My friend Scooter invited me to help out on one of his new tours of the Oakland Fox Theater, so I used it as an opportunity to explore other art deco buildings nearby. I started in the north at the Sears Roebuck building on Telegraph. Sears had enormous buildings similar to this one (the Oakland building is one of the smaller ones!) all over the US. Over the years since Sears closed them, they’ve become housing, office space and entertainment centers.
Next I went to the Breuner Building on Broadway, built in 1931 for the John Breuner Company Furniture Store. You can see the relief of two workers making a chair above the entrance. The building is a lovely sea green which didn’t show up too well in the bright sun. The sun also obscured my photo of the other facade which again shows a chair. You can see how the tile gleams in the sun, though.
The Paramount Theater is a must see, of course. I hadn’t noticed these natural motifs inside the entrance showing a squirrel, flying geese and flowers. The I. Magnin building has long been one of my favorites for its amazing shade of green. I suspect the tiles were a uniform color originally but have faded differently.
The Oakland Floral Depot, built in 1931 like the Paramount and the Breuner, is a glamorous navy blue accented with silver. The current tenant is the Gold Palm. I love how they have repurposed the neon sign that originally said “Florist.” There’s more gorgeous green tile with black and silver accents at 1721 Telegraph. One site says it was a Woolworth’s although Smith Brothers Inc. is inlaid at one entrance.
The Mazor Bros. Building, built in 1920, wasn’t that Interesting visually except for this panel at the top. Oakland Localwiki says it depicts “human figures with astronomical instruments.” The Howden Building is great because much of the ornamentation is at street level. It also has the most varied color scheme of the buildings I saw. The entry has what look like fountains, since the style is Moorish. One has a square surround and the other an arched one. The business sold tiles and the Howdens tiled it themselves.
347 14th Street has been home to many businesses including the Kon Tiki bar that’s closing permanently soon. It’s still another green terra cotta building with stylized flower motifs. A block over is a building I happened upon but found no information about. It has three friezes that maybe depict mythological scenes? They look like they were done by the same artist who made the frieze atop the Central Building & Loan Association Building around the block.
The Fox Oakland Theater tour was very enjoyable. That place is amazing. It was hard to winnow down my photos! It’s not strictly art deco but a kind of mash up of dramatic styles, including Indian (there are lots of elephants), partly due to renovations over the years.