaso Automobili SpA". A new business plan for the company called for producing three models for a total of 8,000 vehicles: 3,000 crossovers, 3,000 limousines, and 2,000 two-seater sports cars.

2011 De Tomaso Deauville
At the 2011 Geneva Motor Show, De Tomaso presented a new model. The new De Tomaso Deauville was to have been a five-door hatchback/crossover vehicle with all-wheel drive, which, in the details of its styling, quotes models from BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

The proposed range included two gasoline engines with 300 PS and 500 PS as well as a diesel from VM Motori with 250 PS. The Deauville remained a prototype, as the new company never started production and the company chairman, Rossignolo, was arrested in 2012 on account of misappropriation of funds taken from the Italian government to revive the De Tomaso brand. As a result, 900 employees of the company were made redundant. Rossignolo was sentenced to five and a half years of imprisonment on the charges of fraud and embezzlement in 2018.

2014 acquisition
The rights to the De Tomaso brand were acquired by Norman Choi of Ideal Team Ventures in 2014. The new management under Choi's leadership undertook the task of reviving the brand. Five years later, the company unveiled its first product, the P72 retro-styled sports car at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, at the time of 60th anniversary of the De Tomaso brand. The car had been in development under the code name of "Project P". The new car is based on the Apollo Intensa Emozione's monocoque chassis, a car manufactured by De Tomaso's sister company Apollo Automobil and 72 units of the car will be sold.

P900
In November 2022 De Tomaso announced a track-only hypercar named the P900. The new vehicle will have a 900 hp 6.2-liter naturally aspirated V12 engine designed to run on carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. De Tomaso only plans to produce 18 P900s and sell them for a starting price of US$3 million. At the time of the announcement, the V12 engine was still in development and would not be fully ready until late 2024, leading De Tomaso to also offer a V10 engined option.

Formula One
De Tomaso made a handful of Formula One appearances from 1961 to 1963, with their own chassis and a mix of engines. During 1962 the "De Tomaso 801" appeared, with an original 135-degree 1498 cc V8 with a claimed 200 CV at 9500 rpm, and a six-speed De Tomaso transmission (although presumably developed by Valerio Colotti). The stubby and somewhat unaerodynamic design of the car raised some questions among period writers, as did the claimed max power. The De Tomaso 801 was entered in a number of races but only appeared at the 1962 Italian Grand Prix, where it failed to qualify.

De Tomaso then built a Formula One chassis (designed by Giampaolo Dallara) for Frank Williams Racing Cars to use in the 1970 Formula One season. The car was uncompetitive, failing to finish the first four races of the year. In the fifth, the Dutch Grand Prix, the De Tomaso 505/38 flipped and caught fire, killing driver Piers Courage. The team persevered, first with Brian Redman, then Tim Schenken. However, with no results, the partnership was dissolved at the end of the season.

Complete Formula One World Championship results
(key)

Car list

 * Vallelunga
 * Sport 5000 (also known as the 70P, P70 and Ghia DeTomaso)
 * De Tomaso 5000
 * De Tomaso Sport 2000
 * Mangusta
 * Pantera
 * Deauville
 * Longchamp
 * Guarà
 * Biguà
 * P72

title: De Tomaso


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A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic is a collection of Robertson Davies' essays about reading aimed at intelligent and thoughtful readers, whom he calls the "clerisy". The title is a quote from Patrick Anderson and has a particular contemporary resonance in Davies' native Canada. Shannon King described this as a deprecatory phrase indicating "a quaint rummage bin of colonial past".

Editions
A Voice from the Attic was initially published by the Canadian publisher McClelland and Stewart in 1960 with an accompanying edition published by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States. It has since been republished several times: Viking Press (1972), Rosetta Books (2019).

In the foreword to the 1990s edition, Davies wrote that while the essays were thirty-five to forty years old, they remained highly relevant. They run from musings on whether or not speed of reading and quality of reading are necessarily coincident, or even congruent, to essays on the nature of the popular book, to essays on the difference between the clerisy and the critic.

title: A Voice from the Attic


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Nouveau roman

The Nouveau Roman (, "new novel") is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the term in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new style each time. Most of the founding authors were published by Les Éditions de Minuit with the strong support of Jérôme Lindon.

Overview
Alain Robbe-Grillet, an influential theorist as well as writer of the Nouveau Roman, published a series of essays on the nature and future of the novel which were later collected in Pour un Nouveau Roman. Rejecting many of the established features of the novel to date, Robbe-Grillet regarded many earlier novelists as old-fashioned in their focus on plot, action, narrative, ideas, and character. Instead, he put forward a theory of the novel as focused on objects: the ideal nouveau roman would be an individual version and vision of things, subordinating plot and character to the details of the world rather than enlisting the world in their service.

