Oakland Underfoot

371 13th Street

Philip Hinkle, of 116/118 Main Street in San Francisco, was an innovator in elevator design starting in the 1870s. His most important patent, issued in 1882, involved a counterweight arrangement that came to mean a lot of money in the 1890s when many competitors were found to have infringed it. However, Hinkle had sold the patent for a relative pittance years before, and the money went to the Overweight Counterbalance Elevator Company, a firm incorporated just to collect fines from infringers.

There’s no indication who built this particular elevator, but the Hinkle name clearly still had cachet.

This building was originally the Hotel St. George, built right after the 1906 earthquake.

This entry was posted on 21 April 2025 at 8:17 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.