This impression at Lee Avenue at Perkins Street, now gone, was the best example of J. A. Marshall’s stamp in Oakland.
John Albert Marshall (1868-1925), born in Missouri, began his career when concrete craftsmen were still called “artificial stone workers.” That was his title in the 1892 directory for San Francisco, where he lived until 1895 when he relocated to Berkeley. He was known as “J.A.”
J.A. Marshall fulfilled a large paving contract for much of the Adams Point neighborhood during 1897-98, so that would put this and other marks there in the 1800s category.
He sold his sidewalk business in 1901 to Lindgren & Hicks and moved to Portland Oregon, where the city had started a drive to pave all of its sidewalks by 1905. There, with his brother Rudolph Augustus “R.A.” Marshall (1861-1936), a former journalist and supreme court clerk, he launched the Marshall Brothers firm, which laid sidewalks until around 1910. The family made strong connections in Portland during that time, and the Marshall Bros. escutcheon, the same as Oakland’s, can still be found on Portland sidewalks. The firm branched out from sidewalks to more ambitious construction projects.
When the 1906 earthquake triggered a great wave of residential construction in the East Bay, he returned and quickly thrived as a builder of custom homes.
His modus operandi was to build, then sell houses for his growing family, each one more opulent. A practitioner rather than originator of the Berkeley Craftsman style, he left many homes still standing in Berkeley and Oakland neighborhoods.
He became wealthy enough for the family to appear regularly in the society pages both in Portland and Berkeley, especially his wife, the former Emily Virginia Jones (1872-1956), and their three daughters. At the time J.A. died, they were all living in a baronial home at 18 Tanglewood Road. His wife promptly sold the place and moved to a luxury apartment at 22 Domingo Avenue, where the papers followed her doings as “Mrs. John Albert Marshall” long after her husband’s death.
J.A. was the contractor whose young relative, future architect Leola Hall, accompanied him and learned the foundations of her trade. Two of his three sons became contractors, Gardner E. Marshall and J. A. Marshall II. He seems to have had a cantankerous streak, and his sons did little work with him, succeeding or failing on their own. The third son, Eliot, became a car dealer in Concord.
Oakland Underfoot 
16 March 2021 at 12:19 pm
Nice JA Marshall strike at Fulton and Dana as well–makes me wonder about his relation to the architect of the building.
19 January 2022 at 6:12 pm
J.A. Marshall stamps in Oakland seem pretty rare, and I spotted a pair of them this afternoon on Howe Street – have you seen them? Both on the bottom concrete step leading up from the sidewalk to a building, similar to the 1899 stamp on Dwight in Berkeley. There’s no date, but real estate websites show that this building was built in 1897. It’s on the north side of Howe between 40th Street and 40th Street Way. Both stamps are in very good shape – not as good as the one at Lee and Perkins but still very good.
20 January 2022 at 10:33 am
That’s a nice pair, and very visible.
27 June 2025 at 11:08 am
Sadly, this pair of J.A. Marshall marks – actually on Jayne Street very near Perkins – are now gone. The sidewalk in that spot was recently repaved. A number of the oldest contractor paving marks in Adams Point have disappeared due to repaving work over the past 2-3 years.
23 July 2026 at 8:54 pm
I’ve turned this post into a profile of J.A. Marshall. Ken Zinns was helpful with detail.
23 July 2026 at 9:22 pm
It looks like J.A. Marshall owned a lot on Euclid Avenue near Adams Street, shown in this 1900 Block Book. I didnât see any evidence that he ever built anything there though. The lot where the residence of Charles and Mary Bates was located is shown here too, opposite the end of Jayne Street on Euclid.
Ken