As San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood undergoes a metamorphosis from gritty industrial hub to hip cutting-edge neighborhood, a new museum has popped up to remind the neighborhood of its past. The Pier 70 Time Machine sits tucked away on the second floor of newly restored Building 12 at Pier 70, where legions of workers once built Navy destroyers during World War II — but now houses a scooter business, padel courts, a brewery and other businesses. The museum was opened by Peter Linenthal and Bill Perez, two historians who merged their collections of ephemera to tell the history of the area’s shipbuilding along with the stories of nearby neighborhoods of Potrero Hill, Mission Bay and the now-gone Irish Hill. “People don’t know that where we are in Dogpatch was an industrial hub that shortly after the founding of San Francisco, that really built the city that we know today,” said Linenthal, who runs the Potrero Archives Project. The 4,000-square-foot museum is filled with pieces of industrial past, such as a room devoted to the tools used in shipbuilding. Perez, who once worked in Bethlehem Steel — the massive shipbuilding operation that supplied military ships during World War II — is now president of the Bethlehem Shipyard Museum. Before opening the new museum, his collection of industrial items filled his garage. Similarly, Linenthal stored his collection of items telling the stories of the nearby neighborhoods, with hopes of one day having a place to show it all. “It’s really a dream come true to have a space like this where we can share our collections for free with the public,” Linenthal said. Linenthal pointed out an old-time dentist chair that once belonged to Potrero Hill dentist Dr. Jean Pierre Cantou, who operated in the neighborhood between the 1930s and the 1960s. Nearby sat a replica of a tule boat that would’ve been used by Ramaytush Ohlone indigenous tribes that once inhabited Potrero Point more than 1,000 years before the arrival of the gold miners. Linenthal pointed out a large, glowing-red beacon that once sat atop a huge gas tank located near present-day Pennsylvania and Cesar Chavez streets. “We’re telling the stories of the people that worked in those industries, in the development of those industries,” said Linenthal. “And actually we’re going back to tell the story of the native people who lived here thousands of years ago.” Admission to the museum is free — it’s open Fridays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. The museum’s founders plan to expand their offerings to include more interactive exhibits to further interest young people in the neighborhood’s many stories. “One of our goals is to become a cultural hub,” said Perez. The museum also tells the story of Wendy the Welder, a counterpart to the famous Rosie the Riveter icon that paid tribute to women who worked in the shipyards. Another exhibit pays tribute to Irish Hill, the one-time working-class neighborhood that existed on a nearby hill that is no longer there. As Dogpatch and the Pier 70 area undergo a massive revamp, Linenthal hopes the museum will inform people of the origins of the brick buildings and metal barns that once were home base to a thriving industrial machine. “Things are changing so quickly that I think it’s important to look at the past just to understand all the changes the city has been through before,” Linenthal said. ...read more read less