5165-69-73 Shafter c1920

Description:
Lifelong friends and neighbros, Dewey Westaway and Louis Siegrist, on Shafter Avenue (looking southwesterly), between Avon Street and Cavour Street, Temescal/lower Rockridge district, Oakland Calif. The three houses in the background are (from left to right) 5165, 5169, and 5173 Shafter Avenue. [from margin note]

Date of Document:
circa 1907

Document Author:
Unknown

Geographic Location:
5173 Shafter Avenue, Oakland Calif.

Context:
Louis Bassi Siegriest (1899-1989) was born in Oakland, California. He was the son of Louis Napoleon Siegriest and Emilia Bassi. Louis Sr. who was a driver of the first horse-drawn streetcars in Oakland, and eventually made a fortune in the heating oil business, married Emilia Bassi in 1888. They built a large Victorian house where Louis was born and lived for the rest of his life. His family home, at 5185 Miles Avenue in the Temescal/lower Rockridge district, still stands. Exhibiting a talent for art, he attended the nearby California School of Arts and Crafts (today's California College of Art) at the age of 15, and later the California School of Fine Arts (today's San Francisco Art Institute). Around 1917, Siegriest joined a group of artists in Oakland that became widely known as the Society of Six. [from The Society of Six: California Colorists by Nancy Boas, University of California Press, 1988]