Have you ever wondered about the history of the California Hotel in West Oakland? Many Bay Area residents recognize the familiar façade of the residential hotel as they drive over the 580 overpass, or roll down San Pablo through the Emeryville/West Oakland borderlands. Look closer, and you will find a rich and vibrant history that connects many important histories of the Greater Bay Area.

Opened on May 18, 1930, the CA Hotel was a premier hotel for “travelers entering Oakland from the north”, complete with the most modern fixtures of the times, including a state-of-the-art elevator service, parking garage structure, and “motorists piano”. The Hotel was also home to 11 storefronts, including the California Grill, the California Beauty Parlor, and a large social hall for community events. This “advanced” hotel was built in the heart of a district known as the Watts Trap, named for a major developer in the area, which served as a hot spot for entertainment and leisure. Travelers from Greyhound buses, the Santa Fe depot, and other major transit lines (Key Route trolleys) came to this stretch – mainly from 20th to 40th on San Pablo Ave. – for the card clubs, music venues and the luxury transit hotel. This prime location was also deeply connected to the construction of the Oakland- San Francisco Bay Bridge, which opened in November 1936.

However, many of these early histories fail to mention that this was a whites-only hotel, a space where people of color were not welcome. As one resident recalls, “when you walked by, you held your head down and didn’t even look into the window.” This was also a time of organized struggle and political resistance, particularly from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the historic militant labor union founded in 1925 and headed by C.L. Dellums. Other events tied to this era of East Bay political activity include the 1934 General Strike, of which black labor was a central catalyst, and the 1930s campaign, “Don’t buy where you can’t work”, which used boycotts and picketing to demand local businesses hire people of color. This political force grew stronger in the 1940s as the black population in Oakland grew substantially – from 8,462 in 1940 to 47,562 in 1950. In 1953, “new operators ended discrimination at the hotel” and held a “grand re-opening” to welcome all their new guests, regardless of race.

By the 1950s, the CA Hotel became a “cultural institution” and a center for the lively community of jazz, funk and blues players in Oakland. It is from this time that we still hear stories of watching a young James Brown perform in the hotel’s lobby mezzanine, or of catching Little Richard or Sam Cooke as they stayed at the newly desegregated hotel in West Oakland. Two historic clubs also thrived during this time on the first floor of the CA Hotel: Club Zanzibar and the Side Door. Based on engravings left in concrete from the early 1970s, we know that Sly Stone and Big Mama Thorton were regular visitors to these venues, as well as Oakland greats such as Eugene Blacknell, Charles Brown, and Roger Collins. These historic figures all tie the CA Hotel to the development of Oakland as a cultural center of black America. Through music, food and community organizing, the CA Hotel has been a key institution in building Oakland as (what Ishmael Reed has affectionately called) a Blues City.

…stay tuned for more history of the CA Hotel, as we move through the 1970s and

80s, and all the way up to today!

Check out some music by folks that played the hotel…

Sources

Many thanks to the amazing librarians at the Oakland History Room in the Oakland Public

Library, Richard Walker, Seth Lunine, Paul Groth and many others for their support in this

research.

Steven LaVoie, “Unseen history in Oakland’s most visible landmark” (Oakland

Tribune: July 12, 1992)

Lawrence P. Crouchett, Lonnie G. Bunch III, and Martha Kendall Winnacker, Visions

Toward Tomorrow: The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community 1852-

1977

Various Oakland Tribune Articles from 1929 – 1933

Chapter 1: Cal Hotel Resident Mickey Martin (care taker of our flock) takes on Oscar The Rooster.