IBNA    India Basin Neighborhood Association
of San Francisco, California
 
Community Issues »
Join us to Save This Historical Cottage!
Click here to view the flyer.
 

Community Issues


900 Innes

 

 Here is a sample letter you can use to send to your supervisor
Help us take the beginning steps to developing the India Basin Historic Maritime Recreation Center.

Please feel free to print out and distribute this flyer about how YOU can help save the Shipwrights' House! (.doc)

The date and time of the Land Use Meeting is at 1pm on April 14, 2008 City Hall, Room 263.
Directions to City Hall

Landmarks Board made a unanimous decision to landmark 900 Innes Shipwrights House as city landmark #250!

Click here to read what the press is saying about 900 Innes.
Built in 1875, this historical Italianate-style cottage has a 120-year history of serving India Basin shipwrights, ship carpenters, workers, and families as their home and office.
The existence of 900 Innes Avenue reminds us of a lifestyle that was dependent on readily available natural resources like wind, water, and the ebb and flow of the bay tides. Unlike current-day working environments, these families' work was not a job, but it was a way of life. Therefore, it was important for their home to be in close proximity to their boat yards, marine railways and the bay.

The building marks the location where skilled working class craftsmen settled to build the city's only unique wooden sailing vessels, the San Francisco scow schooner. Their boatyards were a home-based cottage industry&ndash manufacturing and repairing hand-made sailing vessels with unique and distinctive characteristics&ndash that were vital to San Francisco's economy.

It is the only remaining shipwright cottage of its kind in all of San Francisco, and preserving it will recognize the people who settled in this community in the 1870s. They were hearty, thrifty, working-class people – much like their boats. It would be an honor to San Francisco's working-class community to recognize the efforts and importance of those workers. They were the backbone of our economy, and recognizing their significance to our history through a landmark would be a positive measure. Click here to see more pictures of 900 Innes.