San Francisco City Hall bricks

 

San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, California, Sun, Dec 28, 1873, Page 5

THE NEW CITY HALL. 

First Meeting of the Legislative Committee.

P. H. Canavan's Statement in Behalf of the Commission.

The Plan for Conducting the Investigation Interesting Developments to be Expected.

Pursuant to the resolution of the Assembly, the Committee consisting of Messrs. Terrill, Winchell, Coggins and Freidenrich, met at the new City Hall yesterday morning, and began in earnest to inquire into matters connected with the works. Messrs. Canavan, Eastland and Lane, the three Commissioners, were present with Mr. Laver, the architect, Mr. Wright, the consulting architect, Mr. King, the Superintendent, and Mr. George, the Secretary. The first thing done was to inspect the works, Mr. Canavan acting as guide. Every part of the building was surveyed and many expressions of surprise were uttered at the magnitude of the proportions. Great progress has recently been made under the contract taken by Dennis Jordan, who has a large number of men at work; and the other contractors are making a good show. The walls of the Hall of Records are now up about forty feet, or nearly thirty feet above the basement, and a portion of the walls of the main edifice are raised to a hight of thirty-five feet above the terrace line. It is the intention of the contractor to finish the entire wall to this hight, and to complete the walls of the Hall of Records in about two months. 

[Readers of this blog - all three of you - might recognize the name Terrill. This Terrill was Charles Carroll Terrill, the father of bike racers Harry & William Terrill. - MF]

STICKING LABELS ON TOWNS. - A Queer Mixture of Languages in Alameda County Names. - SPANISH, INDIAN, ENGLISH AND IMPROPRIETY. - The San Francisco Examiner Sun, Jun 19, 1892 ·Page 10

There is some racist language in the place names below. The article is from 1892. - MF

STICKING LABELS ON TOWNS.

A Queer Mixture of Languages in Alameda County Names.

SPANISH, INDIAN, ENGLISH AND IMPROPRIETY.

Combining in One Name a Row of Poplars and a Grove of Live Oaks - Robbing Old Associations of the Soft Spanish Titles That Belong to Them - Railroad and Postal Sponsors.

Contra Costa was the original name of a little settlement on the bank of the estuary of San Antonio, a cluster of houses on the grant to Don Luis Maria Peralta, the most magnificent estate ever owned by one man in California.

Slider bike storage for van

 

We have a 2007 Dodge Sprinter, 144" wheelbase, converted to a camper van. We are bike riders, and we're often bringing bikes with us on road rips, or using the van to travel to a place where we will ride bikes. Having the bikes inside the van, outside of view is very useful; the bikes are better protected from theft, and they don't get rained on, get road spray, get dirty, or bleached by the sun. We have a bed platform in the van that is 38.5" from the floor to its underside, a cabinet on the driver side for water system and storage, and a rear bench seat with tracks installed 62" from the rear-most part of the bracket to the rear sill of the floor. The bench seat location is not stock, the Mercedes seat brackets were installed by Van Specialties in a location appropriate for through-frame access to attach the brackets. A two-seat Sprinter bench is installed, and a Serg Supply fridge cabinet is also a factor in how the bicycles must fit. There are seats with seat belts for four people in the van, so four bikes are the usual maximum we might bring. On our last long trip, we each brought a mountain bike and a gravel bike; two people, four bikes. 

THE PERALTA CLAIM. - San Joaquin Republican, Volume 4, Number 9, 12 January 1854

THE PERALTA CLAIM. 

The Land Commissioners will decide on the merits of the Peralta claim this morning. The Chronicle says that this is one of the most important claims that has come before the Commissioners - certainly more important than any yet decided by the present Board. The claim embraces the villages of Oakland, San Antonio, Alameda, and the whole range of the coast for ten miles; and about three thousand people are settled upon it. The claim was granted in fee simple to the senior Peralta, as a reward for military services, and was occupied by him until his death. It is stated that he lived to the age of 120 years, and could lasso a bull after he was 100 years old; that he rode forty miles the day before his death, which occurred in San Jose, from an attack of cholera. 

