Oakland City Hall is the seat of government for the city of

Oakland, California 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 ...

. The current building was completed in 1914, and replaced a prior building that stood on what is now Frank H. Ogawa Plaza. Standing at the height of , it was the first high-rise government building in the United States. At the time it was built, it was also the tallest building west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest Drainage system (geomorphology), drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson B ...

. The City Hall is depicted on the city seal of Oakland. Oakland City Hall 1917

The building was designed by

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

-based architecture firm

Palmer & Hornbostel Henry Hornbostel (August 15, 1867 – December 13, 1961) was an American architect and educator. Hornbostel designed more than 225 buildings, bridges, and monuments in the United States. Twenty-two of his designs are listed on the National Regi ...

in 1910, after winning a nationwide design competition. The building, constructed in the Beaux-Arts style, resembles a "rectangular wedding cake". It consists of three tiers. The bottom tier serves the foundation. It is three stories high and houses the mayor's office, the city council chamber, hearing rooms, and a police station with a firing range below in the basement. The thinner second tier follows; it is a ten-story office tower. The top floor of this section (the 12th floor) houses a 36-cell jail with an outdoor yard that has gone unused since the 1960s. Above the second tier is the two-story podium with a clock tower on top. The exterior is built of white

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

and

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

, while the inside is built of white and black

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Marble is typically not foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphose ...

. The building was nicknamed "Mayor Mott's wedding cake" after former Oakland Mayor

Frank Kanning Mott Frank Kanning Mott (January 21, 1866 – 1958) was the 35th mayor of Oakland, California. Mott was born in San Francisco on January 21, 1866, but his family moved to nearby Oakland when he was two years old. His father, who worked for the Central ...

, a key player in passing the bond to pay for the new City Hall, who was married the same year construction began. In 1983, the Oakland City Hall was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

. After 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 ...

, the building suffered from major structural damage and was immediately closed down. Instead of tearing it down and replacing it with a newer building, city leaders decided to retrofit it seismically. To do so, steel columns in the foundation were cut and they were replaced by rubber bearings. Steel beams were added to support the steel structure and concrete walls were added to support existing walls. The building can now move laterally 18-20 inches in an earthquake. The city hall was repaired along with the downtown revitalization project of building new office buildings. The repair project cost $85 million.

References

External links

Oakland City Hall official website
{{Oakland Attractions City and town halls on the National Register of Historic Places in California Government buildings completed in 1914 Clock towers in California Beaux-Arts architecture in California Henry Hornbostel buildings National Register of Historic Places in Oakland, California Government of Oakland, California Skyscraper office buildings in Oakland, California