View of Fort Mason and the Golden Gate Bridge

Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC) with museums, art exhibits, large event halls and restsurants, occupies the lower site of the former military port, with its piers and warehouses. The Historic wharves, piers and sheds of Lower Fort Mason were originally built from 1912 to warehouse army supplies and provide docking space for army transport ships. By this time, the US Army began to build new bases in Hawaii, the Philippines, and various other Pacific islands. Most of the materiel for those bases was shipped through San Francisco. By 1915, the three piers together with their associated warehouse had been completed, and Fort Mason Tunnel driven under Upper Fort Mason to connect with the railroad network along the Embarcadero.
The Civil War had prompted the construction of several coastal defense batteries located inside the Golden Gate. Initially these defenses were built as temporary wartime structures rather than permanent fortifications and one of these was constructed in 1864 at Point San Jose, as the location of Upper Fort Mason was then known.The fort was named Fort Mason in 1882, after Richard Barnes Mason, a former military governor of California. During World War II, Fort Mason became the headquarters of the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, controlling a network of shipping facilities that spread across the Bay Area. Over the years of the war, 1,647,174 passengers and 23,589,472 measured tons moved from the port into the Pacific. This total represents two-thirds of all troops sent into the Pacific and more than one-half of all Army cargo moved through West Coast ports. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Mason#The_fort_as_government_property