Pier 28
The Embarcadero Between Harrison and Bryant
Built 1912-1913

Pier 28 was built in 1912-1913 to specifications desired by its first tenant, Matson Navigation Co. Matson, based in a large and imposing building at 215 Market Street, carried general cargo and passengers to Pacific coast ports and Hawaii.

Pier 28 was built at the same time as Pier 26, Piers 30-32 and two years before Pier 24. Although these piers were structurally different from each other, all were built with facades designed in the Mission Revival style to form an harmonious ensemble. Today, only Pier 26 and Pier 28 remain.

By 1927, Matson had moved to Piers 30-32. Over the following decades Pier 28 was occupied by a number of coastal and intercoastal lines including American-Hawaiian Steamship Company, California & Hawaiian Sugar Refining Corporation, Bay Transport Company, Oceanic and Oriental Navigation Company, Williams Dimond & Company, Overseas Shipping Company, Furness-Withy, Grancolombiana, and Barber Wilhelmsen Line.

American-Hawaiian Steamship Company owned and operated a fleet of twenty-six American-built cargo steamers between New York and San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Puget Sound and the Hawaiian Islands. On the opening of the Panama Canal the company inaugurated its service via that route, which reduced the time between New York and San Francisco from fifty days via the Straits of Magellan to twenty-one days via the canal.

Pier 28 contributes to the Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.