Oakland Underfoot

Oakland’s older districts feature remnants of pre-electric technology known as vault lights. They were invented around 1850 as a way to bring daylight into vaults, or basements that extend beneath the sidewalk, by means of thick glass disks mounted in cast-iron frames. In the late 1800s, with the spread of reliable Portland cement, reinforced concrete replaced cast iron. Oakland has examples of both types.

The photo above shows what’s probably Oakland’s largest continuous set of vault lights, in front of the Jefferson Court apartment building at 581 18th Street. It goes all the way to Jefferson Street, about 120 feet. Each piece of glass is actually a block with a prism on the bottom, which bounces and spreads the light sideways into the underlying space. See a quick introduction at glassian.org.

The glass turns purple after decades of exposure to sunlight as a result of manganese in the formula, used as a clarifier. About 100 years ago manganese was replaced by selenium, and today’s glass doesn’t turn purple. (In case you need a fresh dose of outrage, look up the scandal of antique glass being garishly tinted using UV lamps.)

Here’s the only example I’ve found of a cast-iron vault light, on Telegraph near 19th Street. The ventilating panel reads, “W.L.PATD.SF.JUNE,16.1874”. The clear glass may be a later replacement of the round glass prisms.

The Haley Law Office building at San Pablo and 16th has a fine set of vault lights. I’ve walked past at night and seen the cellar lights shining up through them.

Here’s a better look at a nearly pristine set, on Telegraph near 19th. This one has the name of P. H. Jackson & Co. of San Francisco, which I’ve mentioned in my two previous posts. The plate gives their address as “418 Bryant St.”

The Carles Apartments building, on Jefferson at 10th, has handsome vault lights along its whole frontage. I don’t know the manufacturer.

Finally we have this set on 8th Street at Washington, which stands out for its large, square glass blocks. Presumably designing a set that combines maximum light and adequate strength involves careful tradeoffs. The maker was “Henry Haustein 1866 Howard St. S.F.” The 1899 San Francisco business directory lists him as “manufacturer of sidewalk lights, 1832 Howard.”

So, are these old features hopelessly ruined? Not at all! The National Park Service has a nice restoration case study from New York City, where 19th-century street tech is still abundant.

Poking around Oakland’s old downtown has yielded some more overlooked old things. Take P. H. Jackson’s Device for Plentiful Ventilation, on Harrison south of 14th Street.

Somehow I don’t think it’s functioning any more. This is the same Jackson I featured two weeks ago. I found another configuration of ventilator from the Jackson company, this one with a patent date of 1893.

Older parts of downtown Oakland feature these iron grates in the sidewalk. Unlike the purple glass and concrete “vault lights” you’ll also see around downtown, the grates were for ventilation. I collected the following photos during an hour’s walk east of Broadway between 19th and 14th Street.

Here are two sizes of grate from the Phoenix Sidewalk Light Co. of San Francisco.

Please note that these are not sidewalk lights (vault lights), but ventilation grates. Phoenix made both items, according to the Historic Prism Glass Companies of the United States list on glassian.org. It was headquartered in the Monadnock Building on Market Street.

John McGuigan & Co. was also across the bay, at 144 Stillman Street. (The address is now under the freeway.)

The king of the business appears to have been P. H. Jackson & Co., which was a major manufacturer of reinforced concrete and other innovative building elements beginning in the 1870s in San Francisco. The company, on the 200 block of First Street, continued business well into the 20th century. I will have more to say about the company in a future post.

Here are three different examples of their products.

This is an unexpectedly deep subject!