Ethereum

Highrise #64

Collection

Highrises

Description

**Oakland City Hall** **Art by:** Chris Hytha **Story by:** Mark Houser Colloquially known as “Mayor Mott’s wedding cake,” the first city hall to be built as a skyscraper seems almost good enough to eat, with white granite walls drizzled with terracotta icing. The matrimonial moniker originated in the mayor's surprise nuptials to a Berkeley schoolteacher while construction was underway. Frank Mott is best remembered for helping his city shelter 150,000 homeless San Francisco earthquake victims in 1906. The busy executive also wrested control of the waterfront and port from the railroad, expanded city parks and dredged the tidal basin known as Lake Merritt, inaugurated a civil service system, reorganized the police and fire departments, and established Oakland's first city museum. Besides elegant, high-ceilinged council chambers, the highrise houses courtrooms, various municipal departments and offices, a medical ward, and behind the slit windows lining the top floor beneath the clock tower, jail cells. Built of reinforced concrete to be earthquake proof, the skyscraper suffered severe seismic stress in 1989 and was retrofitted with a new steel skeleton and placed on a floating foundation. A memorial oak tree in front was planted in memory of the novelist and socialist activist Jack London, whom Mott defeated in the 1905 mayoral race.

Traits

Style

Beaux-Arts

City

Oakland

Region

West