| Tribune Tower | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Status | Complete |
| Type | Office |
| Location | 409 13th Street Oakland, California |
| Coordinates | |
| Opening | 1924 |
| Height | |
| Roof | 305 ft (93 m) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 21 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | D. Franklin Oliver, Edward T. Foulkes |
The Tribune Tower is a 305-ft. (93 m), 21-story building located in downtown Oakland, California. Completed in 1923, the 89,251 sq.-ft. (8,291 sq.-m.) building was opened by Joseph R. Knowland on January 1, 1924, as the home of the Oakland Tribune newspaper, and is a symbol of both the Tribune and the city of Oakland.
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In 1915, when Joseph Knowland, a former U.S. congressman, acquired the Oakland Tribune, the newspaper was located at Eighth and Franklin streets in the old Golden West Hotel. In 1918, the Breuner Furniture Company vacated its home at Thirteenth and Franklin. Knowland envisioned the vacated showroom and an adjacent warehouse as the site of a first-class newspaper facility. He began to implement this vision with the acquisition of the Breuner's property and the move of the Tribune there.
What became the six-story base of the Tribune Tower had been designed by D. Franklin Oliver and completed in 1907. (The warehouse, which became the Tribune's press room, had been built in the 1890s on the site of the old Pantages Theatre.) The now-familiar clock tower, designed by Edward T. Foulkes, was added in 1923 to complete the Tribune Tower as it appears today.
From 1924, the Tower would appear on the newspaper's masthead. The top floor of the tower housed radio station KLX from its opening until the station was sold in 1959. KLX was sold to pay off debts incurred in the ill-fated 1958 run by U.S. Senator William F. Knowland, Joseph Knowland's son, for governor of California. Joseph Knowland was a political mentor to his son, as well as to California attorney general and governor Earl Warren and many other Republicans.
The building was declared a city landmark on May 4, 1976. At various times, the building has flown a flag with the word, "THERE" emblazoned upon it.[1] This is a send-up of Gertrude Stein's comment that in Oakland "there is no there there."[2]
In 1979, Gannett Company purchased the Tower from the Tribune Publishing Corporation.
The Tower was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which led the Tribune to relocate to new offices in Jack London Square. The Tower sat empty until 1995, when John Protopappas purchased it for $300,000. His company, Madison Park Financial Corporation, renovated the Tower in the late 1990s. The Tribune's parent company, ANG Newspapers, returned to the building after it reopened in 1999. In early 2006, Protopappas sold the Tribune Tower to Edward B. Kislinger for approximately $15 million.
The clock faces were restored and cleaned up in the late fall of 2006--the numbers and minute increments were enlarged and redefined. On December 22 of that year the faces and the famous TRIBUNE lettering were relit. The top of the Tribune Tower once again acts as a beacon for those approaching downtown Oakland.
In December 2011, CallSocket, a newly-formed call center business located in Oakland, purchased the Oakland Tribune Tower building for $8 million. CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) was the commercial realty brokerage that handled the deal. CallSocket intends to occupy about 37,000 square feet on multiple floors of the 83,000-square-foot landmark at 13th and Franklin streets.
CBRE’s Oakland office is managing leasing of the building's offices.
The Oakland Tribune moved permanently to new offices on Oakport Street, near Oakland International Airport, on May 20, 2007, abandoning the old Tribune Tower. The building now houses offices and a cafe on the ground level.]].[3]
Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tribune_Tower_(Oakland) Tribune Tower (Oakland)] at Wikimedia Commons
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