Oakland Underfoot

The paving and grading firm Gallagher & Burk is an Oakland success story. It began in the early 1940s with the purchase by John A. (Jack) Gallagher (1908-?) and G. F. Burk of the Heafey-Moore Company, founded as Heafey, Moore & McNair by John Heafey, Milton J. Moore and Robert B. McNair in the early 1920s. Heafey-Moore operated an asphalt plant at 344 High Street as well as the Leona Quarry. I don’t know the details of the business arrangement, but Heafey-Moore continued existence until at least 1960.

I have documented Gallagher & Burk sidewalk stamps with firm dates from 1942 to 1962, and some questionable ones that may be earlier and later.

Edwin James “Ted” Gallagher (1920-2014) joined Jack at the firm in 1945 and eventually took charge. His son Ted Jr. served as president from 1987 to 1998.

In 1998 Gallagher & Burk was acquired by Oliver de Silva, Inc., and is now an independent affiliate of DeSilva Gates Construction, with a stub of a website. Its asphalt plant at 344 High Street, just before the High Street Bridge, produces material for paving jobs large and small all over the Bay area. Its biggest mark on the city of Oakland, however, is the enormous Leona Quarry in the Leona Hills that it acquired in 1946, now the “Monte Vista Villas at Leona Quarry.”

Fred Peter (Federigo Pietro) Ferrero was born in 1883 in Castellamonte, Torino province, Italy, emigrated in 1899, and launched a pottery business in 1920. Around 1927 he changed the firm to Fred Ferrero & Son, with his eldest son Romeo Achilles Ferrero (1908-1998). The other son Aldo Joseph (1912-1987) joined the firm, making it Fred Ferrero & Sons, in 1932. Fred died in 1944. In 1928 the History of Alameda County said about him, “He is a man of excellent personal qualities, straightforward in all his relations, and cordial and friendly in manner, and throughout Alameda County he is held in high regard.”

The company’s address was 1715 Webster Street, Alameda, starting in the early 1920s. Noted work by Ferrero includes the concrete and plaster for the Latham Square Building (1926) and the “art stone and staff ornaments” for the Grant Miller chapel on Telegraph Avenue (1931).

There are only two Fred Ferrero marks on Oakland sidewalks, neither of them dated. This one is on Longfellow Avenue.

Fred and Lucia (1888-1975) as well as Romeo and Jennie (1909-1978) are buried in San Pablo.

Aldo is the A. J. Ferrero of Alameda whose marks appear on Oakland sidewalks from 1952 to 1981. They are elegant and lightly pressed, so that they show up best when the sun is low.

In the mid-1960s, the firm also used this lozenge-shaped mark. It’s identical to the mark used in Alameda for work produced by the City of Alameda, so perhaps they had a contract with the city at that time.

Aldo and Jan (1913-1991) are also buried in San Pablo.

There is also a G. Ferrero, who left a single surviving mark in Oakland from 1927, but he is not mentioned in connection with Fred’s family.

The Ransome Company traces its lineage back to 1870 and is still in the original business.

It was founded by Ernest L. Ransome (1844-1917), famous in engineering circles. His firm built the first reinforced concrete buildings in North America, including an Alameda refinery for “Borax” Smith’s company. The 1880 census listed him, his wife and their six children living at 1031 7th Avenue in East Oakland. He gave his occupation, there and in the 1880 business directory, as “artificial stone manufacturer.” The business was in San Francisco as of 1884, and the 1892 directory calls it Ransome & Cushing. At the time the family lived at 1505 10th Avenue with their six children.

Ransome’s firm is credited with constructing the Western Pacific train station on 3rd Street, Oakland’s first historical landmark.

His son Bernard Ransome (1873-1946) entered the business in 1898, starting in the East Oakland Contracting and Paving Company. He lived at 713 15th Street at the time. The rest of the family had moved to Brooklyn two years earlier.

