The ghost towns in California are all but gone.  Here and there you still find remnants in the gold country, a few dusty streets and empty houses, or over the border in Nevada.  And for a moment you can still imagine what it must have been like, and even the romantic notions people must have had about living in such a place, and the promise of the coast in the far distance.

I have been fascinated with this part of San Francisco for years. It is a largely unknown ghost town in the very middle of the city.

You may remember that the city’s origins in the 1850s involved shipbuilding, much of which was centered in this area. It was a happening industrial spot that gradually extended to Dog Patch and parts of Potrero Hill.  And up until 40 years ago, Pier 70 bustled. I stand in the shadows and imagine life in the warehouse, the sound of the machinery and loud conversations. I am standing where thousands of workers clocked in each day and where many of the nation’s battleships were built, christened and launched.
Union Works Machine Shop, which later become Bethlehem Steel, thrived here. Their work force peaked in 1945 at around 25,000 workers.

Fencing, graffiti tagged, and riddled with broken windows, now off limits, vacant, surrounds most of these buildings.
Looking at the architecture that was once so magnificent, the industrial power of the machine age, it all makes me think how this empty place becomes anything your imagination takes you to. For example, the Union Works Power house reminds me of an old-fashioned dance hall with a big crystal chandelier. Such is the nature of haunted places.

But there is another gift here. The front door is a visual gift for admirers of the bohemian street artist, Hugh Leeman. He pained a mural, a portrait of “Benz”. It adds to the artistic value to my ghost town.  Remember also that this was one of the settings used by Alfred Hitchcock for Vertigo.
The Bethlehem Steel Office Building, designed in 1917 by San Francisco architect Fredrick H. Meyer, was used in the opening scene, where James Stewart meets an old friend and Hitchcock in his cameo is one of the passersby.

Yes, ghost town, street art, classic movies, machine-age era architecture and emptiness itself, meet here on Pier 70.