Despite the assertions of nouveauté, this vision of the novel can be construed as developing from earlier writers' suggestions and practice. Joris-Karl Huysmans, ninety years before, had suggested how the novel might be depersonalised; more recently, Franz Kafka had shown that conventional methods of depicting character were not essential; James Joyce had done the same for plot; and absurdist writers had engaged with some of the themes that preoccupied writers of the nouveau roman.

A group of writers dubbed Nouveaux Romanciers, "new novelists", appeared in the mid-1950s: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Robert Pinget. The style had different approaches but generally rejected the traditional use of chronology, plot and character in fiction, as well as the omniscient narrator. The Nouveau Roman authors were open to influences from writers such as William Faulkner and the cinema. Both Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras, whose 1958 novel Moderato cantabile was in the style of the Nouveau roman, also contributed to the French New Wave style of filmmaking.

Alain Robbe-Grillet became an elected member of the Académie française on 25 March 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat No. 32. Claude Simon, the 1985 Nobel laureate in Literature, is often identified with the nouveau roman movement.

The nouveau roman literary movement and the novels themselves were mainly theorized by Jean Ricardou, who, in addition to his well-known theoretical works — Problèmes du Nouveau Roman (1967), Pour une théorie du Nouveau Roman (1971), Le Nouveau Roman (1973), Nouveaux problèmes du roman (1978) — also published several nouveaux romans himself: L’Observatoire de Cannes (1961), La Prise de Constantinople (1965, Feneon prize for literature in 1966), Les Lieux-dits, petit guide d’un voyage dans le livre (1969). Besides his own writing, he organized, directed and published the acts of several conferences on the nouveau roman, including the famous 1971 conference and debate at Cerisy, published in two volumes: Nouveau roman : hier, aujourd’hui, indispensable for an understanding of the history of that important period of French literature. Just before his demise in 2016, he was working on a book of interviews with Amir Biglari, in which he provides a complete, precise and objective account of the nouveau roman movement.

Authors in the style of the Nouveau Roman

 * Samuel Beckett
 * Alain Robbe-Grillet
 * Nathalie Sarraute
 * Claude Simon
 * Michel Butor
 * Jean Ricardou
 * Marguerite Duras
 * Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (until the 1970s)
 * Philippe Sollers
 * Jean Cayrol
 * Robert Pinget

Other writers associated with the style of Nouveau Roman are:

 * Gérard Bessette
 * Maurice Blanchot
 * Italo Calvino
 * Jean Cayrol
 * Julio Cortázar
 * Tony Duvert
 * Jacques Godbout
 * Maude Hutchins
 * Claude Mauriac
 * Claude Ollier
 * Georges Perec

The Nouveau Roman and the Left Bank
The Nouveau Roman style also left its mark on the screen as writers Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet became involved with the Left Bank film movement (often labelled as part of the French New Wave). Their collaboration with director Alain Resnais resulted in critical successes such as Hiroshima mon amour (1958) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961). They would later go on to direct their own films. Influenced by these films French courses in North America during the 1960s and 1970s often included works by Nouveau Roman authors such as Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie (1957), Michel Butor's La Modification (1957), Nathalie Sarraute's Le Planetarium (1957) and Marguerite Duras' Moderato Cantabile (1958).

The Nouveau Roman in Quebec, Canada
The Nouveau Roman influenced French-language writers in Quebec such as Jacques Godbout and Gerard Bessette. The Canadian-born French writer Nancy Huston declared that she began writing in direct reaction to the stark style of the Nouveau Roman in Nord Perdu (1999). (See Joseph Pivato, nouveau roman)

title: Nouveau roman


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Garron

A Garron or Garran (from Scottish Gaelic gearran) is a type of a small sturdy horse or pony. The term occurs in Scotland and in Ireland, and generally refers to an undersized beast.

In Scotland, a Garron is one of the types of Highland pony. It is the larger, heavier type, bred on the mainland. The Isles' type of pony is generally smaller and slightly finer, but still within the standard of the Highland pony breed. There is less difference today than there once was between these two types.

The word Garron has also been used to describe a Highland cross of a Clydesdale horse with ponies. Such Garrons were used in farming, especially in the Highlands and Islands where a full-sized Clydesdale would not have been as economical. These horses were valued for their hardiness and ability to work on slopes. Highland deer-stalking estates kept Garrons to bring the stags off the hill, as some still do, for tradition or where ATV access is not practicable.

Mentions in literature
Garrons are mentioned a number of times in George R. R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. There, Garrons are used in cold mountainous areas, generally to the North near the Wall.

The word is used by R. S. Surtees in the first chapter of Jorrocks′ Jaunts and Jollities.

