To many San Franciscans, the old, rusting tower structure on rickety Pier 84 near the Islais Creek Landing is just another crane among many dotting San Francisco’s southern waterfront.  But to a group of union pensioners, port officials, architects, and Islais Creek enthusiasts, the relic is a testament to the years of hard labor that helped create the remarkable City around it.  The Copra Crane – so called because it was a vital part of the process of moving dried coconut, or copra, from ship to production facility, and back to ship again – is a monument as important as the Golden Gate Bridge, they say. And like the marvel of engineering that is the bridge, the Copra Crane should also evoke awe; that of the longshoremen, shipbuilders, construction tradesmen, and other laborers and their work, which laid the foundation for modern San Francisco.

Plans to save the crane were crafted a dozen years ago when Archie Green, a San Francisco shipwright prior to World War II and a nationally renowned “lablorist” and labor landmark activist, approached Julia Viera and the Friends of Islais Creek to ask them to champion the structure. The fifty-four ton, five-story-tall tower is the last of its kind on the San Francisco waterfront.  It’s distinct from newer mechanized cargo equipment in that it’s completely hand-operated. The crane was used as part of the City’s copra industry, in which coconut oils were extracted to make everything from cosmetics to movie popcorn butter.  During the first half of the 20th century copra was big industry in San Francisco.  In 1950, only coffee surpassed it in import value. Green thought the crane was a natural for labor preservation.

“That way of working is gone from San Francisco,” said Derek Green, Archie’s son and an assistant business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 6. “Handling cargo and materials by hand does not happen anymore. Copra was an interesting material itself. Not put in sacks, not palletized in boxes – it was bulk cargo that was sticky and had to be picked apart by hand. This is a visual acknowledgment that people do the work – they made that happen before container cranes. It’s a living monument for this part of the City.”

When Archie Green first approached Viera, she and her group were working successfully toward cleaning up Islais Creek. Green recognized that the pair could form an influential and unique partnership between environmentalists and labor. According to Harvey Schwartz, who joined as a historian for the project, and serves as curator of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU) oral history collection, the partnership worked well from the start.

“Here we are, two old longshore workers, a funny old historian, and an old shipwright and navy man – all these old guys and this one woman, Julia. She was eternally amused by that situation, but it was a very good team that was slowly able to convince the Port that this was a good thing – an asset, not a liability.”

With the ILWU’s blessing, Green created the Copra Crane Labor Landmark Association (CCLLA), and brought Potrero Hill residents Bill Ward and Don Watson on board as president and secretary-treasurer. Soon, other labor unions joined in the Copra monument effort, volunteering time, labor, and holding CCLLA meetings in their halls. Robin Chiang of San Francisco design and planning firm RCCo signed on to provide architectural advice for the project. The campaign slowly gained momentum, and by 2001 the Port was hosting CCLLA meetings. In May 2006, the association received $35,000 from the ILWU to repair the pilings under the crane.

Earlier this year, the Port of San Francisco and the Board of Supervisors approved acceptance of a gift of $450,000 in work and materials from the CCLLA, thereby securing the crane.  Plans call for moving it to a temporary port location in June while four pilings are replaced and the platform is restored.

Just as work on his project was about to begin in earnest, on March 22, 2009, 92 year old Archie Green passed away.   “Archie in many ways was the spiritual guide of this whole thing,” Schwartz said. “He’s been there from the beginning, he had such a wide appreciation for labor and landmarks that honored workers, not just the elites of society. He clearly brought the construction trades into this project, did a lot of academic work with the pile drivers – he had a national presence, and it’s just very hard to think about replacing somebody like that.”

According to Derek Green, there’s still much to be done for the project.  Additional money needs to be raised to pay for the sandblasting and repainting of the crane, for instance. But he said, despite the loss of his father, the wheels are in motion and they’ll stay that way.   “The process has been authorized by the City and there will be a transition into doing the actual work,” he said. “We’ll keep on working, keep it going. Everybody’s on board and we want to complete what [Archie] and his friends started more than ten years ago.”

According to Port staff person David Beaupre, the crane must first be lifted by another crane. Then the pier will be repaired and the crane will be sandblasted and painted, a process that will take a year or more and cost about $750,000. The next step is the inspection of the crane by a certified civil engineer to develop the lifting plan for moving the structure.  “We were just about to embark on that when we lost Archie,” he said. “He kind of marched the group and that hit the group hard … Archie was a remarkable man. Like him, the Port recognizes the folks and the labor that built the port, and there isn’t a great amount of recognition on the waterfront for that. With the modernization of maritime cargo, there aren’t as many types of work that still utilize that particular skill. The crane is strategically located where it reflects both the historical and the modern working waterfront.”