NE Telegraph 51st block plan 2000

Description:
Composite map based on block plan and sewer map, of the block bounded by 51st Street on the south, Telegraph and Claremont avenues on the west, and Clarke Street on the north and east, Temescal district, Oakland, Calif. The drawing shows the route of Temescal Creek (culverted), property boundaries, and footprints and number of stories of structures.

Date of Document:
2000

Document Author:
Jeff Norman

Geographic Location:
Telegraph Avenue and 51st Street, Oakland, Calif.

Context:
In the 1870s and 1880s, this block was part of the site occupied by Humboldt Park, a wooded pleasure resort that featured a hotel, restaurant, a shooting gallery, gardens, trails, and fishing on Temescal Creek. The block was first subdivided in 1897, with commercial structures eventually being built on the Telegraph Avenue frontage, and residences along 51st Street. Erected on a significant portion of the parcel were greenhouses belonging to McDonnell Nursery. On the map, in the lower left quadrant of the block, marked by the dotted line, is the approximate footprint of a movie theater, built in 1913 and demolished in 1998. [Jeff Norman note] Originally opened as a nickelodian in 1913 as the L. D. Purdy (named after its operator, Lawrence Dorman Purdy) and designed by locally prominent architect Alfred William Smith (1864 1933), the building housed a store on either side of the theater s recessed arch entrance. [Jennifer Dowling note, from an article published in the Oakland Heritage Alliance Newsletter, Winter-Spring 1999]The theater was remodeled in 1916 and renamed the Claremont. In 1939, the theater was completely modernized and its name changed to the Tower, where mainstream American movies and foreign films were screened. From 1913 to 1973, the theater stood in the middle of the east side of the 5100 block of Telegraph Avenue. The stores and upper story apartments to the immediate south of the theater were demolished circa 1973 when 51st Street was widened to serve as a feeder to the newly opened Grove-Shafter Freeway (Highway 24), thereby making the theater the corner building. Purchased in 1976 by a Los Angeles-based company that ran a national chain of adult movie theaters, it became the Pussycat. Damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and having become the focus of protests by Temescal residents who wanted to keep the X-rated theater from re-opening, the Pussycat remained closed until the City of Oakland demolished it in December 1998. The resulta