First Unitarian Church of Oakland, 685 Fourteenth Street, Oakland, Alameda County, CA

Significance: The First Unitarian Church of Oakland is an early example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style in California, which is applied to a u-plan complex consisting of an auditorium, a Sunday School, and a Parish House. The interiors of the three wings are linked by sliding doors in a modified version of the wide-spread Akron plan for churches. The structure is a complex hybrid of timber framing, common brick, and stud-framing, clad in a veneer of face brick, sandstone, and stucco. Altogether, the imagery of the building mixes the elite, in its style and materials, with popular culture, in its plan. The church was designed by the Oakland architect, Walter J. Mathews, under the direction of the Rev. Charles W. Wendte. Wendte was a leading Unitarian minister on the Pacific Coast in the 1880s-1890s. The church, with its well-to-do congregation, was a center of intellectual and cultural life in the East Bay, especially in the 1890s. Among many prominent speakers and artists to appear at the church were William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Julia War Howe, Alexander Graham Bell, Jack London, and Isadora Duncan. The building was damaged in the earthquake of 1989, and is presently (1996) undergoing renovation.
Survey number: HABS CA-2670
Building/structure dates: 1891 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1906 Subsequent Work