The 1918 Flu in Oakland (the "Spanish flu")

Flu victims quarantined at the Oakland Municipal Auditorium, 1918.
In the background, stage scenery separates the “wards.”

 

photo credit: Oakland History Room

Our recent swine flu scare reminded me of another time that our nation braced against an onslaught of disease—but that time it was devastating.

In 1918, a worldwide epidemic of flu killed 400,000 Americans. I first wrote about the flu in 1999 when I found an interesting file on it in the Oakland History Room.

Fear was so great here that City Council passed an ordinance that anyone not wearing a mask over his or her nose and mouth could be arrested. Oakland held the West Coast record for such arrests, estimated to be around 1,000-- this in the period between Nov. 1 and Nov. 22, when the ordinance was repealed.

But the masks were ineffectual. The California State Board of Health issued a report after the epidemic had passed, stating that the masks did not affect the flu’s progress. In fact, they might be anti-beneficial, causing the wearer to repeatedly inhale a warmed percentage of their exhale, creating a fertile ground for germs.

The flu first showed up in Oakland in early October, 1918. Those first six cases were all strangers from out of town. Since the flu originated in the U.S. in Massachusetts in late August 1918, it took a surprisingly short time to make it to our coast, given that airplane travel was not yet common.

Two weeks after those initial six cases, Mayor Davie closed down theaters, schools, churches and poolrooms, just as was recently done in Mexico [note: in 2009], so that large congregations of people would not gather to spread the infection. The wise mayor did not, however, close down the saloons; he merely dictated that they had to use paper cups or sterilize their glasses.

On Oct. 22, the Oakland Municipal Auditorium on the edge of Lake Merritt became an impromptu Red Cross Hospital. A prison chain gang cleaned and mopped the auditorium in preparation for patients.

Since there were no walls to separate the “wards” into male and female sections, someone made the creative decision to use stage scenery (the auditorium had been the site of many theatrical performances). The temporary 500-bed hospital operated for less than a month, but saw a lot of patients in that short time.

The first night it opened, 75 people showed up, and there was only one doctor on staff and no nurses. Red Cross women who were there that night sewing masks graciously offered their assistance. They simply did what they could to keep people comfortable. Later, one nurse worked five days straight without sleeping.

By late October, an astonishing 4,714 Oaklanders had the flu, according to the Fruitvale Progress. On a single day, 214 cases were reported.

By early November, the Oakland death toll was 450. Nationally, there were more deaths from the flu than on the battlefields in France—since WWI was concurrent with this epidemic. On Armistice Day, Nov. 11, a nurse from the municipal auditorium remembered people wild in the streets with celebration, while the patients still lay miserably abed.

By late November, as quickly as it had come on, the flu abated. A second outbreak came in early 1919 (Mayor Davie was arrested in Sacramento for not wearing his mask), a third in Fall 1919, and a fourth in 1920.

*  *  *

Erika Mailman is the author of several historical novels. Reach her through her website, www.erikamailman.com.

This column originally appeared in the Montclarion newspaper in 2009, as part of my "Looking Back" column which ran from 1999 to 2011.

Quotes

Often, a few perceptive quotes are all you need to get through your day. Here are a few that have recently arisen in my life.

Alan: My dreams are understaffed. I need five bunnies to drive the tractor, not four.

Student in my class: What would unite our world?
Another student: Brainwashing.

And in case you can’t read my teabag, it says “Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” –Unknown. 

Please note the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club mug, a gift for presenting to them long ago for the Oakland Hills book. The club is a hugely benevolent group in Oakland, responsible for establishing and maintaining Children's Fairyland and fundraising to reinstate the necklace of lights around Lake Merritt. Club members start each meeting with a rousing rendition of Oh What a Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma...and yes, they meet really early. For breakfast.

. . . . .

Sacramento train station

This weekend I picked up an old friend at the train station in Sacramento, David Nicolai. He now lives in China and was visiting for a few days before returning back.

I made a point of parking so that I could go inside the train station and wait for him...and I was rewarded by the sight of a vaulted ceiling and what was once a very grand station indeed. It needs some work--and that scaffolding looks like it's been there a while. But I could see past all that to something beautiful that just needs a little rehab work.

