The last of the India Basin scow-schooner yards, and the site where the Bay's working-boat tradition is most physically legible today.
The site comes first. A Dutch shipwright named Jan Janse Dirks was building on Innes Avenue by about 1875, and the scow schooners that came off that beach — Master Mariner (1876), Wavelet (1878), Paul and Willie (1884) — were the delivery trucks of the Bay economy. Flat-bottomed, shallow, cheap, able to take the ground at low tide and load hay or bricks or oyster shell.
Henry P. Anderson, a Danish shipwright, arrived in 1893 and bought the yard, trading as H. P. Anderson Boat Building and then Anderson's Ways. In 1907 he built Snark, the boat Jack London commissioned for his Pacific voyage. Alf Cristofani joined him in 1926 and the firm became Anderson & Cristofani.
They kept building scow schooners into the mid-1930s — long after the type was economically obsolete — alongside fishing vessels like Yuba (1930) and New Rex (1936). In the war the yard turned out APc coastal transports, Accentor-class minesweepers and harbour tugs.
The property was sold to speculators in the 1980s and bought by the City in 1989 for what is now India Basin Shoreline Park. The Shipwright's Cottage — the Dirks-era building that served as the firm's office — was restored and reopened as a visitor centre in 2025.
- Site origin
- Jan Janse Dirks, Dutch shipwright, from c. 1875
- Anderson
- Henry P. Anderson, Danish shipwright, arrived in the Bay Area 1893 and bought the yard
- Partnership
- Alf Cristofani joined 1926
- Successor
- Allemand Brothers operated on or near the site 1946–2002
- Preservation
- City purchase 1989; Shipwright's Cottage reopened as a visitor centre 2025
- 1876–1884Master Mariner / Wavelet / Paul and Willie — scow schooners, Dirks yard
- 1907Snark — built for Jack London
- 1930 / 1936Yuba / New Rex — fishing vessels
- 1941–45APc coastal transports, minesweepers, tugs
- Some sources describe Anderson & Cristofani as founded 'in the early 1870s'. That conflates the site's boatbuilding history with the partnership, which by those same sources' detailed chronologies did not exist under that name until 1926.
- Snark's construction is dated 1907 here and 'by 1906' in one independent account. She was building through 1906 and completed in 1907, so the two are compatible rather than contradictory.
Wooden Boat Atlas v3.0 · built 30 July 2026 · a project of the Golden Gate Wooden Boat Foundation · licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 · open data · corrections