Thursday Doors–Cannery Row

Worker housing door, Cannery Row, Monterey, California

On my recent trip to California, we stopped in Monterey and visited Cannery Row.  I had not been there in probably five or six years.  There were a lot of changes to the Cannery Row area. They have put in some nice walkways and stairways from one street down below to the lower streets.  There are a lot of new historical markers and information on the area when it was the hub of the sardine canning business and the tide pools which brought Steinbeck to the area to study marine biology.  The door above is on one of the buildings that has been added since I was last there.  It is the door to one of the “shacks” which served as housing for the cannery workers.  They are tiny houses (about 10′ x 14′) which were the home to entire families and in a lot of cases, they held two or three families in very close quarters.

Worker housing, Cannery Row

And this is one of the houses.  They were all lined up one next to the other.  The ones here have been preserved and although the paint doesn’t look great, they have been painted to resemble what they looked like during the heyday of the sardine canneries.

While doing some reading on the houses, I came across a link between these houses and the ones that were built by the government to house those that were displaced by the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 which were also 10’x14′. After they were no longer needed, some were destroyed while others were sold and put together to make larger houses. Some disappeared entirely and it is quite possible, in fact due to the proximity, quite probable that the worker housing in Monterey was first used in San Francisco.

For a doorway to more posts with interesting doors, head over to Norm’s site.