Telegraph-48th-49th 1968

Description:
Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. map (detail) of the block bounded by Telegraph Avenue (at bottom of image), Shattuck Avenue (diagonal, at top), 49th Street, and 48th Street, Temescal district, Oakland, Calif.

Date of Document:
updated to 1968

Document Author:
The Sanborn Map Company, New York

Geographic Location:
4803 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, Calif.

Context:
This block, formerly part of the 1820 Peralta land grant (and before that, falling within the ancestral land of the native Huchiun people), was part of the approximately 600 acres purchased by Solomon E. Alden from Vicente Peralta in the late 1850s. This block was among the real estate holdings inherited by Alden s married daughter, Elsie A. McElrath. In the 1880s, the property consisted of three adjoining, undeveloped parcels one on this corner, one midway down 48th Street, and the third on the northeast corner of 48th and Shattuck. In 1887, Ellen Cavanaugh purchased the corner lot at 4801 Telegraph where she built the Railroad House, a two-story boarding house, with a saloon on the first floor. Soon after, she bought the other two lots. She later subdivided the two corner lots and in 1905 erected a residence at 4808 Shattuck. In 1909, she built a five-room cottage on the middle lot, at 510 48th Street, and a one-story structure at 4803 Telegraph (today 4811). The corner lot on Shattuck was never built upon. From 1899 to 1907, 4801 Telegraph was home to the Alden Free Library Temescal s first branch library after the community was annexed by the city of Oakland in 1897. In 1941, Ellen Cavanaugh s descendants sold the properties to Joseph A. Fiorio, who in 1922 had opened Fiorio Hardware across the street, on the southwest corner of Telegraph and 48th Street From 1949 until 1965, the Question Mark bar occupied 4801 Telegraph. In March 1965, the Gold Cup took over but not for long, as a fire that December destroyed the building and the adjacent American Savings and Loan office, at what had been 4803 Telegraph. The house at 4808 Shattuck was demolished in 1969. Ten years later, the dwelling on 48th Street was also torn down, and once again a narrow, unbroken swath of vacant land extended along 48th Street from Telegraph to Shattuck. The entire parcel was then paved and leased as a parking lot to the post office next door at 4869 Telegraph Avenue (its location from 193