Quick answer
Dogpatch is a small working-class neighborhood on the southeastern waterfront of San Francisco, built up around the shipyards of Union Iron Works. Irish Hill, a steep ten-block district of shipyard workers, grew here from 1867 and disappeared for industry by 1923. Today the industrial waterfront is Crane Cove Park.
Full transcript
The Blocks the Bay Raised
Dogpatch is the working-class pocket squeezed between Potrero Hill and the bay, roughly nine blocks of flats and cottages, most of them raised between 1870 and 1930. Earlier the whole slope was pasture — the Spanish called it Potrero Nuevo, new pasture — and cattle grazed here to feed Mission Dolores. The name comes down to us in legend: stray dogs, hard times, a working edge the neighborhood never polished away. Walk the quiet blocks off Third Street, past the brick and the bay windows, and you are reading the city's industrial backstory in its walls.
The Shipyard That Fed It
The engine of that building was one plant. Union Iron Works opened its Pier 70 operation in 1883, and under manager Irving Scott it grew into the West Coast's great steel yard, turning out the battleship USS Oregon in time for the Spanish-American War. The world wars stretched it further. During the Second World War more than 18,000 workers crowded the dry docks to build destroyers and cargo ships, women among them — Dogpatch's own Rosie the Riveter moment. Stand at the edge of Pier 70 and try to fit 18,000 people, and a steel hull, onto that shoreline at once.
The Hill That Vanished
The workers' hill itself did not survive. Irish Hill, a steep ten-block rookery of boarding houses and saloons reached by a 98-step stairway, was settled from 1867 and then shaved flat to make room for the expanding plants, until its last traces were gone around 1923 — a whole neighborhood erased for steel. What Dogpatch keeps instead is Crane Cove Park, seven acres of new waterfront beneath the restored gantry cranes Nickel and Big Red, with the old warehouse blocks now studios and galleries. Cross into the park, walk under the crane that used to lift ships, and look at what the bay got back.