The Central Embarcadero Piers Historic District is a Registered Historic District in the city of

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It consists of Piers 1, 1½, 3 and 5, which form one of the largest surviving pier complexes along San Francisco's Embarcadero waterfront road. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2002.

Construction

With construction spanning over a decade and led by Chief Engineer of the State Harbor Commission, Frank G. White, Piers 1, 1½, 3 and 5, were opened in 1918. Unlike the piers south of the Ferry Building that were designed in the Mission and

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

styles, the piers north of the Ferry Building were built in the

Beaux-Arts architecture Beaux-Arts architecture ( , ) was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorpora ...

style, similar to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Chelsea Piers Chelsea Piers is a series of piers in Chelsea, on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located to the west of the West Side Highway ( Eleventh Avenue) and Hudson River Park and to the east of the Hudson River, they were originally a pa ...

. The timber-frame bulkhead buildings, covered in

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

, are each two stories high, punctuated by two-story arches. Behind these formal building are the areas more closely associated with the functioning of the port—the piers and transit sheds. Concrete or timber piers extend east behind the bulkhead buildings, connected to the system of

wharves A wharf, quay (, also ), staith, or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such a structure includes one or more berths (mooring location ...

upon which the bulkhead buildings rest. Steel

truss A truss is an assembly of ''members'' such as beams, connected by ''nodes'', that creates a rigid structure. In engineering, a truss is a structure that "consists of two-force members only, where the members are organized so that the assembl ...

and timber frame buildings, accommodating the loading and unloading of ships are built upon the piers, with open aprons for circulation.

Early history

These were the only group of piers in the Port of San Francisco dedicated chiefly to inland trade and transport. These connections facilitated the growth of communities in the

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

and

San Joaquin Valley The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven c ...

s and fostered California's agricultural business that led the state to become the richest in the nation, as well the fifth largest economy in the world. The ''

Delta King ''Delta King'' is a and the sister ship of ''Delta Queen'', built in Scotland and California for the California Transportation Company's service between Sacramento and San Francisco, California. She entered service in 1927 and continued until 194 ...

'' and ''

Delta Queen The ''Delta Queen'' is an American sternwheel steamboat. She is known for cruising the major rivers that constitute the tributaries of the Mississippi River, particularly in the American South, although she began service in California on the ...

'' provided overnight connections between San Francisco and

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

from Pier 1½, making it an important gateway for public travel to the interior of the state. Pier 3 and Pier 5 served primarily freight shipping, with a variety of companies sharing the bulkhead office and warehouse spaces and the huge transit sheds which originally extended the full length of the finger piers for more than 700 feet (212 m) east from the wharf on the Embarcadero.

World War II

The San Francisco waterfront piers played a crucial role in the

Pacific theater The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. With the outbreak of the war, San Francisco's waterfront became a military

logistics Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...

center; troops, equipment and supplies left the Port in support of the Pacific theater. Almost every pier and wharf was involved in military activities, with troop ships and naval vessels tied up all along the Embarcadero. In addition, the military briefly set up

antiaircraft gun Anti-aircraft warfare, counter-air or air defence forces is the battlespace response to aerial warfare, defined by NATO as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It includes surface based, ...

s and

searchlight A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direc ...

s at piers along the waterfront from 1941 to 1942. The Coast Guard,

Immigration and Naturalization Service The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor from 1933 to 1940 and the U.S. Department of Justice from 1940 to 2003. Referred to by some as former INS and by others as legacy INS, ...

and the Maritime Service Enrolling Office occupied Pier 5.

Modern times

After the war, the piers fell into disuse, as ports in Oakland,

Alameda An alameda is a Avenue (landscape), street or path lined with trees () and may refer to: Places Canada *Alameda, Saskatchewan, town in Saskatchewan **Grant Devine Dam, formerly ''Alameda Dam'', a dam and reservoir in southern Saskatchewan Chile ...

and

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

were better equipped to respond to the conversion to containerization. Piers 1½ and 5 were early examples of finding new uses for buildings which form a valuable part of the city's environment. The former Passenger Waiting Room of Pier 1½ was converted into an architect's waterfront office, and the bulkheads of Piers 1½ and 5 were used as professional office space. While many of the piers were demolished, Piers 1 ½, 3 and 5 remain the most visible from the Ferry Building and

Market Street Market Street may refer to: *Market Street, Cambridge, England *Market Street, Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia * Market Street, George Town, Penang, Malaysia *Market Street, Manchester, England *Market Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia ...

, still the main thoroughfare of the city. In January 2001, San Francisco based Pacific Waterfront Partners,

LLC A limited liability company (LLC for short) is the US-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that can combine the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a ...

was selected by the Port of San Francisco to redevelop the historic Piers 1½, 3 and 5. The project focuses on preserving and rehabilitating the historic maritime design of the Northeast Waterfront and the Ferry Building Waterfront while enhancing the public use and access to the historic and scenic waterfront setting.

References

External links