Car barn and PGE 1932

Description:
Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. map (detail) of the Key System's Western Car Barn and vicinity, including PGE Substation D, Telegraph and Shattuck avenues, between 49th and 51st streets, Temescal district, Oakland, Calif.

Date of Document:
1932 (Updated to 1932)

Document Author:
The Sanborn Map Company, New York

Geographic Location:
4937 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, Calif.

Context:
The Oakland Railroad Co. (later called Oakland Railway, Oakland Traction, Key System) purchased a one-acre site from Solomon Alden in April 1870. Temescal Creek ran across the rear of the property at the point where 50th Street ends. The company constructed a depot for the extension of its horse-drawn street railway service on Telegraph Avenue from downtown. The railroad was a major source of employment and stimulated the growth of Temescal s business and residential district. In 1875, 109 daily trips were made from 7th Street to Temescal. At one time, 52 horses were kept in its stables. Steam trains connected here to continue the trip to Berkeley beginning in 1887. In 1890, a brick powerhouse was built at Grove Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Way) and the creek, and within two years, all 126 miles of the street railway had been electrified. [Jennifer Dowling note] The Key System, a company providing streetcar and bus service in the East Bay cities of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Oakland, Piedmont, Richmond, and San Leandro, as well as ferry service to San Francisco, operated from 1903 (when it consolidated several independent streetcar companies) until 1960. Bus service was introduced in 1921. With completion of the Bay Bridge in 1936, Key System trains began running (on the bridge s lower deck) between Oakland and the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. Streetcars stopped operating in 1948. Commuter train service into San Francisco was discontinued in 1958. The company was sold in 1960 to the newly formed public agency, AC Transit. The car barn operated until 1948, the year streetcars on Telegraph Avenue stopped running. The next year, the Fairway Center, a precursor to the modern-day supermarket, opened in the remodeled structure. The market, which became Vern s Shopping Center in 1952, closed in 1985 and sat vacant until 1987 when the Berkeley Land Development Company (owned by the Sabatte family, which founded Berkeley Farms Dairy) de