Oakland Underfoot

Older parts of Oakland are graced with proper curbstones — carved granite rather than molded concrete. They have the whiff of simpler times, of street trolleys and horse-drawn vehicles. They were made to last the ages, you might say.

Stone has always competed with concrete, with quality and cost both in the contest. Stone, above all, is durable, and it still beats concrete in that respect. But everything else has evolved in concrete’s favor. The skilled labor of stonecutters has waned while the strength and the convenience of concrete have grown.

A lot of downtown curbs are ironclad concrete, an early attempt to protect the curbs from chipping. I’ve never seen a new example, and I’ve seen a lot of places where the steel straps have warped.

Today we’re apparently okay with letting the curbs chip. In any case, chipping doesn’t seem to be a big problem. Concrete is easy to repair.

At the old YMCA building, on Telegraph at 21st Street, the curved granite corner curb appears to be part of the heritage designation.

You probably can’t replace these special-order stones any more. The quarries that made them are mostly long closed. And you can’t carve wheelchair-compliant curb cuts into them, either, which has led to an inelegant design on this corner with a wide concrete apron in the street. The building’s manager told me that a small pipe runs through it for street drainage, but it’s easily clogged. So the stone is preserved, but it’s not well displayed. Meanwhile the opposite corner has a nice new curb cut with the grooved concrete and the knobby yellow patch. Today’s ways really are better ways.

I’d be okay with the city replacing this corner. I wonder what the city does with the old curbstones. They should be recycled, perhaps in the parks.

A small tract in deepest East Oakland preserves some very old sidewalks. The stretch of 104th and 103rd Avenues between International Boulevard and E Street — call it Iveywood West — features the following curiosities.

These arrows in the pavement point away from the street. On the north side of 104th, they appear to correspond to the edge of driveways. On the south side, they don’t. On 103rd they only appear on the south side.

Both streets also have stamped in the concrete what I assume are lot numbers. This is on 104th.

And this is on 103rd. They don’t correspond to the addresses.

The sidewalks are very consistent in appearance. I don’t recognize the maker’s style, so I can’t say who laid them down, but I believe they date from around 1910. The 1912 map suggests that the landowner was Ludovina Ivey. She was Ygnacio Peralta’s daughter and developed large tracts of Oakland near the San Leandro line. (She also owned the undeveloped land now preserved in King Estates Open Space.) Google Maps calls the adjacent neighborhood Iveywood.

I’ve seen lot numbers and arrows in one or two other places, but I can’t recall exactly where. If one of you knows of any, please add a comment.

Another odd thing is the appearance of many of the driveways.

They appear not to have been included in the original sidewalk, but instead were put in shortly afterward by a separate contractor. A few, like this, were made by sledgehammering the curb. Almost none are stamped by their makers, and the workmanship is often poor. I have the impression that the neighborhood was laid out without providing for driveways, under the assumption that ordinary people didn’t own cars.

Castle Park Way is a little loop hidden off of Castle Drive, at the southern end of the Piedmont Pines neighborhood. All the concrete work was done by John R. Kemble, who did very good work all over Oakland from the mid-1920s until roughly 1941. When I surveyed this street I was struck by its unity, in which the homes and landscaping take part as well as the paving. And all this time later, it still has great integrity.

Welcome to phase 2 of this blog. I’ll be posting every Friday morning from now on, so add this to your feed, or subscribe, or whatever you do to keep up with the cool new stuff.

Oakland has lots of streets that are special for one reason or another. As I threaded its labyrinth I wished I could show them to you, but didn’t want to interrupt the parade. Now I’m getting around to them.

The Work Projects Administration or WPA gave millions of skilled and unskilled people jobs during the Great Depression. Their work added a great deal to Oakland’s cityscape, not least in its sidewalks. Lawlor Avenue seems to have been entirely paved by WPA workers in 1941 — curbs, sidewalks and driveways. It has an unusual unity of appearance for that reason, and the work is almost unmarred even 75 years after the last trowel was washed dry. In that respect, it’s a heritage street.