Jack London Square is an entertainment and business destination on the waterfront of

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, United States. Named after the author

Jack London John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...

and owned by the Port of Oakland, it is the home of stores, restaurants, hotels,

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

's Jack London Square station, a

San Francisco Bay Ferry San Francisco Bay Ferry is a public transit passenger ferry service in the San Francisco Bay, administered by the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA). In , the system had a ridership of , or about per weekday a ...

ferry dock A ferry slip is a specialized docking facility that receives a ferryboat or train ferry. A similar structure called a barge slip receives a barge or car float that is used to carry wheeled vehicles across a body of water. Often a ferry intended ...

, the historic Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, the (re-located) cabin where Jack London lived in the Klondike, and a movie theater. A farmer's market is hosted among the retail shops on Sunday mornings. The former presidential yacht USS ''Potomac'' is moored at an adjacent slip.

History

The area between Broadway, Webster, First Street (Embarcadero) and the estuary was named Jack London Square in 1951. On May 1, 1951, the area was formally dedicated and a plaque placed at the foot of Broadway.

Geography

Jack London Square is located at the south end of Broadway, across the Oakland Estuary from

Alameda An alameda is a Avenue (landscape), street or path lined with trees () and may refer to: Places Canada *Alameda, Saskatchewan, town in Saskatchewan **Grant Devine Dam, formerly ''Alameda Dam'', a dam and reservoir in southern Saskatchewan Chile ...

. The name has also come to refer to the formerly industrial neighborhood surrounding Jack London Square now known as the

Jack London District The Jack London District, also called the Loft District, is a neighborhood of Oakland, California, USA, that occupies the region south of the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880) along Embarcadero (Oakland), The Embarcadero, between Adeline and Lake Mer ...

, which has undergone significant rehabilitation in the last decade, including loft conversions and new construction. Former California Governor (and former Oakland mayor)

Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...

made his home here before moving north to the Uptown neighborhood.

Tenants and businesses

KTVU KTVU (channel 2) is a television station licensed to Oakland, California, United States, serving as the San Francisco Bay Area's Fox network outlet. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside San Jose� ...

(Channel 2), the Bay Area's Fox affiliate, has had studios at the Square since it began broadcasting on March 3, 1958, and the offices of the Port of Oakland are located there as well. The Square was also the temporary home of the '' Oakland Tribune'' from 1989 to 1996 after the newspaper was forced to abandon the landmark downtown Tribune Tower due to damage it sustained in the

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on California's Central Coast on October 17 at local time. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of t ...

. Other businesses at Jack London Square range from the

Oakland Athletics The Oakland Athletics (often referred to as the A's) are an American professional baseball team based in Oakland, California. The Athletics compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West division. The te ...

team headquarters and software firm Navis LLC, to restaurants such as Farmhouse, Noka Ramon, Scott's Seafood and Yoshi's restaurant and jazz club. California Canoe & Kayak retail and kayak rental shop has been located in Jack London Square since 1993.

Railways and transit

A mainline railroad runs through the middle of Embarcadero West, with the train speed limit set at 15 mph (25 km/h). Trains served

16th Street station 16th Street station (Oakland Central) is a former Southern Pacific Railroad station in the Prescott neighborhood of Oakland, California, United States. The Beaux-Arts building was designed by architect Jarvis Hunt, a preeminent railroad statio ...

until earthquake damage in 1989; afterwards, that station was replaced in 1994 by the present-day Jack London Square station. The tracks running through Jack London Square are used by

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

, Capitol Corridor, Coast Starlight, San Joaquin, and

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

. The trains share the road with automobiles,

AC Transit AC Transit (Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District) is an Oakland-based public transit agency serving the western portions of Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. AC Transit also operates "Transbay" ro ...

buses, and pedestrians. A second

Transbay Tube The Transbay Tube is an underwater rail tunnel that carries Bay Area Rapid Transit's four transbay lines under San Francisco Bay between the cities of San Francisco and Oakland in California. The tube is long, and attaches to twin bored tunnels ...

may include a BART station at the square. Another possibility is an

aerial tramway An aerial tramway, sky tram, cable car, ropeway, aerial tram, telepherique, or seilbahn is a type of aerial lift which uses one or two stationary ropes for support while a third moving rope provides propulsion. With this form of lift, the grip ...

to BART stations in downtown Oakland.

Design and development

Jack London Square's most recent changes are adding more businesses, restaurants, and entertainment. Under lead developer Ellis Partners, Jack London Square's new architecture and public spaces are adding to the daytime and nighttime population and use. Recent new components include the 55 Harrison building, a mid-rise by RMW Architects in association with Steve Worthington. The public spaces by SWA Group extended the city to the waterfront by adding accessible waterfront spaces supporting a variety of programs and events from

farmers markets A farmers' market (or farmers market according to the AP stylebook, also farmer's market in the Cambridge Dictionary) is a physical retail marketplace intended to sell foods directly by farmers to consumers. Farmers' markets may be indoors or ...

to the popular festivals and events.King, John (2013-02-19). Giving Jack London Square a nip and tuck. SF Gate, 19 February 2013. Retrieved from http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/place/article/Giving-Jack-London-Square-a-nip-and-tuck-4290563.php.

References

External links

*
The Jack London District Association

The Jack London News
{{Jack London Neighborhoods in Oakland, California Redeveloped ports and waterfronts in the United States Lincoln Highway Street running Tourist attractions in Oakland, California Shopping districts and streets in the San Francisco Bay Area Jack London San Francisco Bay Trail