Preservation Park, near 12th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Oakland, looks like a late 19th-century neighborhood. In a way it is one, but most of it was moved there.

How it was assembled

According to Preservation Park, the area began in the 1870s as an upscale neighborhood of elaborate Victorian homes. By the 1970s, many of the big houses had been split into rooming houses, and all but five buildings on the two-block site had been torn down. When a new freeway threatened more of the neighborhood's historic homes, the City of Oakland set up a public-private partnership to move the endangered buildings and restore them as offices.

Wikipedia counts 16 buildings: five on their original sites and 11 brought in from elsewhere in Oakland. It describes them as arranged to look like a late 19th-century Oakland neighborhood.

Houses with stories

Wikipedia lists the people tied to each building. A few examples:

  • The James White House was owned by Ellen Gould White and James White, who were active in the Seventh-day Adventist church and launched a paper called Signs of the Times.
  • The Remillard House belonged to brickyard owner Pierre Remillard, whose bricks went into the nearby First Unitarian Church of Oakland. According to Wikipedia, Lilly Remillard tutored Jack London there.
  • The Ginn House was designed by A. Page Brown, who later worked on the San Francisco Ferry Building.
  • The Trowbridge House originally stood behind what is now the Fox Oakland Theatre.

At the center is the Latham-Ducel Fountain. Wikipedia says the cast-iron fountain was forged in Paris, features the moon goddess Diana, and once stood at the Latham House and Gardens near what is now 17th and Jackson streets.

Visiting

Wikipedia says the grounds are open to the public during the day, but the buildings are not. Most of them house nonprofit offices. Preservation Park says the 16 buildings hold 55,604 rentable square feet. In January 2026, the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) took over as property manager. The park sits next to the African American Museum and Library at Oakland, so the two make an easy pair for a downtown history walk.