Oakland Underfoot

The O. C. Jones & Sons company just turned 100 and is going strong from its Berkeley headquarters near Jones Street.

Founder Olin Clement Jones (1890-1954) was born and raised in northwestern Iowa. He married there and started a family, then all of a sudden moved to Berkeley in 1923 or 1924, where he started a concrete business. I have documented stamps by his firm from 1929, 1937, 1938 and 1939 in Oakland. His two sons Harold Rex (1916-2003) and Robert Carlson (1920-2007) joined the firm during World War II and its name changed. It earned its general contractor’s licence in 1947 and its general engineering contractor’s licence in 1954. Apparently by that time it no longer stamped sidewalks. Under Harold’s guidance, O.C. Jones & Sons prospered, and today its trucks can be seen wherever contractors work in middle California.

A notable local project of theirs is the roundabouts at Gilman and I-80. I expect to find more O. C. Jones stamps in Berkeley and Albany.

1717 Fairview Street, Berkeley

This handsome stamp on a concrete wall is the best mark left by August “Gus” Peterson. His sidewalk stamps are rare and poorly preserved; only one has a date (1914) in all of Oakland. It looks like there ought to be more in Berkeley.

Peterson was born in Sweden in 1880 and came to the US in 1903. The 1905 directory lists him at 3132 King Street, and in 1909-10 he was listed at 3130 King.

The 1910 census had him and his wife Signe, another Swedish immigrant, and their infant daughter Ruby living at 3132 King. The 1920 census found them and Ruby at 993 56th Street along with son Robert, Gus’s brother John and two Swedish lodgers. The 1922-24 directories list him living at 5979 Telegraph Avenue. At the time of his death, in 1926, he lived at 5205 Genoa Street.

He’s hard to trace in the newspapers because his name was a common one. In the listings I cite here, he was identified as a cement worker and/or married to Signe.

Five years ago, a commenter identified himself as Peterson’s grandson. Apparently Gus’s son Robert died without issue, so the line must go through Ruby.

Karl Arvid Johanson was born in Piteå, Norrbotten County, Sweden in 1884, where he apprenticed as a carpenter. His biography in F. C. Merritt’s History of Alameda County (1928) rather pointedly notes that “on the completion of his apprenticeship [he] was regarded as an expert workman, receiving a diploma as a journeyman carpenter.” He emigrated at age 19, arriving at Ellis Island from Liverpool on the S.S. Ivernia, and knocked around the Upper Midwest, where for the next three years he went from job to low-wage job in the lumber industry.

He finally put his talents to work in Seattle, where he got into the building business and stayed for 15 years. There he married Jenny Lundholm, a fellow Norrbottener, and there the couple had five children.

Finally, having made some money, he relocated to Oakland in 1920 and jumped into the postwar building boom and was “more than ordinarily successful, having built over three hundred houses in this district, one hundred and seven having been built by him in one year.”

His draft record notes, “third finger right hand off below second joint,” a common injury among carpenters and lumber workers. (Jerry Garcia suffered the same, from a childhood mishap.)

I have found only two of his sidewalk marks in Oakland, both from 1924. One is on 55th Avenue and the other is on 51st Avenue.

He died in 1962, survived by all his children, and is buried at Mountain View Cemetery.

“L. Villata” marks are found all over Oakland, but mostly in North Oakland. They’re all alike, except for a very few that were hand-inscribed with the date. I have documented dates from 1950 to 1953. Villata’s sidewalks are strong and well made, using a dark and slightly bluish concrete mix.

Luigi Villata was born in Asti, Piemonte, Italy on 19 April 1890, but unlike many Italians who came to Oakland he waited until age 31, sailing from Le Havre in 1921. His older brother Stefano preceded him and was in business in Oakland as a cement worker, under the name Stephen, in the 1923 directory living at 454 42nd Street. Other family members in Oakland included brother Francesco “Frank” and half-brother Romolo. A sister, Bany, lived in San Francisco. Luigi became a U.S. citizen in 1929. Starting in the 1925 directory he referred to himself as Louis.

At first he lived (and worked) with his brother Steve on 42nd Street, then moved to 617 47th Street in 1930 and to a bungalow at 5217 West Street in 1936, where he remained until at least 1958. It must be during this period that he used the “L. Villata” stamp. As of 1967, retired, he was living at 4408 View Street.

His World War II draft record, from 1942, indicates that he was about 5 foot 6 and weighed 170 pounds, a typical Italian fireplug. At the time he was working for W. H. Wisheropp.

Luigi married Luigia (Louise) Orecchia in 1925, and they had a son, Frank J., that year. She died in 1940 and is interred at Mountain View Cemetery. In 1944 he subsequently married his second wife Josephine (Maria Giuseppina) Piodelli, who died in 1957, and his third wife, Esther (Esterina) Brusasco, in 1958. Luigi passed on in 1976, and his son Frank died just a few years ago.

Silvio Giuntoli was born in Alguscio (Firenze), Italy in 1890. He immigrated in 1904 and married in 1919. He and his wife Lena Mary (1893-1962) bore no children, but a niece Verna lived with them as of the 1940 census and was listed as a daughter upon Lena’s death. Silvio was naturalized in 1942, six years after his wife. His education ended at sixth grade.

His World War II draft card described him as standing 5’4″, 160 lb, with gray eyes and hair, and “left hand missing.” A short item in the Tribune on 26 August 1954 said he “has been a one-armed cement finisher since the age of 35 when he lost his left hand at the wrist in a concrete mixer.” That accident, then, would have been in 1925.

He first appears in the 1923 directory at 1159 Elmhurst Avenue, the old name of 91st Avenue. (It’s still a sweet little street.) He moved to 9853 A Street in 1929, where he lived until his death in 1968, but the address on his stamp never changed.

I believe he had his first sidewalk stamp made in 1927; it looked like this.

For the next few years, he erased the final digit of the year and wrote it in by hand. As of 1932, his stamp bore only the “19” of the year, and the remaining digits, as well as the month and day, were impressed with a separate set of very small numbers.

I have documented Giuntoli marks in Oakland from 1927 to 1950. They’re all over town, but especially thick around Elmhurst.