EARLY DAYS IN OAKLAND. - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California • Sat, Feb 23, 1884 Page 5

EARLY DAYS IN OAKLAND.

Some of the Pioneers and Their Achievements.

A Hunting Ground for the San Franciscans Oak Forests, Blooming Fields Squatters' Controversies The Peralta Titles Carpentier's Claim to the Water Front Famous Duels, &c., &c.

Americanized California is not old enough to have produced any native citizen who has attained to gray hairs, the "lean and slippered pantaloon," the sixth age, and retired from the lists with chaplets of regard for services done to his State or city, with troops of friends to attend his retiracy and cheer his remnant of honored life. There are not a few veterans, hoary and beat, who may be called the early State's "gray fathers," lingering in picturesque old age, who can relate the whole history of California since the "conquest" as within their still distinct remembrance. These men came to the coast when the Mexican Government still held sway over these fair plains, its subjects living in adobe dwellings, enjoying the bland air, content with the products of a most generous soil yielding its fruits with the slightest solicitation, lords of a land in whose bosom was the wealth of the Indies, unconscious of thus much of the rich heritage that Cortez had given to Spain, incredulous of fortune, unwearied by labor, secure in their possessions, the outside world as blank to them as the wide Pacific which washed these peaceful shores. The thousands who throng our streets and make city and State what they now are, a busy mart of trade, abounding in all the arts and parts that make thrifty commerce, trade, manufactures, agriculture, know little of the men and scenes of former days in this beautiful place, where winter is unknown, where flowers bloom perpetually, and the "melancholy days" never come as they come to dwellers under stormy Eastern skies. It is fit and proper that the men who have made history for California should inscribe their recollections upon the written page, to be in future times rehearsed by the generations which shall see our puissant city grown to a metropolis, hamlets become great towns, the wilderness blooming gardens, mountains covered with palaces and mansions, plains inhabited by opulent merchants and farmers enriched by labors which bring luxury and comfort to the "rest of mankind," and fill the land with plenty;

James de Fremery True '49er - Family Contributed to Oakland's Place in Sun - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California · Sunday, June 29, 1952

James de Fremery True '49er

Family Contributed to Oakland's Place in Sun

By EILEEN DELMORE MURPHY

When James de Fremery was born on his family's estate at Ouwendyck, near The Hague, in February, 1826, the California which he was to help develop had not been imagined in his native Netherlands.

As soon as the young man came of age, however, he headed for the United States, and in 1847 was engaged in the import and export business in New York City with the father of his future bride. Word of gold in California came two years later, and the diary of James de Fremery's voyage to Panama, trip across the Isthmus and arrival in San Francisco on December 15, 1849, is still in the possession of his grandson, James' de Fremery of Yorkshire Drive.

SO WE CALL THEM. - Names That Bring Back Fond Reminiscences. - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California · Saturday, August 31, 1889

SO WE CALL THEM.

Names That Bring Back Fond Reminiscences.

NOMENCLATURE OF THE STREETS.

Futile Attempts to Make the People Use the Official Designations of the Highways.

The reminiscential romance that lingers about places named for persons is the romance of inconvenience when the places named are streets. In the nomenclature of public highways sentiment and convenience are in opposition. The poetic man, loving euphony and hating trade, wants to name the streets after heroes, ancient or modern, after trees or saints or stars, while Mr. Commerce, who may drive the delivery wagon in the mornings, wants streets named with numbers that he may lose no time in reaching his destination. Then the ambitious man who owns a corner lot in the Heaven tract in the suburbs wants the main avenue in the tract named after him. How the streets of Oakland were christened a higher authority with a better memory than man knows and is reticent. Way back in 1859, thirty years ago, the City Council declared Whitcher's map, then on file, the official map of the city. The names of streets designated on that brown piece of paper became by that declaration the official names. How the streets outside the territory that in 1859 constituted the city of Oakland ever gained names, Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist, let some one else tell and I shall hold my peace. 

