Rifle Range Becomes a Neighborhood

Tall, slender Mexican fan palm trees mark a trio of West End streets that any aficionado of the Craftsman style must visit—Burbank Street, Eighth Street, and Portola Avenue. Together they form the “Burbank-Portola Heritage Area,” originally known as the Bay Park Tract and once home to Schuetzen Park .

San Francisco investor John Dunn sold the property—the site of a long-shuttered rifle range and short-lived velodrome—to the South Shore Land Company. The land company’s investors included Charles Hooper, James Carl Eschen, Robert Minor, William C. Sharpsteen, Josephine Phelps, and William “Will” Farragut Chipman.

Chipman was the son of William Worthington Chipman , one of Alameda’s founders. Hooper was a prominent lumberman. Eschen and Minor were both mariners and natives of Denmark; Eschen had arrived in San Francisco in 1864. At the time of their involvement in the South Shore Land Co., both had retired as sea captains and had established the firm of Eschen-Minor Co. William Crittenden Sharpsteen was an attorney whose father sat on the California Supreme Court. Josephine Phelps was Chipman’s wealthy aunt on his mother’s (the McLean) side of the family.

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Minor suggests “a stroll beneath the palms to enjoy the variety of Craftsman-style homes this heritage area has to offer.” We’ll be doing just that on the last of our tours for 2024. The tour will include a walk with Dennis through “Craftsman-style heaven” along palm-tree-lined Portola Avenue, Burbank Street, and Eighth Street. The tract was once home to Schuetzen Park and a velodrome.Dennis will explain the interesting meaning of “Schuetzen” and why many found the park loud, raucous, and even dangerous. Skippy peanut butter was born here, and the homes coincided with the automobile’s growing popularity. We’ll also see where Neptune Beach ended and South Shore began and learn about the mansion that once graced Upper Washington Park.Of particular interest on Sunday’s walk is the Portola Avenue seawall, which lost its purpose in 1956 with Utah Construction’s landfill project. In 1964, the city removed the seawall west of Eighth Street and cut Eighth through to meet Westline Drive. The seawall once extended as far east as Ninth Street. That portion of the wall was removed in 1971 to make room for the homes on the far east side of Portola Avenue. The tour meets at 10 a.m. at Burbank Street and Portola Avenue on Sunday, September 29 . Your $20 ticket price also includes an exclusive presentation of the area on YouTube.

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The investors, save one, had something in common—they lived in Alameda. Hooper lived on Hawthorne Street, Minor on Sherman Street, Eschen and Chipman on Weber Street, and Sharpsteen on Benton Street. Phelps, the exception, lived in San Mateo. Will was her trustee. When she died 1927, her estate was valued at $390,000, which would be equal to $6,758,810 in 2024.

After the South Shore Land Co. purchased the property, the younger Chipman chose the names for the two new streets in the tract. He named one for famous horticulturist Luther Burbank. The year 1909 marked the 140th anniversary of Gaspar de Portola’s discovery of San Francisco Bay, so Will named the second new street Portola Avenue.

Prospect Street, today’s Eighth Street, only extended as far south as Central Avenue. Chipman & Company built a 16-foot-high seawall along Portola Avenue, and extended the street north to meet the San Francisco Bay shoreline, defined today by the rise in elevation in Lower Washington Park. They then extended today’s Eighth Street south to meet Portola.

Sales got off to a slow start. William Thompson was the only buyer in 1910. His house stood alone on today’s Eighth Street for two years, when the Strang brothers showed up. The October 3, 1912, edition of the Alameda Times-Star told its readers of a “big real estate deal whereby 16 lots in the Bay Park Tract passed into the hands of V. N. and F. N. Strang.” Over the next three years the Strang Bros., as their firm was known, would build 47 bungalows there, three-fourths of the 62 homes in the subdivision.

Fred, Verbal, and Eddie Strang hailed from Sierraville, a remote town north of Truckee. The family moved to Oakland in 1906, and the brothers—carpenters by trade—joined others profiting from the building boom following the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire . They turned their eyes toward Alameda in 1912 and became the primary construction firm involved in the developing South Shore Land Co.’s new tract.

“The Strang Bros. are now engaged in building a large number of homes in the Bay Park Tract,” the Oakland Tribune told its readers on March 15, 1913. The Tribune reported that V. N. (Verbal) Strang was the company’s designer.

The brothers purchased lots from the South Shore Land Co. and built homes “on spec,” without any buyers in mind. The brothers took their inspiration from the popular architectural style of the era and designed their creations—bungalows—in the Craftsman style. Historian Woody Minor describes the typical Strang bungalow in the Bay Park Tract as “a 1,400 square-foot, two-bedroom, one- bath affair with a kitchen and breakfast nook.”

As construction within the Bay Park Tract wound down, the brothers shifted their interest back to Oakland and began working with Wickham Havens and Walter H. Leimert in their Lakeshore Highlands development. An article in the February 20, 1920, edition of the Oakland Tribune stated that Fred was “in charge of the building being done in Lakeshore Highlands.” The Strang Bros. moved to Southern California. By 1927, they were building homes in San Clemente.

George Noble had stepped in. By 1918, he was building more homes in the tract. “His most telling change was in response to the automobile,” Minor says. The Strang Bros. creations had failed to include curb cuts for driveways. Noble’s homes in the tract not only added curb cuts but also included a novelty not found in any of the Strang Bros.’ designs—garages.

Noble was born in Michigan in 1865. He passed away in his Alameda home in 1955 at the age of 90. He had called Alameda his home for 72 years. He was living on Foley Street, three doors down from the Doolittle home, which he saved from the wrecking ball in 1912. Woody Minor informs us that Noble designed and built more than 300 homes in Alameda. Noble served on the City Council and was one of the first volunteer members of the Alameda Fire Department . His large family, including 15 great-grandchildren, mourned his loss.

In one of Noble’s 1925 homes in the Bay Park Tract, the garage and the porch assume equal importance. By that time the tract’s last home had been developed. Minor writes that “the era of tract housing had been born and the automobile was here to stay.”

Dennis Evanosky is the award-winning Historian of the Alameda Post . Reach him at dennis@alamedapost.com . His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Dennis-Evanosky .

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