There was also a fantastic mural depicting the arrival of the first transcontinental train. I asked David if George Pardee (Oakland mayor and Calfornia governor) would have been in the picture, and he scoffed and said no, far too early. And maybe even too early for Enoch Pardee, George's father and also an Oakland mayor. More on my adventures with David soon.



. . . . .

Sacramento Train Museum...and its Oakland lamp

Long before Thomas the Tank Engine entered my life, I experienced an attraction to the railroad. In high school I had a gorgeous Art Deco poster of a Wagons Lit poster on my wall, and I've always thought longingly of what it would be like to travel in the golden days of rail.

The Sacramento Railroad Museum shows amazing examples of cars, engines, and even....the element I most remember from my first trip a decade ago....the china and flatware used on various trains. An entire dining car is set for a meal with each seat showcasing the place setting of a different line throughout the U.S.

We visited again in December, and the car that is "dressed" for night, with windows blackened and occasional lights flashing, that rocks as if you are underway, was a real thrill for the younger set that accompanied me. In fact, I think we went through that train at least ten times. There's even a fellow (mannequin) sleeping in the lower bunk bed in the last car.

And right outside it, I noted a gorgeous dome lamp hanging from the ceiling: enormous, municipal and simply ravishing. And it turns out it is from the 16th Street station in Oakland, one of three chandeliers that once hung there. The station was damaged in the 1989 earthquake and I believe was recently restored and used in several movies as it is a truly grand example of a light, airy aesthetic station.

Although it's hard to tell in the photo, the lamp's glass looks like mother of pearl, and indeed a plaque at the museum notes that it was created at the Kokomo Opalesescent Glass Company in Indiana in the early 1900s. I love finding Oakland reminders, and this was a lovely one.


. .. .

Storybook architecture

A reader emailed me recently. She had remembered my (long ago! dating to 2002) Montclarion column about Storybook architecture in Oakland. This style is near and dear to my heart. The article is not cached online, so I’m going to post it here on the blog, slightly rewritten from its original text.

Storybook is the style of architecture that makes you feel like you suddenly slipped into the Germanic forest of Hansel and Gretel, and are peeping at a quaint cottage in the clearing. The Montclair neighborhood boasts two wonderful public examples, pictured here.

At top is the firehouse on Moraga Road. Its roof is not supposed to be painted white to represent snow, but should rather shine with its original copper finish to represent flames –see them roaring up at either end of the building-- quite appropriate for a firehouse. Note the scalloped roofline, the heart above the entry, the tiny windows in the eaves: all illustrative of that olde worlde charm.

The other structure is the library on Mountain Boulevard. Its roofline was built to look like it was already sagging for centuries, although the library was quite new at the time of this photograph. You can see the clinker brickwork behind the bushes and its general homespun, European appeal.

I must credit the coffeetable book Storybook Style: American's Whimsical Homes of the '20s by local architect Arrol Gellner. It’s filled with gorgeous photos by Douglas Keister of many Bay Area buildings, including private residences in Oakland, Berkeley, Piedmont and Alameda. In an email interview, Gellner told me that he thinks "Storybook Style homes, more than any other, represent the embodiment of the builder's personality, creativity and sense of humor. They're also a snapshot of an optimistic era when anything seemed possible, which no doubt appeals to people in these jaded times."

So what defines Storybook? Gellner calls it a "rambunctious evocation of medieval Europe" and sets the three criteria: an overstated rendition of medieval forms, use of artificial measures to make the building look extremely old, and the third, amorphous quality: "whimsy."

Storybook homes, at their most extreme, have crooked chimneys, lopsided walls, roofs that undulate like the wind making waves on a pond, misaligned shingles, askew shutters, clinker brick: all things to suggest antiquity, as if the very house is settling due to its age. Some homes have drawbridges (like Humphrey Bogart's Hollywood home) or streams with bucolic bridges over them, reminiscent of a pastoral Europe.

Gellner presents an interesting reason for why Storybook architecture arose. Even dating to the 1700s, people were fascinated by the Middle Ages (my dictionary says the Middle Ages ended in 1500, so the fascination began 200 years later). For instance, Marie Antoinette's famous "farm" at Versailles was her interpretation of a medieval countryside hamlet. The 1869 castle Neuschwanstein (which Disney later based his Sleeping Beauty castle on) is in essence fake, because it purports to look far older than it is.

