Alameda Theater: Before

Alameda, California

October 7, 2009

My town, Alameda, is a suburb on an island. And it’s a great town. We are a part of the greater San Francisco Bay Area, and yet we are cut off from it. That thin stretch of Bay channel which separates Alameda from the coastline of Oakland helps preserve a rare small town feel in the midst of the otherwise sprawling East Bay metropolitan area.

Alameda Map Two tunnels underneath the channel bring traffic into and out of Alameda to the north. Four bridges do so to the south. The Bay Area’s network of highways does not touch Alameda. Industry, airports, and warehousing lining the mainland coast insulate us. We remain a bit of a mystery. And we like it that way.

Alameda is a quiet town, for the most part; easy to walk around, easy for bicycling. Crosswalks hold sway over traffic on Park Street, the town’s main center of shopping, administration, and activity. The City Hall, Police, Library, and Alameda High School are all within a block or two of Park. The sidewalks restaurants and storefronts of Park Street are always busy well into the evening. The recently redeveloped South Shore Shopping Center on the far end has so far not detracted from a Park Street remaining a healthy and very active center of community activity.

Part of Park Street's attraction is the abundance and variety of restaurants. On Friday and Saturday nights there are lines out the doors and everybody gets to know each other as they wait for their table. Alameda has German food at Speisekammer, Thai food at Toomies, excellent Mexican food and Tequila at La Pinata, and Italian at both Linguini's and Tomatina. After dinner, a nice walk down the street can include a browse at Books Inc. or a classic Alameda icea cream at Tuckers Ice Cream.

The redevelopment and reopening (in 2008) of the 1930’s art deco Alameda Theater movie palace less than a block down Central Avenue from Park Street was controversial for its inclusion of a movie megaplex and multi-story parking structure. Together, these latter two have formed one of the largest and blockiest buildings in the city, dwarfing and diminishing the beautiful structure of the neighboring Twin Towers Methodist Church. But at the same time the city has regained its jewel of a theater, rejuvenated a block of previously rundown eateries, and I am finding it much easier to park downtown these days.

Webster Street, Alameda’s second shopping street to the north is the town’s direct connection to the Webster and Posey Tubes (tunnels) through the Alameda Portal which access downtown Oakland underneath the shipping channel. Not surprisingly, Webster Street has a more urban feel to it than Park. And yet the corner of Webster and Taylor Streets feature Alameda’s twice weekly Farmer’s Market. And we’re hoping they somehow get Tilley’s grill back open one of these days.

Across the entirety of Alameda, the town has managed to preserve much of its 19th and early 20th century history and architecture. The city’s Historical Preservation Society lists over 10,000 buildings still standing which were constructed prior to 1930. Many of these buildings, especially Alameda’s stunning array of Victorian homes, were constructed in relation to the city’s boom as a bayside resort community, hosting beach and swimming attractions including the Neptune Beach “Coney Island of the West” until its closure during the Great Depression.

They city’s history is also shaped in no small part by the US Navy, and the presence between 1940 and 1997 of the Alameda Naval Air Station. NAS had served as home base to the aircraft carriers U.S.S. Midway, Carl Vinson, and Coral Sea and was the sailing point for the USS Hornet carrying Alameda native Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle's famous 1942 raid on Tokyo. Despite the loss of the Hornet in combat in 1942, a renamed Hornet Aircraft Carrier gained further fame in the 1969 as the recovery ship for the Apollo 11 capsule and location for astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins’ meeting with President Nixon through glass while they were still in post-flight quarantine. A mock up capsule and the original quarantine trailer are kept as exhibits on the Hornet today as it remains berthed in the old NAS harbor as a naval museum within sight of the San Francisco skyline.

This view across to the skyline of The City is actually a significant aspect of Alameda’s character. The island is blessed with ample bayside shoreline, beaches, wetlands and low-tide mudflats. In fact Robert Crown Beach is one of the longest and finest stretches of beach on the entirety of San Francisco Bay. And the aforementioned view is the highlight of a six-mile, nearly continuous paved shoreline path suitable for walking or biking along the beach and shoreline, stretching from the Hampton Inn parking lot down south by the airport up to Crab Cove on the north end of the beach.

This vista across the Bay, combined with the variable of the seasons and the weather, keep in mind this is foggy San Francisco Bay we’re talking about, create an ever changing view which I have tried to capture in many different ways. The view deserves its own page.

Across the channel from the Naval Air Station sits the Port of Oakland. This is the fourth busiest ocean port in the United States and Alameda fishermen watch the constant docking of container ships from China, Japan, Korea, and South America. The port’s massive cranes, inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars snow walkers, reportedly, move containers onto trucks and rail for distribution throughout the United States.

This channel continues all the way around the island, but didn’t always. Alameda was until 1902 a peninsula, connected at its southern end to Oakland. The peninsula once shared a portion of one of the state’s largest historic groves of Oak woodland with the mainland, a grove which eventually lent its name to the city of Oakland. But the need for increased shipping access drove the cutting of the channel in 1902. Alameda held a Water Carnival in 1904 to celebrate its reinvention as an “Island City.”

And so the historic peninsula of Alameda is now an island. And the fill from the channel dredging was used to connect the southern section of town still known as Bay Farm Island to the mainland, making it now a peninsula.

All clear?

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