Oakland Underfoot

786 Prospect Street

The San Francisco firm of Lewis M. Merlo Inc. was founded shortly after the 1906 earthquake and is still going strong. They occupy the same address, 1336 Grove Street, today and have the same phone number they acquired in the late 1950s. Their addresses have changed over the years, from 1767 24th Avenue in the early 1950s to 1358 Divisadero in the late 1950s; they were at 1336 Grove, a former livery stable built in 1900, as of 1970. This utility lid and the sidewalk around it must date from that time period.

Details of the life of Lewis Michael Merlo (1913-1982) are scant. San Francisco directories in the mid-1930s list him with various menial occupations; the 1940 census records him as a concrete contractor with his brother Mario Elito Merlo (1917-2013). The 1950 census lists him as a concrete contractor at the 24th Avenue address, age 37, with his wife Erma as bookkeeper. The obituary of a man by the name of John Louis Merlo (1913-1982), with a wife named Erma, called him a founder of the firm. I can only guess that Lewis changed his name or a strange mistake was made. Also, the 1906 founding date must refer to an earlier practice that Lewis M. Merlo acquired in the late 1930s.

Telegraph Avenue near Woolsey Street

Little exists on the web about this firm, which incorporated in Los Angeles in 1906. Its San Francisco office was advertised at 105 Sacramento Street in 1906, but naturally had to relocate after the earthquake, to 12th and Howard, then Beale and Mission. Its ads in the paper said “Metal hose, before and after the fire, and forever.” From 1909 until 1925 it was on the first block of Main Street, at the foot of Market Street, after which it vanished.

The newspapers in Seattle and Portland make no mention of the firm.

The flexible tubing here was probably a gas line.

I’ve only been to the neighborhood between the train station and the UC campus, but the sidewalks there are pretty bare. So this caught my eye, and 1938 is a year I haven’t seen before for a WPA stamp. Oakland has marks from 1939, 1940 and 1941 and that’s it.

371 13th Street

Philip Hinkle, of 116/118 Main Street in San Francisco, was an innovator in elevator design starting in the 1870s. His most important patent, issued in 1882, involved a counterweight arrangement that came to mean a lot of money in the 1890s when many competitors were found to have infringed it. However, Hinkle had sold the patent for a relative pittance years before, and the money went to the Overweight Counterbalance Elevator Company, a firm incorporated just to collect fines from infringers.

There’s no indication who built this particular elevator, but the Hinkle name clearly still had cachet.

This building was originally the Hotel St. George, built right after the 1906 earthquake.