Marinship

LOCATION: Sausalito, California
CLIENT: City of Sausalito
DATE COMPLETED: Ongoing

Marinship is a neighborhood in North Sausalito corresponding to a World War II-era shipyard that constructed 15 Liberty ships and 78 T2 tankers and oilers for the U.S. Navy. Designed to be temporary, the shipyard lasted only four years, closing down in early 1946 after the end of World War II. Since then the former site of Marinship has come to host both non-maritime office and commercial uses and maritime industrial and marina facilities. Unlike downtown's tourist-oriented waterfront, Marinship is a workaday area of boat yards, machine shops, office buildings, and industry. It also contains several dozen buildings and remaining structures from the area's World War II history, more than any other similar "emergency" shipyard in the Bay Area and possibly the nation.

Christopher VerPlanck has been involved with Sausalito's former Marinship area since 2011 when he prepared a historic context statement to document Marinship's history and its remaining World War II-era buildings and structures. Since then VerPlanck has consulted with the City of Sausalito several times on various projects impacting the Marinship neighborhood, including preparing a National Register nomination for the former Marinship Machine Shop and conducting an evaluation of the remnants of the former shipways, where all of Marinship's 93 major vessels were launched between 1942 and 1946. As part of our work, VerPlanck has worked with Community Development staff to ensure that both the City and property owners' objectives were taken into consideration. VerPlanck also appeared at several City Council hearings to present his findings and to answer questions from Council members and the general public.

Based on VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting's excellent performance on this project, VerPlanck was asked to provide on-call preservation consulting services for the City of Sausalito Community Development Department.

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