This 16″ x 20″ print in a 20″ x 24″ frame was made from a 4×5 black and white film negative image of the abandoned Building 253 in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard and taken by Jonathan Haeber. It comes signed by the artist, framed, and matted.

Hunters Point began as a pristine, forested, hill-laden peninsula where the Ohlone people lived. From 1869 to 1939, the site was a commercial dry dock area, and a once-flourishing Chinese shrimp fishing community. The U.S. Navy acquired the land on December 29, 1939 to construct the shipyard.

During the Second World War, thousands of people migrated to San Francisco to work in the shipyards in the Bay Area leading to a housing shortage in San Francisco and neighboring communities.  Black migrants especially suffered during the housing shortage because restrictive housing covenants denied them access to most neighborhoods in the city.  To relieve the shortage, in 1942 the U.S. Government built 5,500 “temporary” housing units available exclusively to Naval yard workers and their families.  Since these units were available to all workers, Hunters Point began as one of the most integrated areas of the city.

On December 29, 1988, the shipyard permanently closed and less than a year later the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deemed it a site on its National Priority List of Federal Superfund Sites in the United States.