Rosie the Riveter

About the Rosie the Riveter Memorial Design
Also see the Bay Trail Markers

A sculpture evoking a ship's hull under construction is made of stainless steel. "Image ladders" recall those used by workers to traverse the prefabricated ship parts. Etched granite pavers begin at the hull and cover the length of the keel walk, including a timeline of events on the home front and individual memories of the period.

View of Rosie the Riveter Memorial with Richmond Marina and San Francisco Bay in background.
This site was formerly Kaiser Shipyard No. 2.

Designed by visual artist Susan Schwartzenberg and landscape architect/environmental sculptor Cheryl Barton, the Rosie the Riveter Memorial: Honoring American Women's Labor During WWII is the first in the nation to honor and interpret this important chapter of American history.

An estimated 18 million women worked in WWII defense industries and support services including steel mills, foundries, lumber mills, aircraft factories, offices, hospitals and daycare centers.

Over 200 people including over 200 "Rosies" attended the dedication ceremony on October 14, 2000. Developed for an existing waterfront park, Schwartzenberg and Barton's design recalls the history of shipbuilding at Richmond's Kaiser Shipyards, the largest and most productive of the war.

Sited at the former Kaiser Shipyard No. 2, the memorial evokes the act of constructing the ships with mass-assembly techniques adopted by Kaiser to make ships in Richmond more quickly, and the process of reconstructing memories of women who worked on the home front.

View from hull down the keel walk to the central stack. This image ladder combines photographs of the shipyards with memorabilia gathered during the course of the memorial project.

This tight enclosure evokes the cramped work spaces women often faced and holds an etched steel image of a woman welder. Shortly after the Memorial was dedicated, someone left a pair of insignia patches here as an offering.

Shaped to recall a ship's stack, this structure holds a ring of panels combining blueprints used in ship fabrication with women's memories of work in the shipyards.

This image ladder combines photographs of women at work with coverage of national home front casualties from the New York Times and an article from the Kaiser Shipyards "Fore 'n Aft" about the double burden women faced on the job and at home.

Quote on armrest at overlook platform reads, "You must tell your children, putting modesty aside, that without us, without women, there would have been no Spring in 1945."

Selected through a 1998 competition open to West Coast artists, the team describes their design as a "construction metaphor exploring the symbolic connection between building ships and the reconstructive processes of human memory."

The principal component is a walkway, the length of a ship's keel, which slopes toward the San Francisco Bay and aligns with the Golden Gate Bridge.

The path is inscribed with a timeline about the home front and quotes from women workers sandblasted into white granite. Sculptural elements of stainless steel encountered on the walkway are drawn from ship's blueprints and suggest the unfinished forms of hull, stack and stern under construction.

Two gardens - one of rockrose and one of dune grass - occupy the location of the ship's fore and aft hatches.

Porcelain enamel panels on the hull and stack reproduce memorabilia and letters gathered from former shipyard workers during the course of the Memorial project, along with photographs of women at work in jobs across the nation.

The panels, quotes and timeline illustrate the complex opportunities, challenges and hardships faced by women during the war years, including gender discrimination, hazardous working conditions, food rationing, and shortages of housing and childcare.

The Memorial was commissioned by the City of Richmond and the City of Richmond's Redevelopment Agency.

All photographs on this page courtesy of Lewis Watts.