Father Pitt

Category: Oakland

  • Cathedral of Learning

    Cathedral of Learning
    Cathedral of Learning

  • Samson Dealer, Oakland

    Sampson Motors dealer

    Continuing our visits to car dealers of the past, we come to the Samson dealer. At least it seems to be a Samson dealer, although it could also be a Sampson dealer. Our 1923 map shows it as “Samson [sic] Motor Co.,’ but these maps are prone to slight misspellings. On the other hand, Sampson was a very rare brand of car, and this seems like a fairly grand dealer to be built for a rare marque. On the third hand, Samson was a brand of tractors and trucks in the early 1920s, and this looks like a rather classy building for a dealer in farm implements. At any rate, it was a motor-vehicle dealer of some sort. More recently it was a gallery of some sort, and now it is decaying, although part of the building appears to be still in use.

    The front is a feast of terra-cotta details.

    Service entrance]

  • Soldiers and Sailors Memorial from a Different Angle

    We saw the front as it looked 22 years ago (and as it looks today, because nothing has changed except the plantings). This is the Bigelow Boulevard side the way it looked the day before yesterday, as seen from Lytton Avenue a block away. Supposedly this was the side that architect Henry Hornbostel had been forced to agree to make the front, but then he built the thing his way anyway, with a long vista down to Fifth Avenue.

    Old-timers will remember the parking lot in the foreground as Syria Mosque.

  • Soldiers and Sailors Memorial, Oakland

    Soldiers and Sailors Memorial

    In 2000, a planting of deep burgundy celosia gave old Pa Pitt the opportunity to take this picture with his beloved Kodak Retinette.

  • Goofy Gargoyle, Grumpy Gargoyle

    Two gargoyle faces on St. Paul’s Cathedral in Oakland.

  • Cathedral of Learning

    Camera: Olympus E-20n

    We have seen this view more than once before, but it is one of the best views of the building, and it is worth seeing in different lights. Here the patterns of light and shade from the drifting clouds made an especially pleasing picture.

  • White Motor Company Dealership, Oakland

    White Motor Company emblem

    Continuing our visits to car dealers of the past, we visit the White Motor Company dealer on Melwood Avenue, which has fortunately found a new use in the medical-industrial complex.

    White dealership

    White started in the automobile business with a successful steamer (more Whites were built than Stanleys), but as gasoline-powered cars took over the market, White abandoned steam and went with the crowd. At some point around World War I or after, White left the car business and concentrated its efforts on trucks and buses. The company was very successful in that business, and remained a manufacturing force until it was bought out by Volvo in 1980.

    Entrance
    From the other end

    Correction: We had identified the architect as Edward B. Lee, based on the Construction Record for November 18, 1911: “Architect E. B. Lee, 1307 Peoples Bank building, has completed plans-for a two-story brick and reinforced concrete garage and sales building, to be constructed in the East End, for the White Motor Car Company, 3122 West Twenty-fifth street, Cleveland.” However, it appears that this entry refers to the building at the corner of Craig Street and Baum Boulevard, which later became an Oakland dealership (Oakland automobiles, that is). A picture of that dealership appears in the September 1913 issue of The Builder, with the caption “Garage and Sales Room for the White Motor Company, Pittsburgh, Pa., Edward B. Lee, Architect, Pittsburgh.”

  • The Beverly and the Bayard, Oakland

    These two matching apartment buildings on Craig Street were built between 1903 and 1910; although they seem to be known only by their numbers today, on our 1923 map they are marked as “Beverly” and “Bayard.” They once stood at the end of a row of similarly sized apartment buildings, but the others have been replaced by bigger apartment blocks. Those bays must make the front apartments very bright and cheerful on a sunny afternoon.

  • The Craig Street Automotive Row, All at Once

    Old Pa Pitt obsessively documented every building in the Craig Street automotive row. But he was even more obsessive than that. The thing that is most impressive about that row is that it is contiguous and intact: not a single one of the buildings, all put up at about the same time in the early years of the automobile, has disappeared or been seriously mutilated. Individual pictures do not show that impressive fact. Therefore, Father Pitt has made this composite view—by hand, he might add, since no automatic software was up to the task.

    Click on the picture to make it very big.

    The brands these dealers sold, left to right: Nash, Oldsmobile, Jordan, Kelly-Springfield tires, B. F. Goodrich tires, Franklin, and Oakland.

    Much of the background had to be filled in with plain blue, and the joints are very obvious if you enlarge the picture. But this is the only way to convey the extraordinary fact that this whole row has survived intact. How long will it last? We can only keep our fingers crossed. But if these buildings disappear, at least this picture can show future generations what this row was like.

  • Old Garage, Oakland

    Front of the old garage

    A garage from the early days of the automobile; on a 1923 map it is simply marked “Garage.” The fundamental simplicity of the Spanish Mission style made it popular for garages, and this front on Melwood Avenue looks almost like a cartoon drawing of a Spanish mission. We have already seen the ghost sign on the south side of it revealed by the demolition of the old Chevrolet dealer next door:

    Ghost sign

    On the other side of the building is another ghost sign, probably later, advertising the Overman Cushion Tire Co.—a name that is still, or again, in use today by an Ohio restorer of antique tires.

    Ghost sign for Overman Cushion Tire Co.