Ten Years Ago. - Weekly Trinity Journal Weaverville, California • Sat, Apr 18, 1857 Page 4

Ten Years Ago.

Original article: Daily Alta California, 22 March 1857 — Daily Alta California FRED'K MacCRELLISH & CO. SAN FRANCISCO, SUNDAY, MARCH 22, 1857. [ARTICLE]

Ten years ago, on just such a bright, beautiful Sabbath morning as this is, we took an early breakfast in one of the dilapidated rooms in the old barracks at the Presidio, and started with a dear friend, for a morning walk, to the then little village of Yerba Buena, the now flourishing city of San Francisco. Then the fields along the roadside were green with the springing grass, which the later rains had freshened, and the golden-headed California poppy and the modest little strawberry flower, dotted them with yellow and with white. From out the thickets which skirted the roadside, a scared rabbit now and then ran across the pathway, and timidly hid in the bushes on the other side. For the whole distance from the Presidio to where now is about the corner of Union and Powell streets, there was not a single house, the first one we reached on our journey to the village, being the little adobe establishment of Dona Juana Briones, which still stands as a relic of the early days of Yerba Buena. [map - MF] The laguna lay lonely and still by the pathway, and on its surface ducks were paddling, fearless of gun or pistol. No squatters' had fenced in the hills - no gardens were planted in the valleys, and but few of the signs of 'civilization' greeted our eyes and ears during the delightful, refreshing, invigorating walk of three miles on that beautiful, sunny Sabbath morning.

TELLS ABOUT AUTO RUN OF INTEREST NEAR OAKLAND - William M. Gardner Thinks He has Found Road to Furnish Test for White Automobiles - Oakland Enquirer Oakland, California · Saturday, August 24, 1907

See if you can identify the places this article describes. I'll add a period map below. - MF

 

TELLS ABOUT AUTO RUN OF INTEREST NEAR OAKLAND

William M. Gardner Thinks He has Found Road to Furnish Test for White Automobiles

"Well," said Wm. M. Gardiner of The White Company, the other day subject of hill climbing
when the stunts came up, "I had a little hill climb of my own the other day followed by a hill drop which beat anything I ever tackled before. 

BERKELEY LOSS $9,000,000: 3,000 HOMELESS, 100 INJURED - The San Francisco Examiner, Wednesday, September 19, 1923

100 years ago, almost to the day, a terrible fire wiped out 640 homes in Berkeley:

The 1923 Berkeley, California, fire was a conflagration that consumed some 640 structures, including 584 houses in the densely-built neighborhoods north of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley, California, on September 17, 1923. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Berkeley,_California,_fire 

Fires were breaking out all over California. Marin and Sonoma counties were hit hard. 

In Marin, a wildfire on September 17 burned from Ignacio through Lucas and Nicasio Valleys, to Woodacre, Lagunitas, and Bolinas Ridge. This happened at the same time as huge fires burned in Sonoma County and in Berkeley, along with 15 other counties in California.

https://www.marinfirehistory.org/1923-wildfires-including-ignacio-to-bolinas-ridge-fairfax.html

Read the front-page news from the September 19, 1923 San Francisco Examiner, below. Some commonalities in this story with what we have today are heat, wind, dry fuel, eucalyptus and other non-native trees and plants, above-ground electrical infrastructure and population density near forested land.

BERKELEY LOSS $9,000,000: 3,000 HOMELESS, 100 INJURED 19 Sep 1923, Wed The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, California) Newspapers.com

MRS. J. MILLER WOULD HAVE MEMORIAL - Oakland Tribune, November 09, 1913

MRS. J. MILLER WOULD HAVE MEMORIAL

Wife of Poet Gives Reasons for Wishing Oakland to Have Big Park.

"The Heights," Replete With Interest, Offered as Worthy Memento.