The author Nigel Tranter mentions Garrons frequently in his novels about Scottish history, for example "Macbeth, the King".

title: Garron


title: File:Edmund001b.jpg


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Fort Point National Historic Site

Fort Point, known historically as the Castillo de San Joaquín (Spanish for "Saint Joachim's Castle") is a masonry seacoast fortification located on the southern side of the Golden Gate at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. It is also the geographic name of the promontory upon which the fort and the southern approach of the Golden Gate Bridge were constructed.

The fort was completed just before the American Civil War by the United States Army, to defend San Francisco Bay against hostile warships. The fort is now protected as Fort Point National Historic Site, a United States National Historic Site administered by the National Park Service as a unit of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now popular as a tourist viewing point of the Golden Gate Bridge directly over top of it.

History
In 1769 Spain occupied the San Francisco area and by 1776 had established the area's first European settlement, with a mission and a presidio. To protect against encroachment by the British and Russians, Spain selected Punta del Cantil Blanco, a promontory with a high white cliff (cantil blanco) located at the narrowest part of the bay's entrance, to construct a fortification. The Castillo de San Joaquín was constructed in 1794, subordinate to the nearby Presidio de San Francisco. It was an adobe structure housing nine to thirteen cannons.

Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, gaining control of the region and the fort, but in 1835 the Mexican army moved to Sonoma leaving the castillo's adobe walls to crumble in the wind and rain. On July 1, 1846, after the Mexican–American War broke out between Mexico and the United States, U.S. forces, including Captain John Charles Fremont, Kit Carson and a band of 10 followers, captured and occupied the empty castillo and spiked (disabled) the cannons.

Sometime during the Spanish and Mexican eras, the Punta del Cantil Blanco came to be known as the "Punta del Castillo" ("Castle Point"), which was carried over into the era of U.S. sovereignty, in rough translation, as "Fort Point".

U.S. era
Following the United States' victory in 1848, California was annexed by the U.S. and became a state in 1850. The gold rush of 1849 had caused rapid settlement of the area, which was recognized as commercially and strategically valuable to the United States. Military officials soon recommended a series of fortifications to secure San Francisco Bay. Coastal defenses were built at Alcatraz Island, Fort Mason, and Fort Point.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began work on Fort Point in 1853. Plans specified that the lowest tier of artillery be as close as possible to water level so cannonballs could ricochet across the water's surface to hit enemy ships at the water-line. Workers blasted the 90 ft cliff down to 15 ft above sea level. The structure featured seven-foot-thick walls and multi-tiered casemated construction typical of Third System forts. It was sited to defend the maximum amount of harbor area. While there were more than 30 such forts on the East Coast, Fort Point was the only one on the West Coast. In 1854 Inspector General Joseph K. Mansfield declared "this point as the key to the whole Pacific Coast...and it should receive untiring exertions".

A crew of 200, many unemployed miners, labored for eight years on the fort. In 1861, with war looming, the army mounted the fort's first cannon. Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the Department of the Pacific, prepared Bay Area defenses and ordered in the first troops to the fort. Kentucky-born Johnston then resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army; he was killed at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862.

Fort Point and the Civil War
Throughout the Civil War, artillerymen at Fort Point stood guard for an enemy that never came. The Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah planned to attack San Francisco, but on the way to the harbor the captain learned that the war was over; it was August 1865, months after General Lee surrendered.

Severe damage to similar forts on the Atlantic Coast during the war – Fort Sumter in South Carolina and Fort Pulaski in Georgia – challenged the effectiveness of masonry walls against rifled artillery. Troops soon moved out of Fort Point, and it was never again continuously occupied by the army. The fort was nonetheless important enough to receive protection from the elements. In 1869 a granite seawall was completed. The following year, some of the fort's cannon were moved to Battery East on the bluffs nearby, where they were more protected. In 1882 Fort Point was officially named Fort Winfield Scott after the hero of the war against Mexico. The name was later applied to an artillery post at the Presidio.

Into a new century
In 1892, the army began constructing the new Endicott System concrete fortifications armed with steel, breech-loading rifled guns. Within eight years, all 103 of the smooth-bore cannons at Fort Point had been dismounted and sold for scrap. The fort, moderately damaged in the 1906 earthquake, where the fort was used as a temporary refugee camp by the U.S. Army, was used over the next four decades for barracks, training, and storage, however, in 1913, part of the interior wall was removed by the army in their short-lived attempt to make the fort the army detention barracks using soldier and prisoner labor. The detention barracks were later built on Alcatraz Island and was used until becoming a federal prison. Soldiers from the 6th U.S. Coast Artillery were stationed there during World War II to guard minefields and the anti-submarine net that spanned the Golden Gate.

New quarters and administrative buildings were constructed on the higher ground, behind the new Endicott batteries, moving Fort Scott to this location.

