Historical Buildings in Downtown Oakland
Razed by Forest City Residential, Inc.
In February 2006, all the efforts to save pieces of African American and Chinese American history in Oakland were dashed when the White Log Tavern (aka White Log Coffee Shop), built in 1930, and the 1883 storefront on the site of one of Oakland’s earliest Chinatowns were demolished to make room for the 1,200 unit Uptown Residential Development, part of Mayor Jerry Brown’s “10K” plan to provide housing in downtown for 10,000 people. The structures stood on San Pablo Avenue between Thomas L. Berkley Way (formerly 20th Street) and William Street.
photo taken by and included courtesy of Anna Naruta.
Despite the efforts of Anna Naruta, who recently completed her doctorate in archaeology at UC Berkeley, and Kelly Fong, first year doctoral student in anthropology at UCLA and formerly an anthropology undergraduate at UC Berkeley, along with the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Oakland Heritage Alliance, City Council members Nancy Nadel and Jean Quan, and others, Forest City went ahead with the demolition. Nancy Naruta and Kelly Fong did extensive historical research on the neighborhood and determined the storefronts were built on the site of Oakland’s largely unknown Chinatown, which was forced out of the area.
Initially Naruta and others tried to convince Forest City developers to incorporate the buildings into their residential design. When that proved unsuccessful they tried to get the developers to agree to provide enough time to have someone move the buildings elsewhere so they could be preserved and possibly house an interpretive museum about the San Pablo Avenue Chinatown in the future. Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this story is that West Oakland developer, Bruce Loughridge, was quoted in the Oakland Tribune (2/3/2006) as being in the process of negotiating to move the buildings to a permanent location in West Oakland that he owned so the structures could be saved, but time ran out.
See the website Anna Naruta has set up: http://www.UptownChinatown.org