It’s a fish! It’s a boat! It’s … a house?

If you were surveying San Francisco’s extensive waterfront a few weeks ago, you may have caught an interesting, but uniquely Bay Area, sight: a floating two-story home. This large, wood-shingled home was seen being towed across the Bay as the owners moved from Redwood City’s Docktown Marina to Sausalito. Though this may seem odd, it actually comes from a long tradition of moving houseboats in the region. 

The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco rapidly increased the demand for floating homes, which became one of the few solutions for families that had lost their homes further inland. 40 years later, however, Sausalito’s shipyard became home to 20,000 workers abandoned at the end of the war. They chose, then, to build a community of floating homes from the leftover lumber, metal, and unfinished boats from the war. Eventually, though, Sausalito, home to the largest population of floating homes, became a city populated by artists and creatives in the ‘60s. Soon, living in their famous floating homes became more of a choice than a necessity, but it remains some of the most unique housing in the Bay Area. If you are curious, you can stay in a Sausalito floating home on Airbnb, or view them from the beautiful Sausalito coastline. 

This tradition of floating homes eventually spread across the peninsula, with Redwood City’s Docktown Marina becoming one of the largest outside of Marin in the ‘70s. Following recent legal disputes with the city, however, most of the boats have left, some resettling in Sausalito. This houseboat was the second-to-last floating home at the marina in Redwood City and is expected to join other houseboats at Commodore Marina in Sausalito. 

While houseboats are fairly common in the Bay Area, it is a rare sight to see one moving. San Francisco also has a long history of moving houses on land. In 2021, an ornate 1880 Italianate-style house was moved seven blocks to a new location of Fulton Street. Through mechanics like these San Francisco is able to keep its unique and historic architecture!