Monday, January 4, 2010

Greetings from Oakland

Oakland postcard

Sometime back I bought some vintage postcards of Oakland. They're a familiar format, with 'greetings from', and the letters of 'Oakland' filled with images from Oakland, of course.

I love them for their vintage-y goodness, but honestly, Curt Teich & Co., Inc, could have done better picking images for inside the letters. It has:
O - Alameda County Courthouse
A - City Hall
K - Lake Merritt
L - San Francisco Bay Bridge
A - Posey Tube
N - Municipal Auditorium (aka the Kaiser Convention Center)
D - Wild Ducks on Lake Merritt

(Searching on Oakland Municipal Auditorium to confirm that it was the Kaiser Convention Center lead to this interesting picture, showing the building being used as a hospital during the 1918 flu pandemic.)

So my question, dear readers, is what would you include for the 7 images for Oakland if you were creating this today? My partial list is:
  • Lake Merritt
  • Tribune Tower
  • Redwood Regional Park
But what else would you include?

5 comments:

artemis said...

Hmm...I might throw in the Mormon Temple or the new cathedral, the Fox or Grand Lake Theater, and maybe the Fairyland sign. There are also a bunch of buildings I love, but they probably don't scream "Oakland" to the average person.

ArtSparker said...

The Albany bulb sculptures? The Creative Growth sign?

Unknown said...

K had two good ideas: the cranes in West Oakland, and some graffiti or one of the many murals.

Anonymous said...

Gene,

Check out this photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eileenrose/3223445235/

Unknown said...

That's awesome! Looks like:
O - city hall
A - Chinatown
K - oranges(?)
L - Tribune tower
A - Fox Theater
N - courthouse
D - redwoods
all with a nice background of Lake Merritt.