Clay Street near 16th Street
The Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company existed between 1900 and 1907; before that it was The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company and after that it was the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company (“The” was taken out of the name). Background in this post.
This access cover, with its rare scallop design (others are here and here), seems to always have a vehicle parked on it. Today I finally got a decent look at it.
Grand Avenue was closed off today for the 4th of July, giving me a chance to inspect the roadway. This classic access cover near Embarcadero appears to be bronze.
2nd Street at Castro Street
This is a mystery access cover. The site is where Oakland’s original gas works was located, back in the 1800s. As I understand it, they manufactured gas by roasting coal in those days. “H & L Co” stands for “heating and lighting company,” but I expected this to have an “O” for Oakland, like the later Oakland Gas, Light and Heat Company.
The other odd bit about this lid is its scallop design, attested in only one other place, the ancient Sunset Telephone & Telegraph Company lid on 6th Street.
19th and West Streets
I think this may be the notorious people who made a mess of things in Berkeley.
38th Avenue and Redding Street
An unusual configuration from Empire Foundry.
While I’m at it, here’s a street drain plate from Empire. Don’t know where this is, because I’ve had the photo lying around for a long time.
437 25th Street
The Fire Alarm Police Telegraph system was the cutting edge of public safety a century and a half ago. It was a wired system that connected battery-powered alarm boxes to transmit alarms instantly across a city. San Francisco had such a system in 1865, described in a history on the S.F. City Museum site. The 1906 earthquake led to complete upgrades in this system. San Francisco dedicated its new Central Fire Alarm Station in 1915, but Oakland was ahead of that city, having finished its fire alarm police telegraph system in 1911. A main building at 13th and Oak Streets was connected by underground cables to police stations and call boxes and fire stations across the city. “With its isolation, fire-proof construction and underground system of cables,” the Tribune reported, “the entire city might burn or be shaken to pieces by earthquake and the operation of the system would not be disturbed in the least.”
Presumably this access cover dates from that time and belonged to that system.
This access cover, next to the Paramount Theater on 21st Street, combines hardware from East Bay MUD and its primary predecessor, the East Bay Water Company. The two leaves look to be the same vintage and installed at the same time. It’s my theory that when EBMUD took the reins of the East Bay’s water system in the 1920s, they inherited a bunch of plumbing stock with the EBWCo logo and just deployed it until they ran out. It helped that local foundries could quickly adapt their existing forms to the new client.
Oakland Underfoot 