Oakland Ca Landmarks

On Aug. 5, 1929, a crowd of 10,000 people gathered in downtown Oakland for the long-awaited opening of the H. C. Capwell department store in a massive, brick-fronted building adorned with terra cotta and hailed as a gem of Beaux Arts design. Today, the six-floor store, renamed the Emporium a year ago but still Capwell to many longtime Oaklanders, will reopen after almost 10 months of massive restoration to repair damage from last October's Bay Area earthquake.

If I could put myself anywhere to watch a movie, I'd choose a theater I've never visited--one of the West Coast's greatest motion picture houses that today rarely shows films. It exists in my mind only as a dream conjured up by photographs in a book I've pored over for a decade, and it is precisely that overlay of fantasy that makes it seem like the perfect place to look at movies.

If I could put myself anywhere to watch a movie, I'd choose a theater I've never visited--one of the West Coast's greatest motion picture houses that today rarely shows films. It exists in my mind only as a dream conjured up by photographs in a book I've pored over for a decade, and it is precisely that overlay of fantasy that makes it seem like the perfect place to look at movies.

On Aug. 5, 1929, a crowd of 10,000 people gathered in downtown Oakland for the long-awaited opening of the H. C. Capwell department store in a massive, brick-fronted building adorned with terra cotta and hailed as a gem of Beaux Arts design. Today, the six-floor store, renamed the Emporium a year ago but still Capwell to many longtime Oaklanders, will reopen after almost 10 months of massive restoration to repair damage from last October's Bay Area earthquake.

A group of homeless people who want to renovate and live in a dilapidated downtown house won an important victory when the Oakland Planning Commission recommended that the house be designated a historical landmark. The action delays any possible demolition of the boarded-up Victorian house for at least 240 days, and gives the two dozen people calling themselves the Oakland Homeless Union time to work out a deal with the city and the owner of the house, Robin Orr.

As a wrecking ball punched into the historic Cominos Hotel again and again last Friday, Betty Brusa sadly clicked away with her camera, recording for posterity the death of one of the Salinas Valley's most regal landmarks. "It was heartbreaking," said Brusa, president of the Monterey County Historical Society, who with a stunned group of local preservationists and history buffs watched the destruction of the old luxury hotel in downtown Salinas--a favorite haunt of author John Steinbeck.

As a wrecking ball punched into the historic Cominos Hotel again and again last Friday, Betty Brusa sadly clicked away with her camera, recording for posterity the death of one of the Salinas Valley's most regal landmarks. "It was heartbreaking," said Brusa, president of the Monterey County Historical Society, who with a stunned group of local preservationists and history buffs watched the destruction of the old luxury hotel in downtown Salinas--a favorite haunt of author John Steinbeck.

A fire in Oakland's aging Will Rogers Hotel killed a 65-year-old man, injured two other residents and forced 50 others to flee into the streets. Officials said Ned Bradley died from smoke inhalation suffered when the fire broke out in his second-floor room. The cause of the blaze in the three-story residential hotel had not been determined.