Oakland Underfoot

The water company has one of these at nearly every property in town, covering the valves and meters for each lot it supplies. I’ve documented these three varieties, from three different manufacturers, that bear dates on them. Now I’m going to keep my eyes open in case there are more that’ve been lurking unnoticed. The dates, needless to say, reflect only the day they were manufactured, not the day they were deployed.

The oldest of the three, on the left, is significant because the sidewalk (at 160 Requa Road, Piedmont) also includes a J. H. Fitzmaurice II stamp, which I have firmly documented only from 1926 to 1941, so it establishes that the stamp was used into the late 1940s.

But here’s an example of the middle one with a date of 1934. (I’ve seen them as old as 1932.)

Perhaps Art Concrete Works made lids during two separate periods — the letters and layout aren’t the same, and the older one has the word “Patented” under the maker’s name.

There are several other versions of the EBMUD lid that have no dates.

This entry was posted on 29 January 2025 at 7:52 am and is filed under  Streetscape. 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.