The Ninth Avenue Terminal
The Ninth Avenue Terminal is a prominent visual element in the neighborhood and along the waterfront, a distinct ‘A’ rated landmark and anchor building with a distinctive design and focal location on the Oakland-Alameda Estuary, and large scale - 1,004 feet long by 180 feet wide and 47 feet in height, i.e., 180,000 square feet. This historic building: ➢ is strongly linked to establishment of the first Board of Port Commissioners, sworn in on February 12, 1927, as a requirement of the 1925 harbor bond issue. ➢ is significant to maritime history of the City of Oakland, California and the San Francisco Bay Area with respect to architecture, maritime commerce, transportation, port history, and the stories of the men who worked loading and unloading break-bulk cargo and labor unions. ➢ is the last of the break-bulk terminals constructed as a part of the Port of Oakland’s massive modernization and improvement program during the later half of the 1920s as a state of the art harbor improvement, with a 500-foot addition in 1951, and is the last surviving municipal terminal in Oakland, California constructed from the 1925 harbor bond approved by voters on November 10, 1925. ➢ is of Beaux Arts derivative style, designed by architect Arthur H. Abel, the Port of Oakland’s first Assistant Chief Engineer and Assistant Port Manager. The existing wide deck between the Ninth Avenue Terminal Building and the water provides an opportunity for a significant attraction along the San Francisco Bay Trail. Being adjacent to the Terminal serves as a windbreak for public use of the existing deck with excellent views of Brooklyn Basin, Coast Guard Island and Alameda, California. Adaptive reuse of the original section of the Ninth Avenue Terminal transit shed (1927) would preserve the last break-bulk transit shed and contribute to Oakland, California’s maritime history.
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