Oakland Underfoot

PG&E’s utility hole covers have dates on them. These two examples are on 20th Street near Broadway, and you can see the subtle differences in the designs from 1969 and 2011.

These aren’t the same thing as a sidewalk stamp. These dates are presumably the day the covers were manufactured, not the day they were lowered into place on the street. Indeed, the older lid may have been used somewhere else for many years. We’ll never know. Whereas sidewalk stamps bear the dates they were created, like a newspaper.

This entry was posted on 4 November 2015 at 12:03 am and is filed under  Access covers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.