The peculiar round mark of the Golden Gate Construction Co. is so rare that I had to document this example, one of two at 5519 and 5527 Market Street. The company was in existence in the first decade of the 20th century. Another one is next to Lois the Pie Queen.
Carl T. Petersen paved a lot of Oakland over the years, and he had many years, starting in the mid-1920s and lasting into the 1950s. This 1952 mark at 2009 Capp Street is a good example of his later marks.
Born in Denmark in 1888 or 1889, Petersen was working as a concrete contractor in Oakland as of 1923, at 1318 E. 12th Street. At that time he and his wife Hazel had one son, Carl Jr. They were there in 1924 as well.
The earliest surviving marks of his are from 1925. Those included his address at 3041 Champion Street, in the lower Dimond near the St. Jarlath’s church.
The house at that address is from that period, and the redwood tree is one Petersen could have planted himself.
In the driveway is an example of that early mark.
The latest example I have with that configuration is from 1929. During their time on Champion Street, Carl and Hazel had a second son, Eugene. Afterward Petersen’s marks consisted of only the upper line of text, lightly incised and placed right at the edge of the pavement.
As of 1930 the directory had the Petersens at 2324 E. 20th Street. The 1940 census listed them and their two sons. In the 1967 directory he and Hazel were listed at that address as “retired”. A Hazel Petersen, with the dates 1894-1971, is buried at Mountain View.
The sidewalks of Oakland were not paved with concrete until the late 1800s. Before that, pedestrians were shielded from the dust and mud of the roadside with gravel paths or timber boardwalks, at best. It was a point of pride in Oakland, regularly mentioned in promotional literature, when the sidewalks began to be widely paved.
In some old sidewalk stamps you’ll see the abbreviation “A.S.P.”
That stands for “Artificial Stone Paving,” the early term of art for sidewalk concrete. Starting in 1887, the San Francisco directories had a classified section for artificial stone manufacturers. It included George F. and Harry N. Gray, the notorious Gray Brothers, at 316 Montgomery Street. The Grays operated three quarries in the city at 26th and Douglass streets (Diamond Heights), 29th and Castro streets (Corona Heights) and Green and Sansome streets (Telegraph Hill).
The same directory listed an Oakland firm, Oakland Artificial Stone Company, at 454 Ninth Street. If it ever produced sidewalks in this town, they do not survive.
You may wonder about the “Schillinger Patent.” It was a method, patented by John J. Schillinger in 1870, of making pavements that involved inserting tarpaper or similar materials between blocks of concrete. No less a person than Frederick Law Olmsted made the name famous among Supreme Court scholars when he designed some concrete paving for the U.S. Capitol grounds, specifying a technique of this type, and took the chance that Schillinger’s patent wouldn’t stand up in court. Schillinger sued the government in the federal Court of Claims, and in 1894 the Supreme Court ruled in Schillinger v. United States that because the offense was merely a tort the claims court had no jurisdiction. Oakland paving pioneer W. D. Perine also fought and beat claims by the patent holder.
Another San Francisco artificial stone manufacturer, George Goodman, was listed in the 1893 directory as a Schillinger Patent specialist.
One of his lovely marks survives here, at 1028 E. 17th Street.
When I featured a Land and Water Conservation Fund plaque here a few weeks ago, I had a nagging feeling I’d seen one elsewhere, and there it was in my photos from March 2013. Oakland’s second LWCF site is tucked away next to the covered Central Reservoir, which I wrote about a few years ago in Oakland Geology. With a total of $70,000 from the fund to acquire 4 acres and help develop it, the Central Reservoir project took shape in the early 1970s. That may account for the maturity of the palm allee leading in from East 29th Street — or more likely a suburban estate once occupied this spot.
The park is small but well equipped for kids’ teams to play daytime softball and soccer. It also has picnic tables, bathrooms, a basketball court and views of the steel-roofed reservoir.
I’m glad they left a plaque behind. As the podcaster Roman Mars says, always read the plaque.
