The Tank House Saga
- leeonardo
- Jun 24, 2020
- 11 min read
The unlikely history of the most curious structure in the inner harbor, the iconic tank house that houses Docktown's infamous Peninsula Yacht Club.
The oldest and most endearing structure at Docktown, the Yacht building is a community center and bar, used for community dinners and parties, yoga classes, drum circles, pool tournaments, movie nights, staging sailing expeditions and races, and community meetings, even hosting weddings, baby showers, and funerals. This report reaches back to the earliest days of Redwood City to discover the mysterious origins and evolution of this landmark.
A presentation to the Redwood City Historic Resources Advisory Committee by Lee Callister
It’s one of a kind, not like anything else anywhere: An old tankhouse that dates from the dawn of the 20th century, turned roadhouse and community center.
Its tower was built with massive redwood timbers from the forests above Redwood City, whose lumber was shipped down the creek that runs next to the old tank, and transported to rebuild San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. It’s a showcase for the resilience of the wood of the giant trees, with beams as strong as ever 120 years later.
It’s topped by a giant metal tank that can be seen for miles from all directions, brightly painted with the flag of the Yacht Club it houses. Walls have been added to the structure, and a bar and kitchen added, along with a dance floor, and a lounge area in the back, making it a popular place to mingle, eat, and listen to the many musicians that play there.
Who built it and how it evolved is the subject of this paper.
Ties to the earliest days of Redwood City
The first owner of what became Docktown was William Holder who arrived on the Peninsula in 1851. Redwood City was still called Embarcadero or Pulgas Embarcadero because the harbor at the junction of three creeks served as the wharf for the Alameda de las Pulgas Ranch.
A picture of him as an old man is located on his obituary pages along with a picture of his gravestone at Union Cemetery on Woodside Road.
A builder by trade, Holder would soon set up a planing mill at the end of Main Street next to the Creek where he prospered; cutting giant Redwoods into lumber that could be shipped down the creek to San Francisco and beyond. He also began to buy up the marsh land across the Creek towards the bay.
Heart of the City in 1891. Green arrows show creek and turning basin (middle arrow), Orange is Bridge Street (Broadway), Dark Red is Main Street, which ended at the creek. Bright Red is Holder Street (Bradford). Yellow arrow is the probable location of Holder Mill, which may be the building shown According to his obituary Holder was the first man to build a “substantial” home in the City on Main near Bradford) , which was still called Holder Street well into the 19th century, and was also, the first to fly the American flag on a 42’ pole he erected at the westerly corner of Marshall and Main Streets, just up the street from his home and shop. The house burned down in 1927.
The birdseye view picture above is actually from 1891. By then Holder owned about 200 acres of the land north and east of the creek, and his lumber was moving down the creek to the Bay, passing by his own property, which included today’s Docktown. He could have had the tower built on his land next to the creek.
Although they would soon be overrun by squatters who claimed portions of the Pulgas Ranch, the town's inhabitants at at that time numbered about 150.
In this picture taken in front of the historic office and then store at 726 Main, Holder is the second from the left. Built by John Diller and then sold to PP Chamberlain, to Holder’s left it is the oldest commercial building in Redwood City today. In those days it was a gathering place for the locals.
The building’s back entrance overlooked the creek until it was paved over.
Here’s what the building looks like now.
Eventually Holder owned all the land to the right of the creek just downstream of his home at the end of Main Street, which was also the property line of the Rancho de las Pulgas land grant. The area was largely marshlands, cut by sloughs and creeks. According to is obituaries, he owned “most of the property on the north end of Main Street “ encompassing the current Kaiser Hospital lands, Creekside plaza, Toys R Us, Kmart, and everything north and south and east that is now included in the Inner Harbor Plan. All together he owned about 200 acres by then.
1868. Green arrows show Redwood Creek. Yellow outline shows today’s Inner Harbor. Blue Arrow points to William Holder’s name. Orange arrow shows downtown Redwood city. The red box is the area now known as Docktown.
Holder never married or had any children, and as he grew older began to sell off the land to support himself.
The Tannery
One of his first sales must have been the transfer of 1.5 acres to IM Wentworth for a tannery on Redwood Creek in the 1870s. on the property now occupied by Toys R Us and Kohls. But Wentworth had overextended himself and sold it to Joseph Frank and his sons for in 1879 for $7500, a lot of money at a time when lots were selling for $100 an acre. But leather was an important commodity and the tannery prospered under the Frank family.
By 1909 the Land belonged to Franks Tannery. Green arrows show Redwood Creek. Red Line is just above Docktown’s Location. Blue Arrow points to Franks Tannery name. Orange arrow shows downtown Redwood city. For many years the Tannery was the largest employer in Redwood City, building its own wharfs which continued to function after the Army corps of engineers stopped dredging the creek and the city moved the Port further down the creek.
