A bustling transit hub for decades and later an event space, the 16th Street train station has served many roles for residents of Oakland, new arrivals, and visitors to the city. The history of the 112-year-old structure also intersects with local civil rights and labor movements, and with the 1989 earthquake that reshaped West Oakland.
But for years, the grand Beaux-Arts building has been left to deteriorate and accumulate graffiti.
Preservationists have pushed to get the station restored for decades. And with new plans to develop 90 homes around the site, they believe there’s an opportunity and a need.
City Ventures, an Irvine-based developer, plans to build 90 solar-powered, all-electric homes on the land surrounding the station at 1405 Wood St. The proposed housing, distributed across 10 buildings, consists of mainly two-bedroom townhouses along with some studios, one-bedroom units, and three-bedrooms, all condos for sale. The developer is also planning 1,500 square feet of retail space.
“The project will be marketed to first time home buyers and young families looking to grow their roots in Oakland,” City Ventures said in its planning application to the city.
In response, the Oakland Heritage Alliance, a preservation advocacy group, is petitioning City Ventures to restore the old station building and seismically stabilize it. They’d like to see the property put back to some sort of use, whether as offices for community organizations, retail, or a performance space, and include features honoring the station’s storied past.
In an open letter to the developer, OHA also calls for a redesign of the project layout because the plans show some of the housing blocking the view of the station’s baggage wing, a historically noteworthy site, and situated close to its main hall. The group also wants City Ventures to join its call to get the station, which is a local landmark, added to the National Register of Historic Places.
City Ventures did not respond to requests for interviews.
This is not the first time there have been plans to develop housing on the property—and corresponding calls to return the abandoned station to glory. For many years in the early 2000s, affordable developer BRIDGE Housing owned the site, planning to build housing around the station. According to OHA’s Naomi Schiff, the developer originally planned to demolish the baggage wing, causing an uproar among preservationists.
Eventually an “elaborate agreement” was drawn up to restore the station, Schiff said. But the plans, estimated at different times to cost $20 or $50 million, ran into trouble in 2011 when California ended the ability of cities like Oakland to use redevelopment agencies to finance big real estate projects, a critical source of funding.
“Needless to say that rehab never happened, although they did put a new roof on it when it was leaking badly,” Schiff said. “Here ensued a long period of nothing.”
A site of Black history and labor organizing
Built in 1912 and designed by Jarvis Hunt, the 16th Street station was for a time the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad. For decades, it was a major station and rail yard for the Southern Pacific Railroad. In its early years, it was the entry point into Oakland for many European immigrants, and became the portal into the city for Black southerners arriving throughout the Great Migration and for wartime jobs.
The 16th Street station was also a significant site of Black labor organizing in the first half of the 20th century. The high-end Pullman Company, which manufactured and operated “sleeping cars” on many train routes across the country, employed Black men as porters, serving the needs of mostly white travelers on long trips. These employees worked under demeaning conditions and paying them unfairly. White customers were told to call all of the porters “George,” after George Pullman, regardless of what they were actually named.
The conditions led to the 1925 formation in Chicago of one of the first Black-led labor unions, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The union is widely considered to have laid groundwork for the ensuing decades of Black organizing and protest movements across the country. Oakland became a key hub for the union because of the 16th Street station.
Oakland’s C.L. Dellums, who’d go on to become a celebrated civil rights leader, was elected vice president of the brotherhood in 1929 and later became president. Dellums had been fired from his job as a Pullman porter seemingly because of his participation in the union.
In an interview in the 1970s, Dellums recalled how he had gotten a job as a Pullman porter after “hanging around the Southern Pacific station.” In the 1920s, rail jobs presented one of the few opportunities to make a living as a Black resident.
“One was to go down to the sea in ships and the second was to work on the railroads or for the railroads down in the yards and thirdly, illegally,” Dellums said in the interview conducted by the University of California’s Regional Oral History Office.
Under Dellums’ leadership, Oakland was a reliable focal point for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
“In the darkest of days, Oakland maintained the highest dues-paying membership percentage-wise” nationally, he said. Dellums was the uncle of Ron Dellums, Oakland mayor, member of the U.S. Congress, and activist.
OHA doesn’t want the baggage wing to be torn down or blocked because that’s where the porters were stationed. “Please design a plan to celebrate this history rather than conceal it,” their petition says.
The station was damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Amtrak, which operated there at the time, relocated and opened the current Jack London station, and the tracks were removed from the West Oakland station. Since 1994, no trains have traveled to or from 16th Street.
The station building has since been the set of movies, music videos, live dance performances, and photo shoots—some through rental agreements with BRIDGE, and some unpermitted. Artists have long been attracted to the building’s grit and history and how it’s hit by natural light.
Over the years many homeless residents have made homes inside it too. But mostly it’s been unused and empty.
“Our fear is that the continuing neglect is really causing a lot of deterioration and damage,” Schiff said.
Station in the middle of a housing boom
While the station building has been static, hundreds of homes have sprung up on the properties surrounding it over the past two decades.
There’s the 163-unit Pacific Cannery Lofts, the Zephyr Gate townhouses, and a 99-unit affordable apartment building by BRIDGE. City Ventures also already built another housing project, called Stationhouse, nearby. The company initially proposed a different, slightly smaller development at 1405 Wood in 2015 before drawing up the current plans. MidPen Housing is also pursuing an affordable development in the area.
Until a year ago, Oakland’s largest homeless encampment and community also bordered the station. Hundreds of people were living in vehicles and makeshift structures for blocks along Wood Street, until the state and city closed the camp over a months-long period.
The city is on the hook to build much more housing in the coming years, especially affordable homes, to meet state requirements and continue to address high housing costs and demand to live in Oakland.
OHA’s vision would require changing the layout of City Ventures’ housing plans. Schiff said she believes the developer could still achieve the same density without encroaching on the station. She said placing the building on the National Register of Historic Places—while introducing strict rules and regulations around restoration—would offer tax credits to the developer. City Ventures would likely need some kind of influx of funds to embark on a pricey rehab project.
OHA argues that restoring the abandoned station is a sound investment.
“How does it help the marketability of your units to have a blighted building next to it?” Schiff said.
The developer has hired a consultant who’s met with OHA, she said. The developer’s application says the company will begin a community engagement process down the line. The initial application is still under review with the city, so it’s early stages for housing at the site let alone any work on the train station.
