U.S. Appraisers Stores and Immigration Station

1. 1940

   The United States Appraisers Building, 1940, a Public Works Administration project by Gilbert Stanley Underwood under the supervising architect Louis A. Simon.

   Modern Architecture and Landscape Design Context Statement, adopted 2011
2. 1941

   Built.

3. 1944

   A sixteen-storey reinforced-concrete federal office building put up by the Public Works Administration on the site of the 1874 Appraisers Building, which was demolished in 1940. The Office of the Supervising Architect under Gilbert Stanley Underwood designed it in the PWA Moderne style; wartime rationing delayed its official opening until 1944, a year after the PWA was wound up. Its only notable ornament is an American eagle over the main entrance by Lombard & Ludwig. It was remodelled in 1985-88 by Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz and is listed in the National Register.

   San Francisco New Deal Historic Context Statement, adopted 2023
4. 1944

   Its upper floors were built with dormitories, private rooms, day rooms, kitchens and rooftop exercise terraces for detained immigrants, and truck docks on Custom House Place served the appraisal of imports. Gilbert Stanley Underwood designed it as consultant to the Public Buildings Administration; the eagle over the Sansome Street entrance was carved by the architectural sculptors Lombard & Ludwig.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
5. 1945

   Designed in 1939 and completed in 1945; by the mid-1990s the U.S. Appraisers Building had been found eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

   U.S. General Services Administration and San Francisco Department of City Planning, Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report — San Francisco Federal Building, 1996.
6. 1945

   Immigrants were detained and processed here until 1960 — the successor to the Angel Island Immigration Station, closed as too costly, and the main gateway for entrants from Asia and the Pacific until air travel and new immigration laws outgrew it. The detention floors then became offices, and the building remains the region's immigration headquarters.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
7. August 16, 1964

   Photographed, showing the U. S. Appraisers Building.

   San Francisco Subjects Photograph Collection (SFP 162), San Francisco Public Library
8. 1988

   The main entrance was rebuilt and widened for emergency and wheelchair access, removing the original inner vestibule, and the eagle was remounted.

   National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service
9. Oct 2001

   Issued Permit M17385 $$$ $5,500,000

   Street space.

10. Feb 2002

    Issued Permit M19041 $$$ $3,500,000

    Street space.

11. Jun 2002

    Issued Permit M20813 $$$ $300,000

    Street space permit.

12. Nov 2002

    Issued Permit M22257 $$$ $100,000

    Street space permit.

13. August 13, 2013

    Listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its place in Pacific Coast customs and in Asian immigration to the United States.

    National Register of Historic Places nomination, National Park Service

7 nominal $1 street-space or sidewalk permits are omitted from the timeline. 2 expired permits are not shown. A federal environmental review dates the building's completion to 1945; the assessor's roll gives 1941 and the page's other sources give 1940 and 1944.