By 1909 Franks Tannery owned the entire 200 acres. For many years Tannery maintained its own wharfs (used also by others) after the Army corps of engineers stopped dredging the creek and the Port moved further downstream.
It is in this 1917 areal photo of Franks Tannery that we first see the tank house, which can be seen in the distance behind the tannery.
The Green arrows point to Redwood Creek. The area inside the Red Line is Docktown,with the tank house circled. A blue arrow points to Tannery.
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The mud below the tank in this close-up, taken at low tide, shows the creek was already silting in again after the last time it had been dredged.
Was it the Franks who built the tankhouse? And if so why?
Water is needed in making leather, and some have also suggested the tank had something to do with leather operations,. But the tannery had its own, much larger tower, which survived the fire in 1968 that destroyed the rest of the tannery. And the squat little tank at Docktown in the 1917 photo sits alone on the creek at some distance from the tannery.
Construction Clues
Rivets on the tank are similar to those found in other steel tanks, trains and ships built in the latter quarter of the 18th century.SF Water Dept historian Michael Housh suggests that, based on the rivets and design, it was probably built by the Union Ironworks in the era between 1870 and 1910. Union Iron Works was purchased by Bethehem steel whose successor was acquired by yet another company based in Europe, so records from that era are hard to come by.
A water tank for Steamships?
A theory put forth by Former Marina Operator Fred Earnhart and Harbor master Paul Porri is that the tank was built earlier to supply water to the schooners that rode the creek into the heart of Redwood City in the early days when the wharves and turning basin were located near the present day City Hall. That would have made the tankhouse one of the last vestiges of this rich maritime history. But it implies those vessels were steam powered, and while there is a picture of one small steam schooner in the innter harbor it does not seem to have been the norm, and large steamships could not have navigated the narrow, shallow creek.
The Jean Grosberg Drawings
Jean Groberg, who made this sketch of the tank during that period, described he building as a huge steel tank, supported by a substantial trestle, surrounded by houseboats. “The area below the tankhouse contains offices,” she said. “The houseboat residents pick up their mail at the bank of postal boxes mounted on the left side of the building. It was an interesting area with many boats up on blocks being worked over and refurbished. “
Groberg developed a passion for drawing the tankhouses she found throughout Northen California, creating hundreds of drawings, but found this one different from most. Her definition of a Tankhouse, was a water tank built on a tower to make water pressure, where walls were created around the tower to create a building or part of a house. The designs themselves were very varied they evolved into many different types of structures and put to many different uses.
Mostly they were structures standing alone or connected to houses and barns, with a cistern like the one under the structure where rain water collected. Most had a windmill to draw the water up into the tank from where it could be drawn down as needed.
The Docktown tankhouse has a cistern to collect water, and brass pipes to extending through the ceiling, but no indications there was ever a windmill. Equally unique is the design and materials used. Most tanks are much taller. Most were made of redwood, sometimes with a wooden base, sometimes steel. This may be only one found that has a redwood base with a steel tank on top. The tank is huge compared to most of the tanks.
And the Docktown tank house was not originally a building. It was a stubby tower built with made of huge redwood pillars to support the weight of the large tank. It became a building only after it was no longer used to store water, by removing the less essential pillars to open up the space inside and building walls around the base.
Or was it really just an oil tank?
A more mundane but more likely explanation is that the tank was used for oil storage, which was needed for tannery machinery and could be sold off to other Redwood City Businessmen.
Construction techniques and rivets would have been the same as for a water tank.
That would explain why the tank on its redwood tower was short and squat while water towers are normally as high as possible to increase the water pressure. Having been filled with petroleum from barges on the creek, the tank would be less susceptible to rust, as is the building on the tower. It would also explain why it was located so remotely from other outbuildings where an oil fire could quickly a become a major conflagration.
Additionally, a hand drawn map from this period shows a road cutting diagonally scross the property to the tank's location, which could have been used by customers coming to pick up oil from the tank.
Finally, a 1960 newspaper article heralding the birth of the new Marina at what would become Docktown, describes “an old oil tank” where owner operator Jay Salaman reportedly planned to build a circular restaurant around the existing tower.
Building the finest Marina on the Peninsula.
The Franks family included 7 sons, all of whom died untimely deaths so that management of the enterprise passed from one to another, then to the inlaws, and finally in the 1950s, to a man named Joseph Salaman, who had worked for Franks Tannery since he was 13.
