Dogpatch: Part 2

With all the buzz surrounding the recent growth and changes in Dogpatch, it’s important to keep one important detail in mind; the greatest changes are yet to come. In the 1990s, when real estate developers discovered Dogpatch, they changed the … Continue reading

Dogpatch: Part 1

It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco and one of the fastest growing; Dogpatch, long a forgotten patch of real estate on the city’s central waterfront, has big plans. Actually, it’s always had big plans. Dogpatch dates back to the mid-1850s, when gunpowder manufacturers built factories there, outside the original Yerba Buena city limits to avoid the new city’s ordinance forbidding “dangerous industries.” From that point on – and especially after the construction of a bridge leading from downtown to Potrero Hill and the Bayview District, making the district much easier to reach — and continuing through Dogpatch’s industrial prime, the neighborhood was magnet for large manufacturers like The Tubbs Cordage Company, the Union Iron Works and, later, Bethlehem Steel, for ship builders and other heavy industry. A steady flow of immigrant workers followed. Continue reading