Grove Street Hotel - Oakland

Undated photo. ¹Sunshine C.E. logo suggests 1897

The Grove Street Hotel was a small hotel at 46th and Grove (now MLK) in the 1890s and early 1900s. According to Albert E. Norman, most of the patrons worked for Oakland's first electric streetcar line, the Oakland Consolidated Street Railway (OCSR). ¹

The above is consistent with the 1901 Oakland directory, which lists seven residents as being employed by the Oakland Transit Co., which purchased the OCSR in 1898 and later became part of the Key System.² The hotel was across the street from the OCSR car barn at 4629 Grove.

In the 1898 directory, it's listed as a hotel run by Gottfried Meyer, who also ran a grocery store. Meyer and his wife Anna bought the property in October 1892. The 1901 directory lists him as running the hotel. The 1906 directory lists Meyer still running the grocery store, but also as proprietor of the Central Hotel (616 - 12th Street).

1900 classified³

It's unknown exactly what years the hotel was in business as a hotel. Occasional classified ads from 1905 onward imply the building was being operated simply as a boarding or rooming house, and the 1911 Sanborn doesn't label the hotel, only a noodle factory in the storefront with a 4612 Grove address. Also, when the building was advertised for sale in 1914, it was described as a furnished apartment house.⁵ The building still exists today, although many of the original features have been removed. A photo on TemescalOverTime.org dated 1959 shows the details gone by then.

1905 classified ad⁴ 1914 classified ad⁵