Marconi Wireless-Synanon Tomales Bay Headquarters Historic District (Boundary Increase)

Four buildings on the east shore of Tomales Bay in Marshall, California, survive from Station KPH, a wireless receiving station built in 1913 by the J.G. White Engineering Company for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. They are a two-story hotel for operators and guests, a powerhouse, and two cottages for the station's managers. All are steel-frame and concrete buildings with red tile roofs. The hotel has a long veranda on 35 concrete pillars and stone fireplaces in the lobby and billiard room. Dedicated in 1914, the station worked with a transmitter at Bolinas to open dependable communication between California and Hawaii, and onward to Japan, and it also served ships across the Pacific. The Navy took it over in 1917, and the Radio Corporation of America operated it from 1920 until radio work moved to Point Reyes in 1931. The nominated parcel excludes the original operating building and later buildings constructed during Synanon's 1965 to 1980 occupancy.