Free Downtown Oakland Walking Tours

From May through October, the City of Oakland offers 90-minute walking tours through the downtown districts. Choose from eight different tour itineraries:

Tour 1: Old Oakland
Tour 2: City Center
Tour 3: Uptown to the Lake
Tour 4: Preservation Park
Tour 5: Oakland Chinatown
Tour 6: Waterfront
Tour 7: Churches & Temples
Tour 8: New Era | New Politics

To make reservations, please call (510) 238-3234 or e-mail aallen@oaklandnet.com. Please specify which tour and date you are requesting in your message.

Spring House Tour photo gallery

Did you miss our Spring House Tour? See the houses and the people who went in our photo gallery.

Last-minute House Tour tickets

The House Tour ticket booth will open tomorrow at noon on Stuart St. mid-block between College and Benvenue Avenues (see map).

Public transit: Take AC Transit bus line 51 northbound from Rockridge BART to College & Stuart or southbound from Downtown Berkeley BART to College & Russell. You can also walk from either station.

Parking: Underhill Parking Facility and Anna Head West lot open at 1 pm. They charge $1 per hour.

Bernard Maybeck: An Arts and Crafts Architect in California

Pre-tour lecture by
Sissel Hamre Dagsland
Wednesday, 23 April 2008
8:00 pm
The Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley
$15 at the door

Sissel Hamre Dagsland is visiting from Norway, where her book Bernard Maybeck: en arts and crafts-arkitekt was recently published by Bodoni Forlag.

As she writes in the book’s introduction, “Berkeley was [...] my own city for ten important younger years, including most of my school years [...]. Through a number of later visits to close relatives in Berkeley my own interest in Maybeck has increased. This growing interest is also influenced by my numerous years as a journalist in the cultural department of the Bergen newspaper Bergens Tidende. An important part of my work there has concerned architecture, older building styles, cultural history, and problems of conservation and restoration of buildings. ...[In my book on Maybeck] I have concentrated on important background material as well as what I personally have observed and experienced. In a final chapter I have tried to clarify resemblances and possible connections between Maybeck’s work and Norwegian traditions. This includes the relationship between Maybeck’s architecture and Norwegian stave churches, as well as inspiration from the Arts and Crafts movement which is a common feature for Maybeck and the so-called Bergen school of architects.”

This lecture is being offered in conjunction with our Spring House Tour.

Heinz Emigholz: Architecture as Autobiography

Here is a film series that no architecture lover would want to miss. It’s beginning tomorrow evening, 1 April, at the Pacific Film Archive with Goff in the Desert, an examination of the work of Kansas-born architect Bruce Goff.

Yet to come are Schindler’s Houses (15 April), Sullivan’s Banks and Loos Ornamental (17 April). Visit the BAM/PFA website for additional information.

BAHA Spring House Tour

Westenberg House (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2007)

Sunday, 4 May 2008, 1 to 5 pm. See details.

South Berkeley Community Church on the National Register

Photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004

Volume 1, Issue 1 (Winter 2008) of Preservation Matters, the newsletter of the California Office of Historic Preservation, reports that the South Berkeley Community Church (Hugo W. Storch, 1920) was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on 15 November 2007.

The church was listed at the local leverl for its architectural qualities and for its important role as one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s first integrated churches.