The Maritime Center is part of Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park and one of two surviving Richmond child care centers designed and built to serve women working in the WWII Richmond Kaiser Shipyards. Built in haste without a concrete foundation, the Maritime Center served as a pre-school and child care center continuously from 1943 until 2004, when child-care services moved from the aging facility to a new space. The facility was endangered and rapidly deteriorating when Tom Butt, President of Interactive Resources, Inc., and President and Founder of Rosie the Riveter Trust, the non-profit partner of Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, began a successful seven-year project to rehabilitate and put it into adaptive reuse. Using his skill and experience in historic preservation, architecture, construction, grant writing and politics, Tom lead the rehabilitation of the Maritime Child Care Center in 2004, preparing numerous grant applications and securing $7,000,000 in funding.

In 2010, Tom Butt arranged transfer of property ownership from Contra Costa County to Rosie the Riveter Trust and opened bids for the rehabilitation work. Construction started in March of 2010, and Tom continued to act as pro-bono project manager for Rosie the Riveter Trust, overseeing both the architect (Hamilton + Aitken Architects) and the contractor (Alten Construction).

Today, the Maritime Center is occupied by pre-school and kindergarten classes of the Richmond College Prep Charter School, offices of Richmond Community Foundation and a National Park Service interpretive center.

As part of a national historical park, the property enjoys a status equivalent to a national historic landmark, and is certified LEED Gold.