Aldo Guidotti-FoSO 2008 9

Description:
Aldo Guidotti (1920-2013), center, with Studio One Art Center staff and members of the Friends of Studio One (FoSO), at the front entrance to the recently renovated Studio One Art Center, 365 45th Street, Temescal district, Oakland, Calif. Front row, l-r: Studio One staff member, Alethia Walker; attorney, Aldo Guidotti; FoSO member, Betsy Yost; Studio One director, Kola Thomas. Back row, l-r: unidentified Studio One staff member; FoSO member, John Momper; FoSO member, Ron Bishop; Studio One staff member, Tomye Neal-Madison. Aldo Guidotti is being honored by FoSO (and later taken to lunch) for having spearheaded (along with other North Oakland business and community leaders), in 1947, the community fundraising drive to purchase the former Children's Home and donate it to the city for use as the North Oakland Recreation Center. The NORC opened in 1949, housing the fledgling Studio One art program on its second floor.

Date of Document:
23-Jul-08

Document Author:
Jeff Norman

Geographic Location:
365 45th Street, Oakland, Calif.

Context:
Inspired by the great Chicago fire in 1871, the Ladies Relief Society of Oakland formed in 1872 to help Oakland s indigent women and children. The Society operated residential facilities for elderly women, children, and infants on the "old Beckwith estate" a 10-acre parcel in the Temescal district, Oakland Calif. The property, which the Society purchased in 1873, extended from 42nd Street to 45th Street, and from Emerald Street west to about Shafter Avenue. The organization built a new, two-story, brick and shingle, U-shaped Children s Home in 1894. A fire in 1906 destroyed the second story, but the facility was quickly rebuilt. Boys and girls, either orphaned or from families too poor to provide for them, continued to live there into the 1940s, by which time child welfare programs had shifted away from institutionalization to a foster care model. During World War II, the Ladies Relief Society (later known as the Ladies Home Society) leased the building to the Army. In 1947, the North Oakland Area Council launched a major fundraising drive to purchase the building and adjacent boy's playground and donate it to the city of Oakland for use as the North Oakland Recreation Center and the future site of the Temescal Pool. When the North Oakland Recreation Center opened in 1948, it also housed the fledgling Studio One Arts Center, begun the year before at Bushrod Park. After years of deferred maintenance, during which Studio One classes, labs, galleries, and offices gradually took over the entire building, the facility closed in the spring of 2005 for a $12.5 million renovation and seismic upgrade funded by Measure DD, which was approved by Oakland voters in 2002. Studio One reopened in 2008.