Union Iron Works

Union Iron Works, located in San Francisco, California, on the southeast waterfront, was a central business within the large industrial zone of Potrero Point, for four decades at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.

History

The Donahue Brothers Peter and James, Irish immigrants, founded Union Iron Works in the south of Market area of San Francisco in 1849. After years as the premiere producer of mining, railroad, agricultural and locomotive machinery in California, Union Iron Works, led by I.M. Scott, entered the ship building business and relocated to Potrero Point where its shipyards still exist, making the site on the north side of the Potrero the longest running privately owned shipyard in the United States. After Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation bought the works in 1905, the consolidated company came to include the Alameda Works Shipyard, located across the San Francisco Bay in Alameda and the Hunter's Point shipyard to the south.In 1885, the Union Iron Works launched the first steel hulled ship on the west coast, the Arago, built with steel from the Pacific Rolling Mills. In 1886, UIW was awarded a $1,000,000 contract to build a Naval cruiser, the Charleston, which they completed in eighteen months. From the completion of the Arago in 1884 to 1902, UIW built...
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