Alameda County Loan Association Building Annex, 563-565 Sixteenth Street, Oakland, Alameda County, CA

Significance: This building is a contributing structure to the Oakland Downtown district. The Oakland Cultural Heritage Survey describes the district as, "...an architecturally, historically, and functionally distinct area within central Oakland. It contains the City Hall and a strong concentration of well-preserved commercial buildings from about 1900 to 1929, spanning two boom periods for Oakland, the East Bay response to the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, and the intense real estate and financial growth of the 1920s. These urbane, mostly Beaux-Arts inspired buildings display a general unity of style and scale, and represent many of the better-known Bay Area commercial architects of the period. In their siting and relation to each other, with 17-21-story "skyscrapers" punctuating lower construction, they represent an urban design termed "ideal" by City Beautiful planner Werner Hegemann in 1915, and gave Oakland a distinctive and much-photographed skyline. Downtown's development was one of a series of distinct stages whereby Oakland's commercial center moved north along Broadway from its original waterfront location in the 1850s, to Uptown (around 20th) in the 1930s. The economics of the era in which the 14th and Broadway district developed made it Oakland's office and financial center, in contrast to the Old Oakland district alterations and demolitions, in their historic relationships to one another, skyscrapers spaced among lower buildings, creating a still-distinctive downtown Oakland skyline." According to the Oakland Cultural Heritage Survey: "In style, scale, and age, this building contributes to the downtown district. In its particular location, it forms a transition between the seven-story Hotel Touraine and other tall buildings along Clay Street, and the lower commercial buildings to the west of it on the outlying edges of the district.
Survey number: HABS CA-2646
Building/structure dates: 1912 Initial Construction