Preserving Fort Point
In 1926 the American Institute of Architects proposed preserving the fort for its outstanding military architecture. Funds were unavailable, and the ideas languished. Plans for the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s called for the fort's removal, but Chief Engineer Joseph Strauss redesigned the bridge to save the fort. "While the old fort has no military value now," Strauss said, "it remains nevertheless a fine example of the mason's art.... It should be preserved and restored as a national monument." The fort is situated directly below the southern approach to the bridge, underneath an arch that supports the roadway.

Preservation efforts were revived after World War II. On October 16, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed a bill creating Fort Point National Historic Site.

Landmark status
Fort Point is designated as California Historical Landmark #82, officially listed under the site's original name, Castillo De San Joaquín.

Recreation
The rocky point north of the fort produces waves, in the winter months, that are popular with surfers.

Media use

Fort Point is a popular filming location. It is also mentioned in other media.

In film

 * In Dark Passage (1947), a fight scene with Humphrey Bogart on the bluff above the fort ends with his opponent falling to his death in what is now the fort's parking lot.
 * In the 1950 film The Man Who Cheated Himself, there is a five-minute search scene near the end of the film that was filmed at Fort Point and shows many shots of the fort.
 * The most famous example is Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 thriller Vertigo, wherein Kim Novak's character jumps into the San Francisco Bay in an apparent suicide attempt.
 * In Point Blank, the 1967 John Boorman noir movie starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, it is shown as the location for the "Alcatraz Drop" at the closed Alcatraz Prison. However, in the final scene a continuous camera shot rises to show Alcatraz Prison in the distance, revealing this to be Fort Point.
 * In Richard Lester's 1968 film Petulia, George C. Scott's character plays with his boys, ignoring 'No Trespassing' signs, at Fort Point.
 * In the 1969 pilot film for the TV series Then Came Bronson, Martin Sheen's character jumps to his death from Fort Point.
 * The phone booth scene in the 1977 Mel Brooks comedy High Anxiety took place beneath the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point, where the crucial water rescue scene takes place in Vertigo, part of the film's thematic homage to Alfred Hitchcock.
 * In the 1985 James Bond film A View To a Kill the fort can be seen in various aerial shots particularly the final scene which takes place above the Golden Gate Bridge.
 * The 1999 film Bicentennial Man Starring Robin Williams has a scene featuring Fort Point as a bustling market. With the main building being home to NDR Robotics.
 * In the 2014 film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes the humans use Fort Point's armory to dramatically increase their firepower in the form of armored vehicles and large amounts of munitions.
 * The 2019 film The Last Black Man in San Francisco filmed throughout San Francisco, with several scenes filmed outside and around the fort.
 * The fort is briefly shown on a television during the opening of the 2019 horror film Us.

In games

 * A building based on Fort Point is included in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as a night club called Jizzy's Pleasure Domes in the fictional city San Fierro heavily based on San Francisco.
 * Fort Point is also included in the video game NBA Street
 * Fort Point is included in the game Midtown Madness 2
 * Fort Point is one of the surf spots in Transworld Surf.
 * Fort Point is a mission location in Watch Dogs 2.
 * Fort Point (along with the Golden Gate Bridge) has been faithfully recreated in Duke Nukem 3D 20th Anniversary World Tour's episode 5, level 6, named Golden Carnage.

In television

 * In The Amazing Race 16, teams are here presented with a building's height, year built, and features. They must figure out that it's Coit Tower and go there to find their next clue.
 * In Season 3, Episode 20 of the television series The West Wing, (titled "The Black Vera Wang"), Fort Point is the intended target of a foiled terrorist attack by Islamic fundamentalists, who are planning to attack the fort because of its proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge. The attack is allegedly funded by the fictitious Arab nation of Qumar, a recurring source of terrorism over the course of the series.
 * Fort Point was in a made-for-TV movie "What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing." The movie was a spin off of the TV show Emergency!. The movie opens with a tour guide talking about the Fort to a group of school-age kids. A worker falls from the Golden Gate Bridge and is hanging by his safety rope.
 * The Streets of San Francisco, a crime drama television series produced by Quinn Martin Productions (1972–77), starring Karl Malden and Michael Douglas, filmed a shootout scene in Fort Point. Karl Malden killed a "bad guy."
 * Featured in an episode of Emergency! as a rescue takes place above the fort on the girders below the Golden Gate Bridge.
 * Murder, She Wrote  episode "Birds of a Feather" opening credits are at Fort Point.

In Music

 * The album cover image of Editors' album, The Back Room is of Fort Point.

In books

 * The 1980 John Varley science fiction novel Wizard begins at Fort Point, which in the book contains an embassy.

title: Fort Point National Historic Site