History
As part of the process of creating a site-specific performance, I have been researching the history of the immediate area surrounding our site (the blocks encompassed by 12th and 14th Streets and Jefferson Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way). Below is a summary of what has turned up at the Oakland History Room of the Oakland Library and through interviews with longtime Oakland residents.
About this area…
Around the late 1800s and early 1900s, this part of downtown Oakland was occupied by mixed residences and small stores. Several theaters were located not far from here, such as the Orpheum Theater and the Empire Theater, damaged in the 1906 earthquake, on 12th Street between Broadway and Washington Street. After the earthquake, many San Francisco-based businesses moved their offices and storerooms to Oakland while San Francisco was rebuilt. By 1918 such businesses as the Bruguere Co. (based at 518 Montgomery St. in San Francisco), the Charles Jurgens Co., and the Eastern Outfitting Co. were all found on these two blocks.
By 1951, a significant shift had occurred with the popularization of the automobile. Most of the block between 12th and 13th Streets was taken up, like now, by open auto parking, with a few 4-story wood frame stores. The block between 13th and 14th Streets consisted of the Oakland Police Department garage, the Oakland Fire Department garage and repair shop, and the Oakland Firehouse #1 (see photo).
Apparently the Oakland Fire Department had moved into a former ice rink on the site. The Oakland Ice Rink, where professional hockey games were played and professional skaters trained, stood here from 1929 to 1948 (or earlier).
With the exception of the Oakland Firehouse #1, the area mostly looked like this 1954 photo of Thrifty Gas Station at 1125 Grove St. (the former name of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way) at 12th St.
Called the City Center project, the plan underwent many revisions before ground was finally broken on new construction in the area. Among the proposed uses for these two blocks were parking and department stores (see map below).
First, however, the current buildings and residents had to be removed, as they apparently were under a plan called Operation Padlock (Walker 1997: “Oakland: Dark Star in an Expanding Universe” at http://geography.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/R_Walker/OaklandDarkStar.pdf).
One long-time Oakland resident describes the area as a wasteland of demolished buildings in the late 1970s. He says, “In those days there were no lights from Grove St. to Broadway. I used to get off the bus here at 14th and walk up to DeLauer’s to look at comic books, and you had to be careful where you stepped or you might step on someone and get a bottle thrown at you. We called it ‘Wino Alley’.”
Another resident concurs, claiming that no one who has never seen it can imagine how such an area could exist in the middle of an urban center. This corroborates the description of the CityWalk condo construction site by a Oakland resident who has lived or worked in the area for over 15 years. She says that many years ago, the condo site was an open area full of weeds and building foundations, where people parked their cars or sat and ate lunch.
Although other areas of City Center were completed earlier, the City Center parking garage seems to have been completed closer to the late 1980s-early 1990s. Artist Stephen DeStaebler, well-known for his pioneering figurative art in both ceramics and bronze, was commissioned along with a local architecture firm to create an outdoor public art installation on the back wall of the parking garage. Completed in 1993, “Three Figures” was designed to be a space for performances.
