Lake Merritt Hotel helped preserve Oakland

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, May 7, 2006

OAKLAND Heritage Alliance is celebrating its first 25 years on May 19 at the landmark Lake Merritt Hotel. Prizes, birthday cake, vintage film clips and original Oakland songs by local composer Joyce Whitelaw will be featured attractions, event organizers say.

"Since May is officially Preservation Month, this seems like the right time to have this event," said OHA president Naomi Schiff.

The group plans to display poster boards with examples of historic Oakland buildings and districts once threatened over the years and ultimately saved, says Schiff -- with the dedicated help of community activists.

"Even the Lake Merritt Hotel, where we are having the event, was in danger of being demolished at one time," Schiff said. "Today it has been completely refurbished, I am happy to say, and is listed on the city's register of landmarks."

A look at history files shows that in the mid-1980s developers did indeed file for a demolition permit, stating that any renovations for the hotel did not appear to be cost-effective.

The demolition proposal angered preservationists, who collected signatures on a petition submitted to the city, which won a 60-day delay. Ultimately, the demolition permit was withdrawn and the hotel was later sold. The new owners enthusiastically nominated it for landmark status.

The experience of nearly losing the hotel also led to OHA and the city's Landmarks Board working together to overhaul landmarks policies and procedures, Schiff recalled.

"Today we have a fully detailed Preservation Element to Oakland's General Plan, so everyone knows what the rules are," she said. "More financial incentives are in place now, and technical assistance to property owners who own potential landmarks is available."

The building was originally designed as an apartment hotel in 1927 by locally-prominent architect William Weeks. It was singled out for special mention in then-Mayor John Davie's 1928 annual message, and described as "a credit to the city, with a barber shop, beauty parlor, drug dispensary and novelty shop all under one roof." The dining room addition, where so many engagements and special occasions have been celebrated over the years and where notables like Count Basie entertained, was completed a few years later.

The Lake Merritt Hotel is a good example of the large, well- appointed apartments that developed along the southwest border of Lake Merritt during the 1920s. It reflects the fashion in large urban centers nationwide for convenient hotel living "close to the entertainment and other amenities of downtown," according to history files. In Oakland, this trend was strongest in the Lakeside neighborhood.

Art deco in style, the hotel's roofline features richly ornamented stucco panels and projecting spandrels, which are replicated along the building's grand entry facing Madison Street. A painted wall mural in the dining room, depicting the nearby lake and jogging path, retains its original charm.

It is the work of noted muralist Andre Boratako, records show, and among the landmarks depicted in the scene is the now-vanished, Moorish-inspired, automobile showroom by Bernard Maybeck, torn down in the late 1970s.

"The loss of the showroom, which took place before there was a public process to landmark buildings, spurred many of us to take action and form an organization to preserve Oakland's architectural heritage," said Schiff.

For more information on the celebration, go to http:// www.oaklandheritage.org, or call 763-9218.

On a personal note, I would like to conclude today's column in memory of Jane Jacobs of Toronto, who died April 25, days before her 90th birthday. Her influential book, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" published in 1961, is credited with sparking the historic preservation movement in the United States and causing city planners to re-examine the wholesale demolition of urban centers so prevalent in the postwar era.