User:Kevin Murray/forbes



Forbes Island is a floating structure of roughly 100 feet in length, moored in San Francisco Bay. Builder Forbes Kiddoo began the process in 1975, as his private residence. It was launched in 1980 in Sausalito California, but forced to move by government intervention. After multiple relocations and much controversy, Forbes Island is now operated as a restaraunt and tourist attraction in San Francisco at Pier 39.

Forbes Kiddoo
Forbes Thor Kiddoo was born in Neshanic, N.J., in 1938, to George and Betty Kiddoo. His father was a carpetner and a welder. Forbes was raised in Brooklyn with three siblings: Vanatta, Torsten and Nanette. He competed high school in Brooklyn in the 1956.

Soon after high school he enlisted in the Coast Guard, where he was a cook for two years until he was discharged in 1959. .

In 1959 he arrived in San Francisco, working for the next decade as carpenter, involved in projects such as the Palace of Fine arts and St Mary's Cathederal. In 1968 he opened his own business in Sausalito building custom barges and house boats. His homes were built on buoyant concrete barge bases to Kiddoo's own innovative designs, using smooth lines, with an emphasis on warm woods of the 1960s deco style.

Most of the earlier houseboats were supported by lightweight foam, limiting the livable area to above the water. But, Forbes Kiddoo started making floating homes using displacement hulls from ferro-cement in the late 1960s. While he was not the first to fabricate a barge from reinforced concrete, he did initiate "basements" which allowed an additional floor below the waterline and added buoyancy in order to build larger structures above .”

One of the most recognized structures on the Sausalito waterfront is a Forbes joint venture with real estate developer Bill Harlan. The Taj Mahal was originally designed by Charles Porter and Robert Steinwedell in the 1960s, as a single-level open floorplan entertainment hall. Forbes Kiddoo built the concrete-and-steel barge in 1968 and the Taj was eventually completed by Harlan in the mid 1970s, as a three level 4,500 square foot residence.

The Forbes Ferro Corporation built 100 house boats up until 1986, many of these are still moored in Sausalito. But in the 1970s, large new marinas were being built along the Sausalito shore of Richardson Bay. Houseboaters who had been living rent-free, were now forced to pay berth fees and comply with vessel standards. A few clashes occurred between the police and houseboaters, but in the end most complied with the regulations of the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, formed from officials of Marin County and four cities bordering on the Bay: Sausalito, Tiburon, Belvedere and Mill Valley.

The boat yard began losing money after these restrictions on houseboats virtually eliminated the demand for custom-made floats. Kiddoo said ''"In 1986 we built one barge," he says. "We used to build 24 each year."'' In 1986 Forbes Ferro Corporation was closed and Kiddoo began Forbes Construction Company, which built and repaired piers.

Forbes personal residence
Jules Verne's vivid depiction of a state-of-the-art submarine in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was Kiddoo's professed inspiration behind his next ambition, a project that he began in 1975: the hands-on construction of his own fl oating island, complete with soil, vegetation and paper-white picket fences.In 1980, after five years of weekend and evening work, and slowed by the necessity of gathering funds and ongoing houseboat commissions, Kiddoo launched Forbes Island, a fl oating homestead with 120 tons of rock around the perimeter, 100 tons of sand for the beach, and 40 tons of topsoil in which to plant the kitsch palm

When demand flagged, Kiddoo was left with nearly all his assets sunk into his floating home. Between the $4,000 a year in property taxes and the endless improvements, "it's kept me poor," he says. To offset expenses Kiddoo began renting out the island for parties at $500 an hour and giving guided tours for $25 a head. Artist Leroy Neiman has been aboard, as has an ill-mannered group who took snaps of each other snuggled in the beds.

Now the 100-by-50-foot "island," which is taxed as a boat and weighs an estimated 700 tons, is on the market for $2 million.

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