West Oakland, Oakland, California

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This article is about the neighborhood in California. For the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania neighborhood, see West Oakland (Pittsburgh).

West Oakland highlighted within the City of Oakland.

West Oakland is a neighborhood by the waterfront in Oakland, California, close to the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

1 History
2 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and redevelopment
3 See also
4 Further reading
5 External links

[edit] History

The land which comprises part of West Oakland was granted to Luis Maria Peralta in 1820. In the 1850s, his son Vicente sold the land. One of the new owners, Horace Carpentier became Oakland's first mayor in 1854. The population grew after 1863, when the San Francisco-Oakland railroad, connected central Oakland to the San Francisco bay ferries. In 1869, West Oakland became the terminus of the transcontinental railroad, and the population grew again as railroad workers settled in the neighborhood.

In the 1880s and 1890s, a large number of shops and small and medium-sized houses were built to accommodate the large number of European Americans, African Americans, Portuguese, Irish, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants who settled in West Oakland. Many African Americans were employed as porters for the Pullman Palace Car Company, and the headquarters of their union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was at 5th and Wood Streets. The writer Jack London lived in West Oakland in the late 1800s, and his novel Valley of the Moon is set in West Oakland. Many of the houses built in that period are still standing today and make up the quaint character of the neighborhood. Oakland's baseball team, the Oakland Oaks, played at the Oakland Baseball grounds West Oakland in 1879. In 1906, many people left homeless by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake settled in West Oakland. The original wooden train station at 16th and Wood Streets was replaced in 1912 by a large Beaux Arts structure which is still standing (thought it was severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake).

World War I brought new job opportunities in the shipyards and with it an influx of workers and business growth. By 1930, West Oakland was a thriving, ethnically diverse neighborhood of about 280,000 residents. Seventh Street was lined was jazz and blues clubs. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association had its West Coast headquarters at 8th and Chester Streets.

West Oakland experienced a decline in the Depression in the late 1930s, and some residential areas became dilapidated. In the 1940s and 1950s, dozens of blocks were bulldozed and replaced with public housing project. The 1940s and World War II saw a new influx of workers for the shipbuilding industry and the newly constructed Oakland Army Base and Naval Supply Center.

As the railroads declined and Americans turned to the automobile for transportation in the 1950s, many employees moved away. When the Cypress Freeway, a double-decker freeway connecting the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge with the Nimitz Freeway, was built in the 1950s above Cypress Street, it effectively split the neighborhood in half and isolated it from downtown Oakland. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, block after block was razed and thousands of residents were displaced for the building of the massive Oakland Main Post Office, the West Oakland BART Station, and the Acorn Plaza housing project. These projects coincided with a period of economic decline characterized by unemployment, poverty, and urban blight. West Oakland became a primarily African American neighborhood, with a small Hispanic population.

Groups of African American residents of West Oakland mobilized to resist the "urban renewal" projects during this period. The Black Panthers grew out of this resistance and West Oakland became the center of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. Their main office was on Peralta Street, and they distributed free breakfasts to children in St. Augustine's church on West Street. DeFremery Park was the site of Black Panther rallies and social programs. Huey Newton was convicted of manslaughter after shooting an officer on 7th Street, and Newton himself was killed in 1989 by a drug dealer in West Oakland.

[edit] 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and redevelopment

In the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the Cypress Freeway collapsed. Several people were killed despite heroic rescue efforts by West Oakland residents. West Oakland residents successfully resisted efforts to rebuild the freeway in the same location. With West Oakland no longer cut off from the rest of the city, it started to undergo a renaissance. Cypress Street was renamed Mandela Parkway, a recently-finished wide thoroughfare with a pedestrian path and greenway in its median, including a park commemorating the 1989 earthquake. It is lined with condominiums and new (and existing) businesses. Mandela Transit Village, a mixed retail and residential development at the end of Mandela, surrounds the West Oakland BART station. The old Victorian houses are being refurbished, and new construction is springing up. The new Central Station project has begun and will bring 1500 condominiums to the area on either side of the 16th Street station on Wood Street. The growth of Emeryville on the border of West Oakland, and West Oakland's proximity to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, has attracted many new residents. Plans to refurbish the train station include a monument honoring the Pullman porters.