Gellner points out that because Victorian style was so fussy, with its overwrought gingerbread detailings and interior doilies and tassles, people longed for a return to simpler times, like the society of a medieval town where goods were made by hand rather than in a factory. This was the basis of the Arts and Crafts movement, which valued craftsmanship. By the 1920s, people were ready for Storybook architecture, which allowed them to pretend they had stepped back in time. However, it seems to me that storybook architecture is a little fussy on its own, with turrets and eaves and different roof levels. Gellner says Storybook architecture relies on Craftsman ideals (like using natural materials, buildings of a small scale and architecture that appears organic to its setting) that were "recast in a rather more theatrical style."

And why theatrical? A major factor contributing to the rise of Storybook was the indomitable presence of Hollywood. By the 1920s, talking movies had created the first "stars" – people whose homes needed to reflect their unique standing in life. Moreover, there was a ready workforce that was used to creating fantasy sets – or was inspired by them – builders whose dials were already set on creative. Hollywood is indeed, as Gellner says, the "epicenter of Storybook style," although I did see at least 10 Oakland buildings featured in the book, as well as a handful from other Bay Area cities.

Another reason for this style? Men returning from WWI with memories of appealing European villages.

Sometimes entire housing tracts were built in Storybook style. Three are local, and were all based on designs by Oakland-based architect W. W. Dixon. One is Stonehenge in Alameda, another is Normandy Gardens in Oakland, and the third is on Oakland's Ross Street. This street was chosen because its electrical and phone cables had already been undergrounded by the time of the construction, and the street had pleasant light standards, rolled curbs and concrete pavement rather than asphalt. Part of the Ross Street tract, built by R.C. Hillen, was removed during freeway construction in the 1960s.

A few other streets host Storybook enclaves. One is 75th Avenue near MacArthur Boulevard. This stretch is called Holy Row, Gellner says, because at one point many of the homes were lived in by various church leaders. These homes were built in the early 1930s. Another street is the charming, tiny Veteran Way in the Dimond District, with three full-fledged Storybook homes and several "almosts."

Storybook architecture was gone by the late 1930s when Art Deco took over—a style that was also revivalist, looking in part to Egyptian motifs after the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb. Unfortunately, there are few buildings left. Gellner told me "Sometimes we (he and photographer Keister) had to spend days just to find one good one. It was like finding a diamond buried in a sand dune." So Oakland should certainly appreciate its good fortune in having many structures!

. . . .

Kismet

Yesterday I was out photographing various Oakland landmarks that had been saved through efforts of Oakland Heritage Alliance members. Here’s a startling one: City Hall itself!

After the Loma Prieta earthquake, there was a strong push to knock it over and start over. Luckily, our gorgeous Beaux Arts building got the seismic retrofit it deserved.

I was photographing these buildings for the Oakland Heritage Alliance newsletter, which I lay out. It's OHA's 25th anniversary, so I was trying to get images to illustrate a looking-back kind of article. Since Friends of the Oakland Fox, the group working to re-open the fabulous old Fox Theater which has been abandoned for decades, was an OHA offshoot, I decided to take pictures of the Fox façade.

Façade only, since the front is barred with chain link fence. I’d only been inside the theater twice, for very abbrievated looks.

So I was there holding my camera, peering through the fence, when I discerned a live human behind it, sitting in a chair. Upon seeing me, he rose to his feet and walked to the gate, saying, “You’re here to take photographs? Come on in.”

He was treating me like he was expecting me!

Although it crossed my mind to pretend I was whoever he thought I was (which always works in movies), I decided to come clean. “Are you expecting a photographer?”

“Yes.”

“Someone from a newspaper, media?”

“No, a preservation group or something.”

“Oh. It’s just a random coincidence that I’m here taking pictures of the Fox. But I wonder… is that preservation group the Oakland Heritage Alliance?”

He wasn’t sure, but he was kind enough to let me inside anyway. I was blown away by the luck of my timing, to be there holding a camera when he expected someone holding a camera….