In the following letter, teeming with interesting facts about the personal life of the late Poet of the Sierras, Mrs. Joaquin Miller sets forth her reasons why she believes "The Hights" should be purchased by Oakland as a memorial park:

EDITOR TRIBUNE: I am grateful for your kindly and publicly expressed appreciation of the "Hights" and that you value the place through its association. In 1885 Emerson, Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes urged Mr. Miller to make his home near them and tried to interest him in property in Boston - financially considered most desirable but Mr. Miller was loyal to California and had a view for these hills indelibly impressed upon his mind. In all his travels he had seen nothing to equal it.

Knave - Oakland Tribune - Sunday, February 19, 1961

 

I'm leaving out the first few paragraphs, which deal with current politics, and moving right to the histories and stories. Click the clipping below if you want to read what you missed, here.

Whaling Ships

"The old town has changed," commented Capt. W. T. ("Bill") Murnan this week on his arrival in Oakland to show his "Spain and Portugal" travelogue at the Oakland Auditorium Theater next Friday night, Feb. 24. What Captain Murnan was thinking about was the Oakland of 1911, the year he arrived here as a 15-year-old youth and stowed away on the F. S. Redfield, one of the old whaling ships of the Pacific Steam Whaling Co. The whaling ships in those days anchored well down stream in the Estuary from the Alaska Packers fleet, and Murnan recalls he had been aboard the Redfield pleading for a berth and a chance to sail. "They told me I was too young... go home and tell my mother she wanted me... or something like that," he recounts. While looking wistfully at the ship from ashore he was given more advice by some "old salts" who chanced to be loafing nearby. That night Murnan returned and under the cover of darkness crawled, hand over hand, up the bow line and hid out under the forecastle head on the forward deck. The skipper didn't find him until next day when the ship was out beyond The Heads and it was too late to do anything about it. The skipper, he recalls, was Capt. James McKenna of Berkeley. Murnan thrilled to whaling and trading in Alaska and Siberia. He had never before been at sea, but he was an adventuresome boy. He ran away from his Chicago home in 1909 and made his way to the Alaska-Yukon Exposition at Seattle. Two years later he headed for California and landed in Oakland. The new adventure was to be more exciting than he had bargained for. The Redfield was driven on the point during a storm at Cape Prince of Wales and was pound to pieces. But not before all aboard were rescued by the great old Cutter Bear of Oakland. One of his fondest recollections of his adventure aboard the Redfield was the meeting aboard ship of an equally adventurous young man from Oakland named Bob Dalziel. [Maybe? - MF] Bob came back to Oakland aboard the Bear after the shipwreck, but Murnan returned via Nome and Seattle aboard the coal ship Eureka of Buffalo. "I never saw Bob again," he says.

NEW ROADS OPEN ROUTES FOR AUTOISTS - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California · Sunday, November 20, 1921

The early 20th century meant the development of Oakland for cars and for home building. The bicycle was mostly forgotten, except as a toy or a piece of sports equipment, and neighborhoods were laid out and developed privately, by for-profit corporations rather than a civic body meant to benefit the citizens of Oakland. Public transit was deprecated, except as a vehicle for real estate sales. Auto Row, on Broadway, and the car plants were churning out cars, and debt to the people of Oakland, and the newspaper was a marketing organ for these industries. Mayor Davie was pro-growth, pro-development. Parks were ignored, not built, in favor of private development. Scenic roads like Skyline Boulevard served to open up development, and sell cars. This is all described really well in Mitchell Schwarzer's book Hella Town, which I recommend. I like old maps, knowing how roads came to be, and I've always been curious about the term "Little Skyline," which shows up in articles from this time. This article explains the route, and tells the story...

NEW ROADS OPEN ROUTES TO AUTOISTS

The season of the year having come when short afternoon trips are a popular motoring treas, The TRIBUNE Touring Bureau suggests one within the city limits of Oakland. Berkeley and Piedmont. The one logged by a TRIBUNE-Stephens Salient Six touring car from Brasch & McCorkle's salesroom centers principally in Piedmont and through the Montclair section. In the latter district many new roads have been opened within the past two months about which little is known and they tap new avenues into Piedmont and skirt ridges which give birdseye views of Oakland and the San Francisco Bay that are as beautiful as any obtained from higher summits.