Alameda Works Shipyard | |
---|---|
Alameda County, California | |
Type | Shipyard |
Site history | |
Built | 1900s |
In use | 1900s–1956 |
Battles/wars | |
Union Iron Works Powerhouse | |
Location | Alameda, California |
Coordinates | 37°47′13″N122°16′31″W / 37.78694°N 122.27528°W |
NRHP reference No. | 80000793 [1] |
Added to NRHP | January 10, 1980 |
The Alameda Works Shipyard, in Alameda, California, United States, was one of the largest and best equipped shipyards in the country. The only building remaining from the yard is the Union Iron Works Powerhouse, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.1956. [2]
Established in the early 1900s by United Engineering Works, the yard was purchased by Union Iron Works (Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation) in 1916 and came to be known as the Alameda Works.
During the World War I period the yard built cargo ships, tankers and 2 small tugboats.
For the UK Admiralty
For other private contractors
For Standard Oil of New Jersey
For Standard Oil of California
For Bethlehem's own Ore Steamship Company
For the United States Shipping Board
tugs Dreadnaught, Undaunted
Challenger, Independence (War Harbor), Victorious (War Haven) and Defiance (War Ocean) were all launched on 4 July 1918. [3]
The Lebore was the last ship delivered (January 1924) during that production period.
The site was expanded from 7 acres (2.8 ha) to 75 acres (30 ha) with facilities for constructing up to six major vessels simultaneously. After 1923, the Alameda Works ceased making ships but continued its dry docking and ship repair operations. [4] [5]
At the beginning of World War II, the Alameda Works was re-established as the Bethlehem Alameda Shipyard, and modernized and expanded to include new shipways and on-site worker housing. During the war produced P-2 Admiral-type troop ships, as well as some repair work and it continued to produce structural steel.
This power station was designed by San Francisco architect Frederick Meyer, one of many designed for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in Northern California between 1905 and the 1920s. It is a one-story rectangular industrial building, 25 feet (7.6 m) high, 53 feet (16 m) wide and 110 feet (34 m) long, that rests on a concrete base. Designed in a simplified Renaissance Revival style, the powerhouse is an excellent example of a building type-the "beautiful" power house-for which the San Francisco Bay Area was nationally known. It contained several large generators and was constructed specifically to meet the massive electricity requirements of the yards.1956. [2] [6] [7]
Today, the little building that once powered an entire shipyard has been converted into private office space and is closed to the public.
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Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
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The Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation was an American corporation established in 1917 by railroad heir W. Averell Harriman to build merchant ships for the Allied war effort in World War I. The MSC operated two shipyards: the former shipyard of John Roach & Sons at Chester, Pennsylvania, and a second, newly established emergency yard at Bristol, Pennsylvania, operated by the MSC on behalf of the U.S. Shipping Board's Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFC).
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H.M. Storey was an oil tanker built in 1921. She escaped an attack in California in 1941, but was sunk in an attack in 1943. She was owned by Standard Oil Company of California and built by Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation at the Alameda Works Shipyard with a hull# of 5312. She had a max. capacity of 306,115 gallons of fuel oil. Her keel was laid on January 19, 1921 and she was launched on September 28, 1921. Her sister ships are the SS F.H. Hillman and SS W.S. Rheem. She had a range of 7,717 miles, 10,763 DWT and a 16,000 ton displacement. She had a length of 500 feet, a beam of 68.2 feet and a draft of 30 feet. She had 2,700 hp, made by a triple-expansion engine with dual shaft and 2 screws. She had three Scotch boilers. Named for Henry Martin Storey, vice president of the Standard Oil Company.
The Design 1032 ship was a steel-hulled tanker ship design approved for production by the United States Shipping Board's Emergency Fleet Corporation (EFT) in World War I. A total of 5 ships were ordered and completed from 1919 to 1920. All ships were constructed by Bethlehem San Francisco, but sources disagree whether all were built in Alameda or some were also built in the Union Iron Works yard.
Potrero Point is an area in San Francisco, California, east of San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood. Potrero Point was an early San Francisco industrial area. The Point started as small natural land feature that extends into Mission Bay of San Francisco Bay. The Point was enlarged by blasted and cuts on the nearby cliffs. The cut material was removed and used to fill two square miles into the San Francisco bay, making hundreds of acres of flat land. The first factories opened at Potrero Point in the 1860s. Early factories were powder magazine plant, the Pacific Rolling Mill Company and small shipyards. The large Union Iron Works and its shipyards were built at the site, stated in 1849 by Peter Donahue. To power the factories and neighborhood coal and gas-powered electricity works were built, later the site became Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E).
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This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service .