4602 Grove 1959

Description:
Storefronts and apartments (looking northeasterly), 4602 Grove Street (present-day Martin Luther King Jr. Way), Temescal district, Oakland, Calif.

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Date of Document:
1959 (date on form: 12-19-1959)

Document Author:
Unknown (Valva Realty?)

Geographic Location:
4602 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, Calif.

Context:
Temescal s residential development started in 1868 when Solomon E. Alden created his first subdivision (within the 600+ plus acres he owned) by platting Temescal Park, an area that extended from Telegraph Avenue east to just beyond today s Webster Street, and from today s 48th Street north to about where 51st Street runs today. The extension northward of horse trolley service along Telegraph Avenue to Temescal Creek (51st Street), and the building of a streetcar barn and stables there in 1870, helped spur settlement in Temescal, where these modest parcels were now available to be purchased. Gradually, properties were bought and modest, one-story homes built. Over the next twenty years, neighboring tracts were platted, with larger, fancier, Victorian homes often occupying corner lots and smaller cottages gradually filling up the blocks. On the southern end of Temescal, residential development followed the opening, in 1913, of the Oakland, Antioch and Eastern Railway s (later consolidated into the Sacramento Northern Railway) southern terminus at 40th Street and Shafter Avenue. Bungalow-style designs (referred to as post-Craftsman Bungaloid in the city of Oakland s publication, Rehap Right) typified homes built at this time. But undeveloped lots were still scattered throughout Temescal. On many of these lots, throughout the 1920s, fourplexes and sixplexes were built, a response to Oakland s growing working-class population in need of affordable housing. Larger apartment buildings, as well as single-family homes of various designs, also appeared. By the 1930s, virtually all of Temescal s available lots had been developed.