So for the third time in my life, I entered the cavernous and gorgeous Fox Theater, built in 1928 and moldering since the 1970s. The 4,000 or some odd seats are all gone, so the auditorium is vast and curved and empty. On either side of the stage are two gigantic Buddha statues. Back when the Fox was operational, incense would burn in the figures’ laps and their eyes would glow. One statue’s eyes glowed ruby, and the other’s emerald.

The theater was very dark and of course my flash didn’t serve to light the space, so the interior shots didn’t work. But here are some shots of the dazzling Art Deco entrance, where the ticket booth used to stand. The marquee and blade (the long vertical sign) were very badly deteriorated, and in 2001 the city paid to have them professionally restored, so they beam brightly at night although the Fox itself is still pretty dismal. 

The Friends of the Oakland Fox just kicked off a capital campaign to get the theater restored enough to hold performances there, sort of a placeholder until the whole thing can be restored. Even just this stopgap restoration, called the Ruins project (i.e., keep the theater as a ruin, but operational) is supposed to cost $27 million! I’ll be making a donation once I get my advance, and you should too!

Professionalism

I gave a lecture last night at the Oakmore Homes Association annual meeting, on the topic of Walter Leimert. This guy was a 1920s real estate man responsible for the settling of Lakeshore Highlands (Trestle Glen) and Oakmore, among other things. He was a very colorful character, playing practical jokes (sometimes not very nice ones) on people, like preventing his brother from watching the last five minutes of a very heated Superbowl game that he had money riding on (he did this in his 90s, in case you’re wondering how 1920s people had televisions.)

I had a great time. The Oakmore folks are really nice. I’m often in Oakmore since it’s a quick walk across the Leimert bridge for me. And now I can call myself a Professional Lecturer since they paid me an honorarium. Thanks, guys!

I’m also a Professional Artist because at a yard sale once a guy paid $1 for something I made. (I always want to be an artist, but somehow it never pans out.) This piece was made out of the cross that your Christmas tree is stapled to, if you should happen to buy one at Long’s Drugs. I took the tree off, discarded it (no, I’m kidding; I decorated it and decked the halls) and painted the cross. Then I attached little milagros to it with tiny carpet tacks. That’s it. That was my famous art piece that a guy paid $1 for, even with the big nails of the crossbar still sticking out the back!

I’m also a Professional Shoe Model. Long ago, a photographer friend was hired to do a shoot for Bitch magazine, and she in turn hired me and another woman to wear the funky, sexy shoes Bitch supplied. The photographer was, I think, not entirely familiar with the Bitch format, and she was staging the photos by doing things like putting rose blossoms by our feet. In one photo, I’m wearing argyle (!) socks and propping my legs up against a tile mosaic that shows men golfing. The other “model” and I kept trying to suggest more lurid, perhaps Bitchy poses—we would pseudo embrace, etc. We wanted to do things like have one of us place our high-heeled boots on the other’s shoulders while sitting facing each other, but instead we got more flowers. In a combined fit of boldness and shyness, I took off my shirt (no bra) –but kept my back turned towards the camera! This was in Lakeside Park, by the McElroy fountain, and I wonder what the joggers thought was happening. Anyway, Bitch magazine didn’t like the “sweet” feel of the photos and paid the photographer a kill fee. Bummer.

My very first job was cutting articles out of the newspaper (to go into subject files for the reporters’ reference), so I guess I’m a Professional Scissors Wielder. Alan was once in a focus group where he had to drink beer, so he’s a Professional Drinker. If anyone out there is possibly reading this blog – my one lead is my cousin’s girlfriend Lynette, although Mike Chorost said he looked at it once—what are you a professional at?

Neighborhood proofs

Today I looked at the printer's proofs for the Oakland Neighborhoods book and OK'd them. Pretty fascinating to hold a mock-up of a book in your hands. The proofs I got from Arcadia for the previous book were not bound like these were. It makes a cool psychological difference!

It looks like I will have the shipment of books in time for the Nov. 19 launch party. There was a little nail-chewing on this timing aspect, but I asked the printer to Fed-Ex three copies when the book is ready (the rest will arrive by truck), so that if worse came to worse, I'd at least have a few copies to pass around.