Salaman teamed up with Hotel Magnate Ben Swig in 1959 to purchase the tannery properties from the family and develop the lands closest to downtown, including the Kaiser Hospital site, Kmart, and Creek Plaza, giving the State a right of way for a freeway through the heart of the old Tannery, which later burned down shortly after leather became unprofitable, and gave or sold Docktown to his sons, J. Franklin Salaman and his brother Joseph Waldo Salaman.
Boating was very popular at that time, and with Joseph Waldo as a silent partner, “Jay” Salaman and his partner Warren Cash set out to create the most modern boat harbor in the south bay. Salaman and Cash leased the creek waters from the city, and Cash once again dredged out the mud, and they built what was then known as Redwood Harbor, with covered berths, a boat landing, a crane, and boat yard. There were plans for a miniature railroad around the yards. Redwood Harbor would eventually become Docktown.
With the old tank empty and available, Salaman removed some of the pillars from the tower and created a building he used for the harbor office, which later became the office of a boat dealer and then a real estate company, and was touted by Salaman as the site of a restaurant that was never built.
The birth of the Peninsula Yacht Club
A boating enthusiast himself, Jay Salaman was one of the founders of the Peninsula Power Cruising Club, in Palo Alto, whose members cruised bay waters in the days when gasoline was cheap and conservation not yet trendy. Salaman brought the group to Redwood City, and as more of the members acquired sailboats the club transformed into the Peninsula Yacht Club.
But the creek bottom again filled with mud, and dreams of a dynamic boat harbor on the creek diminished as better harbors were established downstream, and the club moved out of the Marina.
Cash left, and Salaman eventually traded the lease to the marina to his bookkeeper, Fred Earnhardt in payment for gambling debts and other considerations, and turned his attention to his other properties, and society friends in San Francisco where he owned a home in Dolores Heights.
The Salaman brothers still owned the property, but were content to collect rent on it.. The shallow water was better suited for flat bottom structures like the floating homes and houseboats that would soon proliferate there.
Meanwhile, with his wife Maureen, a cancer crusader who would ironically later die of cancer, Jay Salaman became involved in alternative health care, which led to his arrest for trying to smuggle an illegal cure called laetrile into the US from Mexico. It's not clear if there was any connection to the mysterious loan of $50,000 in gold coins from Taroub Rusnak buried in his backyard in San Francisco that would eventually lead to her acquisition of half of Docktown from Jay's second wife, Janice, after he died. Jay claimed Mauareen dug up the gold when she divorced him, and carried it off to Atherton
In the meantime, looking for a new home, the Yacht Club moved into the recently vacated space in the tank house in the early 1980's, and continued to expand and improve the property,
Because of the relationship with Salaman the club had always paid very affordable rates for rent, on the condition that members maintain and improve the building on their own dime, and they added the bar, a dance floor/reading library, kitchen, back bar, and other improvements. The design on the tank, created by one of its members, has been painted and repainted mostly recently in 2013.
Redwood Harbor Becomes the floating community of Docktown
Time marches on. Fred Jr. took over the lease on the harbor after his father died. It had become evident that the tidal waters, which retreated to mud flats twice a day, were better suited for flat bottom houseboats, floating homes, and small boats that could be utilized for residences, and Earnhardt encouraged the transition because it was more profitable.
By the time he gave up the business in Feb of 2013 there were about 100 residences on the creek, and while a few sailboats still endured the indignity of sitting in the mud when the tide was out, most of the serious sailors were keeping their boats at Pete's and the Municipal pier. What emerged was a floating community of people who live on the water, and use the tankhouse building as a gathering place, where people meet nearly every day for drinks or dinner, meetings, and parties. Weddings have been performed here and divorces celebrated. Children have been introduced and the dead honored. It has been loved and cherished, slowly improved, A fountain of fond memories for the Docktown community and their friends. The landside of Docktown, the only part that Salaman actually owned outright, still included a boat yard, but largely transitioned into storage areas for boats, RV's, and household goods
As the leaseholder for the creek, the city took over operation of the Marina after Earhardt left. By now the land was the property of Joseph Waldo Salaman's children, Jodi and Franklin, and the successor to Jay Franklin, Taroub Rusnak who acquired a half interest for $500,000 in 2010 after forcing Jay's widow into a sheriff's sale over unpaid debts arising from the loss of the gold coins.
The lands along the Creek at Docktown where the tank resides is now slated for development for 131 condos.
Following a presentation of the the story told here, Members of the all sent letters to the planning Commission recommending keeping and recognizing the tank house as a Historic Resource, however the Cit y has apparently chosen nw to support the recommendations, opting instead to just keep the tank itself and not the building, moving the tank to a new location on the waterfront.
The plan to develop the area now is now under consideration by the Architectural Review Committee, and pending approval will be presented to the City Council.
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