There is a bit of confusion (in my mind anyway) about the Ransome company’s identity. Ransome Concrete Construction Company first appears in 1900 in the Oakland directory, at 1016 Broadway, with Bernard as its vice president and manager. A Hutchinson-Ransome Company also existed in 1902 and 1903, presumably a joint venture ensuing upon Bernard’s marriage in 1901 to Martha Hutchinson of the Hutchinson construction dynasty. (The couple lived at 426 Orange, in Adams Point, and later moved to 190 Grand Avenue. Bernard is buried in the Hutchinson family plot at Mountain View Cemetery.) By 1904 Ransome had left the Hutchinson Company, and that year ads for Ransome Construction Company appeared in the Oakland Tribune, listing Bernard Ransome as president and Hugh Crummey as secretary.

That year it was awarded a $300,000 contract to construct 12 miles of Foothill Boulevard below High Street, “the scenic boulevard between Oakland and Haywards.” The San Francisco Call reported, “The drive follows the contour of the hills at an elevation of about 200 feet, and gives a splendid view of the country.” This opened up a huge tract of land to developers. The firm also “bitumenized” San Pablo Avenue south of Emeryville starting in 1905. It also built the Ocean Shore rail line from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, through Devil’s Slide.

This sidewalk stamp, at 215 Ridgeway Avenue, may date from that time. The arched lettering and the presence of stars are typical of pre-1910 marks.

At the same time, the Ransome Concrete Company was listed in the 1907 San Francisco directory with Bernard Ransome and Hugh Crummey among its principals, specializing in “reinforced concrete building construction.” As of 1908 Ransome and Crummey had left and were listed just below the Concrete company as the Ransome-Crummey Construction Company. A famous court case later in that decade went against the company, the ruling hinging on the company’s suspension after it failed to pay taxes. I have found its sidewalk stamps dated 1914 and 1915.

At this time, the firm’s main yard was at 28th and Poplar in West Oakland. It gave Broadway its first asphalt paving. It operated rock quarries at Point San Pedro (for the rail line), Leona Heights (now the site of Merritt College), and Exchequer in the Sierra Nevada foothills (now under Lake McClure).

E. L. Ransome served as chairman of a new Ransome company in New York in 1916, but he died the next year. Ransome-Crummey disappeared from the directory as of 1921, around the time the notorious Ransome-Crummey case ended with its last appeal, although Bernard was still listed as a contractor.

Ransome teamed up with a Mr. Randle as the Ransome-Randle Company and were winning city contracts for street improvements in 1919 and 1920. At least one stamp from this company remains in Berkeley.

The Ransome Company appears to have been reincorporated in 1927 in Santa Cruz County, still under Bernard Ransome and Hugh Crummey. Bernard had left Oakland for Berkeley by that time. This odd mark is the only record I have from that time.

From 1934 through 1969 (the latest directory I have access to), the Ransome Company was in Emeryville at 4030 Hollis Street, and Bernard’s son Tallent was vice president under his father, who was president until he died at age 72. I have examples of this mark ranging from 1939 to 1991.

Today the firm is in San Leandro, at 1933 Williams Street, but is no longer led by a Ransome. Here is its headquarters . . .

. . . and a recent sidewalk stamp . . .

. . . and one of today’s trucks.

The Andersen & Montgomery partnership did a small number of surviving sidewalks in the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood and in Piedmont.

I’ve found two other marks dated 1929, but usually there are no dates.

The address on the stamp, 3796 Howe Street, was wiped out by the construction of the MacArthur-Broadway shopping center and then by the new Kaiser hospital building. John Andersen lived there with his wife Hulda (Lobel), according to the 1930 directory and the census. He was born in Denmark in 1859 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1883. Hulda was German, born in 1864, and immigrated in 1888. So they were pretty old by this time. She died in 1954, but I don’t know about him.

John Andersen was surely the “J. Andersen,” of 3774 Howe Street, responsible for this mark:

These date from 1912 to 1928 and are found mainly in North Oakland.

Robert B. Montgomery was a much younger man, born in Colorado in 1904 or 1905. He married the former Alice Sueell in 1929 and raised a family at 2626 Ivy Drive, where her folks lived. He dealt with bungalows, mainly. He is also responsible for this 1931 stamp on E. 24th Street.

It’s the only dated example I’ve found. Montgomery got in the paper in 1951 when he bought the Olympic Hotel building, at 2nd Avenue and E. 12th Street, and moved it across the street.