Now it looks like I'll have 1,003 copies to pass around.

Excuse the prior post

"BBB" isn't really meaningful except to slobbering infants testing out sounds. That arose out of my frustration at crafting a really long, heartfelt post called "Would-Be Squirrel Rescue" about my attempts to shepherd a squirrel out of the road, only to hit "publish post" and have it disappear. Agh! So I did a test post (the BBB) which I now cannot delete because it oddly does not show up in my dashboard, though it does show up on the live blog. Whatever. I continue.

About the squirrel: turns out he was already dead, even though the breeze of passing cars made his fluffy tail stand up and waggle as if he were tormented, which is what made me do the U-turn and come to his aid. With my windshield sun screen, I pushed his rigor-mortised body out of the road, thinking it was the least I could do. As we approached the grassy median, his body jammed into the curb and no amount of maneuvering could get him up that slope, so I used my index finger and thumb of my left hand to grab his little back paw (where I thought fleas and rabidity were least likely to reside) and swoop him up to the median. I used that same hand to do the father-son-holy spirit thing you see the pope do, said "take care" to him, and got back into my car, studiously avoiding use of my left hand. I unrolled the window (right hand) and dangled my left arm out, driving fast enough that I hope the breeze would blow the germs right off!

In my original post, I talked a lot about my former animal rescues (most notably, a pigeon with a broken wing -- I saw the car that hit it or vice versa is more accurate-- that I held in my arms, fighting my own tears and its writhing while I begged the 7-11 clerk to call my friend and come get me. My friend did, we went to the bird rescue place and supposedly the pigeon is today flying with a healthy wing!) and how I have a certificate on my wall about my bravery in showing a skunk how to safely exit our basement.... oh well. My heart bleeds for my animal friends, and that was the gist of it.

The Oakland Heritage Alliance house tour was today, and it was great. Nothing so wonderfully lurid as walking through people's houses in a publically-endorsed event! It's funny to see the houses all carefully staged... and then you see in the Craftsman-tiled shower that they are using Head and Shoulders dandruff shampoo. Or they leave up their family photos so you study the faces and wonder where they all are right now... at a cafe while strangers wander through their house? It was all for a good cause, to raise money for OHA.

And now I am off to read the rest of my friend Scott's cool novel Soma, which will be published next year by Kensington.

Historic history

I'm working right now (deadline breathing down my neck, so of course I decide to blog instead) on an update to Beth Bagwell's wonderful Oakland history book Oakland, Story of a City. This reference book is the be-all, end-all of Oakland history.

But it was written in 1982 and since then we've had a big earthquake, a firestorm, a Strong Mayor initiative, a dot-com rise and crash, etc. etc. My job is to update the book for the last 20 years. Right up my alley: I love Oakland, and I love history.

Right?

Ostensibly, yes. But I'm finding I have a real bias for old history. Historic history. What happened here in the 1970s is perhaps a little less compelling. Give me streetcars and ostrich-plumed hats and I'm in ecstasy. Give me Broadway Auto Row and I'm working rather than playing. But I can't complain. I'm honored that I was asked to do the update, and it is compelling to learn about Oakland's more recent history. I moved here in 1991 -- just in time for the firestorm--and so there's a lot I don't know.

For instance, during some research yesterday I came across these cool pictures of our City Hall just after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The quake battered City Hall so badly that there was talk of tearing down the gorgeous 1912 structure, which was the first City Hall in the U.S. to be built as a skyscraper. Preservationists fought to save the building, and today it rests on seismic pads in the basement, which will move around and allow it to sway like a winsome girl in a daisy field next time the Big One hits.

Anyway, Bagwell's book is currently out of print -- the Oakland Heritage Alliance sold out of its print run. Which is good news, because it shows that Oaklanders love their history and will buy this book, and because as soon as the update I'm working on is ready, we can start fresh with a new print run with a new cover. (While I love the book, the cover could use a new design.)

Oakland Heritage Alliance is a very cool group that we can thank for many wonderful things still being around. It's not just a nostalgic, let's-love-the-past group; the members actively push for preservation--ironically, by attending City Council meetings in the City Hall they once saved!