Oakland Underfoot

As I surveyed Oakland’s sidewalks, I came to be amused by the marks of M. Cvetich for the variety of stamps he used over his career. At first, in 1928, he had this ordinary, understated mark.

At the time, he was listed as Michael Cvetich in the phone book, living and practicing with his wife Annie at 2515 Adeline Street.

In the mid-1930s, he was listed as Mike Cvetich and he used at least three different stamps. Two included his address and phone number.

The third left off the address, and the phone exchange had changed. This was the stamp he stayed with through the 1940s to 1950, the latest date I have from him.

By 1940, he was giving his name as Milan, which I assume was his real name. But eventually he dropped the phone number.

In addition to these basic stamps, he varied in the way he marked the year, sometimes inside the mark and sometime outside, sometimes with the month and day and sometimes not. He wasn’t very consistent. To me that implies a certain playfulness for someone in this exacting line of work.

So now I have to ask, because I don’t know anyone named Cvetich: How is it pronounced? It looks suspiciously like it might sound like “quidditch.”

Rosas Brothers Construction, our leading current provider of sidewalk repairs, has left marks all over this town in recent years. When contracts come up for bid in the East Bay they compete hard, then get the job done and done well.

Although they don’t have a website, their sidewalk stamps have their phone number, an effective marketing tool used by Oakland concrete contractors since the mid-1920s. When I called that number, I learned that Victor, Umberto and Luis Rosas are the brothers who started this Oakland-based general contracting business in 2002. The offices are still in a little old house on Coliseum Way by the freeway. Their earliest stamp I’ve seen in Oakland is from 2009.

They have used two different marks. The one above came first, then the one below appeared in 2010. It appears that each crew carries its own stamp, because there’s a lot of variety in the marks. Some stamps have a complete set of numbers in the date, while others have the final digit of the date drawn by hand.

One day in early 2014, I happened to walk past one of their work sites in the Laurel district, and there on the ground was one of their silicone rubber stamps.

So this mark prints the data “201—” and the concrete finisher writes the last digit. The stamp goes on after the fresh concrete has begun to set — a worker sprays the job to soften the surface, then pushes the stamp in.

Some of Oakland’s sidewalk makers left 40 years’ worth of dates. Rosas Brothers has a ways to go, but they’ve made a very good start.

Lazzero and Virginia Banchero lived at 2019 86th Avenue, in East Oakland, for many years while he ran his business. Although the 1925 directory lists him as a “cement worker,” the earliest mark I have from L. Banchero & Co. is a bizarre stamp from 1926 in the area, on Plymouth Street.

The Banchero home is still there, complete with a Banchero & Co. mark from 1928 on the sidewalk.

The earliest example of the standard stamp I have is from 1927. For the first few years of his practice, Banchero’s mark read “L. Banchero & Co.”

After 1933, he consistently wiped off the “Co.” (or chiseled it off his stamp). I don’t know why; probably he was just downsizing.

Banchero marks are scattered all over town, but they’re thick on the ground in East Oakland near his home base.

His marks continued until 1948, and possibly 1950. That’s a decent career.

The place now occupied by 1111 Broadway was once the site of the Bacon Building, also known as the Bacon Block. It was named for Henry Douglas Bacon (1818-1893), “a pioneer capitalist of this city” who is also remembered at U.C. Berkeley as the benefactor behind the old Bacon Hall library building.

The Bacon Block or Bacon Building was the second structure here. The original Bacon Block, a wooden building that housed Smith’s Market and many other small businesses, burned on December 30, 1902. The newer steel and concrete structure housed many business offices as of 1904.

^{The Bacon Building in 1911.}

Between then and 1926, when J.C. Penney took over the entire property, at least four businesses in the Bacon Block/Building left their marks on Oakland’s sidewalks.

The Golden Gate Construction Company, “215 BACON BL’K”, was listed in the San Francisco directories of 1902 and 1907. It was listed in the 1910 Oakland directory at this address, but not in any other year. It was a partnership between Harry B. Williams and Joe Rosenberg until 1910, when John R. Sorensen of Berkeley replaced Rosenberg. The new partnership apparently lasted only a year. Oakland has a handful of these hard-to-read marks, none of them with a date. This firm also left the G. G. C. Co. mark, of which I’ve seen maybe three examples.

