Walter K. Fisher Laboratory

Siino (pronounced Seeno) Boat Works Building

In 1921, an opportunity arose to purchase land adjacent to the laboratory and extend the property line of the Hopkins Marine Station. By acquiring the additional 2.587 acres, at a total cost of $3,007.20, the new location was protected from the intrusion of business enterprises that might impede future development of the seaside laboratory. In 1923, three and a half additional acres were purchased, the Marine Station was now a total of almost eleven acres in size.

In 1925 the Siino (pronounced Seeno) Boat Works was built on the subject property. Owned by master shipwright Angelo Siino, former manager for Monterey Boat Works, the new business focused on boat repair but would earn its sterling reputation for producing strong work boats, in addition to fish hoppers used to catch sardines. Siino built all of his boats without blueprints and hand-picked the wood he used—Douglas Fir, Philippine mahogany and Indiana bending oak—from San Francisco lumberyards.

 In 1939 Monterey Boat Works owner Gus Smith died. Angelo Siino bought the neighboring business from the Smith estate and transferred operations into the Monterey Boat Works building, using the Siino Boat Works building for storage. 

In 1967, the Monterey Boat Works closed, when owner Ray Siino became ill. Also in 1967, Stanford University purchased the nearby Hovden Cannery, which had become the last operating cannery on Cannery Row in 1962. Concerned that the Hopkins Marine Station would be adversely affected by the development of a hotel on the site once the cannery inevitably closed, the university bought the property and leased the facility to San Francisco’s Wilbur-Ellis Company; the cannery was renamed the Portola Packing Company and operated until 1973. The cannery closed permanently when Wilbur-Ellis transferred their business to Moss Landing in 1973.

Walter K. Fisher Laboratory

In 1980, Stanford University administration awarded Hopkins Marine Station fifty percent of the proceeds from the sale of the Hovden property to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. With this substantial sum of money, Hopkins directed a portion of the funds to upgrade various facilities at the Station. These upgrades included a complete renovation of an old redwood building, "Siino Boat Works" that at the time, in 1981, housed the Monterey Sculpture Works and the Monterey Bay Aquarium's planning staff. The MBA vacated their portion of the Warehouse in March 1981 and the Sculpture Works left in December 1981. The following year, 1982, renovations to the Siino Boat Works  were completed adding 6400 square feet to the Station's physical plant, The building would, for a time, house a 70-seat lecture hall, teaching laboratories for cell biology and neurobiology /biomechanics, and four small seminar rooms and offices and promptly renamed the Walter K. Fisher Laboratory.