3819 Monterey Boulevard
A rare new year for me from this prolific firm. As with most Riechel & Bredhoff stamps, this one has the high arch.
1939 – Riechel & Bredhoff
20 May 2025US Flexible Metallic Tubing Co.
14 May 2025
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.
Sidewalk maker: The Avenas
12 May 2025Sebastiano “Sebastian” Avena (1875-1934) was from Carrú, in northeastern Italy, and immigrated with his wife Anna (Soda; 1874-1953) and son Francesco Dominic “Frank” in 1902. They built a house in west Berkeley in 1912 at 1021 Snyder (later Heinz) Avenue. The 1920 census listed them there with four children: Frank (born in France), Mary (born in Pennsylvania), Amerigo “Ted” (born in West Virginia) and Marguerite (born in California). He appears to have taken up the business by 1915 from Francesco, a family relative. His Avena & Sons firm was active as of 1925-1930 with sons Frank (1901-1980) and Ted (1906-1978).
After Sebastian’s death, Frank worked for the city for a while, then revived the firm with his son Frank Adam (1922-2007), and changed the stamp from “S. Avena & Sons” to “Avena & Son,” apparently by erasing the first and last letters of his father’s stamp.
I have only one dated example of each from Oakland, typical for a Berkeley firm.
Out of town: Davis, California
3 May 2025
1959 – John Astorino
24 April 2025
523 29th Street
There are several of these along this stretch of sidewalk, all with ambiguous dates. I interpret this as 1959 and the heck with it.
P. Hinkle’s Patent Elevator
21 April 2025
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.
Out of town: Chicago, Illinois
19 April 2025I had a six-hour layover at Union Station the other week and put in a few miles north, over to the lake and back. These caught my eye along the way.
How could I resist a genuine CTA access cover? This was by the approach to a bridge, North Orleans and West Kinzie Streets.
These were a block or two east on Hubbard Street. They show that the practice of sidewalk stamping is alive and well.
And brass inserts have a long pedigree in Chicago, if you look at the link in the Other Cities list on my home page. I forget exactly where this is. Oakland doesn’t have these.
Oakland Underfoot 