Car Ferry House

Mary Breuer, live aboard the Maritol, a decommissioned Icelandic car ferry docked at Pier 54 in the Mission Bay neighborhood of San Francisco. Ms. Breuer her husband started looking for industrial buildings to buy years ago. But despite the vacancies created by the dot-com crash, they could not find a suitable building. "I'd seen tugboats that had been converted," Mr. Lundberg said, "so I thought, 'What about a small ship?' " She found the Maritol, which was built in 1975, listed for $260,000 on a Web site which deals in used and repossessed ships. They flew to Iceland to buy it and hired five of the ship's crew members to deliver it through the Panama Canal to San Francisco, a seven-week trip. They spent another $600,000 repainting the exterior, rebuilding the engine, converting the electrical system to United States standards and other alterations required to make the ship habitable.link