Rockridge Center c1967

Description:
Rockridge Shopping Center (looking to the northeast), off Pleasant Valley Road and Broadway, at the confluence of the Temescal, Rockridge, and Piedmont Avenue districts, Oakland, Calif. The shopping center occupies the former site of the Bilger Quarry.

Date of Document:
Circa 1967

Document Author:
Unknown

Geographic Location:
Broadway and Pleasant Valley Road, Oakland, Calif.

Context:
Incorporated in 1870 as the Oakland Paving Company, what became known as the Bilger Quarry was located at the present-day Rockridge Shopping Center, Broadway and Pleasant Valley Road, in Oakland. Its blue rock, processed at a nearby crushing plant, was used mainly as foundation for road building and related construction throughout the East Bay. By the turn of the 20th century, northern Italian immigrants dominated the workforce at the quarry, many of them living in a large boarding house near the site. The Bilger Quarry operated until 1923. In the 1960s the suburban-style Rockridge Shopping Center, which included a Safeway supermarket, Payless Drugs store, and several small shops, was built on the site. In March 2015, with Safeway holding the master lease to the property, the first phase of a complete redesign of the shopping center renamed The Ridge commenced.