Ad from Daily Alta California, January 22, 1852Oakland House, which opened in 1851, was the first hotel in what was then known as the village of Contra Costa. It was constructed by Alfred Burrell for A. D. Eames. 1
Oakland House was the site of Oakland's first post office. It was located at the southwest corner of 1st Street (now Embarcadero West) and Main Street (now Broadway), and was even included in the description used to create the town's initial boundaries. By 1854, however, the hotel had apparently been closed or renamed, since the 1854 act creating the City of Oakland referred to the former site of the Oakland Hotel. The building itself apparently still existed, since one source notes that it was known as the Pullen's Temperance Hotel in 1862. 1 A 1869 Oakland directory states that a business known as Broadway House then existed at this corner.2 However, the Pioneer Planing Mills, which opened on 1st Street between Washington and Broadway in 1865, eventually expanded to include this corner.
The hotel can be seen in an 1857 photo of Broadway.
Links and References
- Oakland History Timeline City of Oakland
- City of Oakland v. Oakland Water-Front Co. (1897) 118 Cal. 160, 50 P. 277, 280
- A Steeple among the Oaks by Albert E. Norman
- 1869 directory
