Oakland Underfoot

1375 Rose Street, Berkeley

I’ve documented the Schnoor Bros. mark from 1922 before, but this one is really 22-y. In fact, even the “s” on “Bros.” looks like a 2. That’s been known to happen.

743 Lincoln Avenue, Alameda

I’m going to put up a bunch of stamps I collected in Alameda last month. As always, I only use non-Oakland stamps to document dates that I haven’t found in Oakland. Alameda has stamps from a lot of sidewalk makers who don’t appear in Oakland. One reason, especially in the old days, is that the city required a $200 bond in order to do business, which kept a lot of artisans away and reserved street work for the already successful and/or well connected.

LaPlant marks are scarce in Oakland. I expect to find quite a few more dates in Alameda.

2700 block San Pablo Avenue

I’ve recorded a 1922 Castellotti mark before, but this one features the month as well as the year.

1427 103rd Avenue

This mark pushes back Otto Hennig’s dates back a few years.

1380 102nd Avenue

It looks like N. Lena may have modified a stamp with a “191X” date to make this. But I have no evidence that he was active before 1920, so who knows.

1605 90th Avenue

Here’s a beautiful strike from the only year I’ve found from the elder Mr. Lopes.

1734 Auseon Street

It looks like early in 1922, M. B. Wiggins used large numerals for the date. Later that year he used smaller digits. “2-22” was pretty special. Maybe he started business on 2/2/22, the same day that James Joyce’s Ulysses was published.