Harry Bennett Williams (1876-1957), not to be confused with the more prominent contractor Harry C. Williams, succeeded Golden Gate in the same office starting in 1911. He lived on the 900 block of 61st Street. From 1915 through 1926 he was president of the Merchants Exchange and in 1918 he headed the Cement Contractors’ Association. As of 1921 the business was at 1106 Broadway, which was across the street in today’s Key System Building, and a garage is also mentioned out at 61st Street. I think he was probably using his second stamp at that time. His marks are thinly scattered in north and central Oakland, none with a date.

Ernest Hilmer Sundberg (1870-1945), “308 Bacon Block”, was a South African immigrant who lived in San Francisco before moving to East Oakland, on E. 17th Street, then to Pacific Grove. His firm is listed in the Bacon Building in the 1912 and 1913 directories and across the street in the Oakland Savings Bank building in later years. This mark is rare; I have one dated 1912.

Michele “Michael” Bua had a partnership with Roberts, who may be Frank Roberts (whose F. Roberts stamps date from these years) or someone related to the Roberts Brothers firm (Delore Roberts, president and Arthur Roberts, vice-president), which never had a Bacon Building address. I interpret this date as 1922, and a 1924 date is unequivocal. Vallejo Street has a mess of these marks but they’re scarce elsewhere. The address 254 Bacon Building was used by several different firms in the early 1920s, including contractors and real-estate dealers, so it must have been a large office suite.

Simon Aiassa worked and lived on Apgar Street, in North Oakland, with his wife Clorinda and their daughter Caroline. I don’t have access to the 1929 directory, but they were listed in the 1930 directory. He was still there in the 1944 directory. This is the house at 963 Apgar Street today, thanks to Google Maps.

Aiassa is a rather rare Italian name, and Simon was the only one in the Oakland phone book. He was born Simone Aiassa in Italy on 13 October 1878, in the Moriondo district of Torino, and Clorinda was born in Italy around 1887. The 1920 and 1930 censuses also list a daughter, Caroline, born about 1915. If there is uncertainty about her birth date, it may be because she was born in Italy, but the whole family used Americanized spelling for their names. Caroline went to Tech High and got a gold pin for high grades in 1932. Another handful of Aiassas came to California about the same time in Santa Clara County.

S. Aiassa marks are scattered throughout North Oakland, with a few more in Allendale. Few of them are dated, and the dates are always drawn by hand. I have marks from 1928-30, 1932, 1937, 1938, 1940 and 1943.

William B. “Bill” Andrade (1924-2016) left marks on sidewalks all over Oakland. His obituary was in yesterday’s paper and a memorial page is up. He founded the Andrade Concrete Company in San Leandro with his father, August Andrade, shortly after World War II.

In Oakland, I’ve documented Andrade marks dated from 1946 to 1961 (missing 1954, 1957 and 1959). Presumably there are more in San Leandro, Castro Valley and Hayward. The mark above is the earliest I’ve found. Many marks from 1961, the latest year I have, are scattered around Jingletown. His work survives all over Oakland, which speaks to his success and to the quality of his work.

He used a distinctive escutcheon for this company, and also for a short-lived collaboration with Arthur Moniz of Oakland (the two examples I’ve found did not have dates).

He is not to be confused with M. Andrade & Son, which was run by Marvin and Mark Andrade of Oakland.

4500 block Bond Street

In a comment elsewhere on this site, Harold W. Smith’s daughter said, “My father did a lot of concrete work in Alameda and Contra Costa County. He came to California from Kansas, riding the rails as a young teenage during the Great Depression. He got his cement contracting license in the mid to late 1930s. He’d used the stamps mostly in his earlier work.” He lived somewhere other than Oakland.

Smith used the exact same escutcheon as W. H. Fitzmaurice‘s first mark, which it used from 1922 to 1925. I think this is the only example I’ve seen; in any case, I found no example with a date on it.