I came upon this mark by a house somewhere around 90th Avenue and Thermal Street last year. Gene Anderson, one of the ever-helpful guys behind the Oakland Wiki, sleuthed out the identity of Potter: Arthur W. Potter, who operated the California Mission Realty Co. in Oakland on High Street during the 1920s. In the 1923 directory he was listed as a carpenter living on 41st Avenue; in 1925 he had started the company and lived in Berkeley. By the 1950s he was in business with two of his sons, Irving and Harvey, in Castro Valley as A.W. Potter and Sons.
A 1926 advertisement referred to “Potter Built Homes,” built with “oodles of built-ins, hardwood floors throughout, tile sink and bath, the latest in home construction.” Buyers could pick their own paint, wallpaper and electrical fixtures while their house was being built. This custom sidewalk stamp is another sign of the pride and care Potter must have taken at the time, during Oakland’s wave of expansion after World War I.
This is the only such mark I’ve found in Oakland, and I’m not sure it still exists. Nor do I know if others survive in San Leandro or points south. Red concrete was in vogue during the 1920s and 1930s.
Frank Paul Salamid was born Francisco Paolo Salamido in the town of Monopoli, way down in the heel of Italy, on 23 October 1881. Family lore has it that he was in town for the 1906 earthquake and was a barber at the time. However, his name first appeared in the 1900 directory, in the classifieds as a cement contractor. Then and thereafter, his address was on Manila Avenue.
I’ve documented the triangular Frank Salamid stamp from 1909 to 1949, one of Oakland’s longest records. From the start, his marks always varied. Here are three different examples from 1909.
Although the stamps read “Frank Salamid & Co.,” in 1911 and 1912 he started wiping out the “& Co.” part. My only clue about this is that in the 1910 directory he used the address 619 47th Street. I surmise that he started a proper company at that address and soon thought better of it, reverting to a one-man practice or a small team based out of his home.
Frank’s brother Angelo (1896-1997) came to America in 1914, working first in Pennsylvania and then in Oakland with Frank. Angelo Salamid first appeared in the 1917 directory at the same address as Frank, 5348 Manila Avenue. They and their respective families seem to have lived together, or at least within a few homes of each other, into the 1940s.
I haven’t found a mark from 1920, but in 1921 Frank appeared to have lost one of his most important numerals.
After that he acquired a new set of smaller numerals that allowed him to customize his marks even more capriciously — sometimes with months and days, sometimes inside the triangle instead of out. I’ve always thought this example from 23 December 1929 was poignant, coming as it did after the October stock-market crash and just two days before Christmas, when every extra dollar must have meant a lot.
The 1930s were good for Frank and Angelo. Their work is integral to the Idora Park development, the remarkable 3700 block of Elston Avenue, and elsewhere. In this period he got lax about wiping away the “& Co.”
The latest really good date I have is 1948.
Soon thereafter (the family source puts it at 1951), Frank sold the business to Angelo, retired to Glenn County and that was it. The family home for most of their time was at 5350 Manila, but the sidewalk there is blank.
Frank died in December 1969. Angelo and his son Anthony (Tony) carried on with the ubiquitous “A Salamid” stamp from 1951 into the 1970s, although none of their marks were dated.
Angelo lived to the age of 100. Tony, now retired, lives in Pleasant Hill, and other descendants live in the East Bay. My thanks to Patrick Salamid for the family stories.
The artist Mark Bulwinkle is widely known for his exuberant sculptures in uncoated steel. His signature series in the East Bay Bridge shopping plaza (or, as he calls it, Bulwinkle Plaza) surely gets as many viewers as any work by an Oakland artist. His smaller pieces grace many homes and gardens.
Today Bulwinkle’s studio, Bulwinkleland, is in high West Oakland, but for many years he installed sculptures all over his home on Manila Avenue. Eventually the house was shrouded in a fantastic frizz of welded rusty steel, each bit a piece of artwork, that resembled a giant crouton gone flagrantly moldy. I lived nearby and never tired of it. One day he decided to stop encrusting and start deconstructing. Soon enough the house was ordinary again, then he sold it and moved on.
Left behind were these two works embedded in his neighbors’ driveways: a moon and a star.
These remind me of the dreamlike spectacle the house presented at night, its great fringe of steel branches silhouetted against a moonlit sky, or backlit just as impressively by low Bay clouds.
