Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • 5

i to 0 aUaiiA (Trl bu nr April 6, 1969 5 t. A 4 -V -a. aii i I V- 1' XX -J 4 1 I ry THIS WEST OAKLAND FIREPLACE STILL HAS ITS OLD GOOD LOOKS Redevelopment Agency would like to refurbish Oak Center fireplaces this way 150 Oak Center Victorian Homes Ruined by Vandals SPARE THIS HOUSE AND THE CHARM, BREATHING ROOM IT PROMISES ONCE UPON A SHIMMERING CHANDELIER Only the plaster ceiling rosette now remains The Redevelopment Agency is fighting to give this house and others new lives SPRING 4 4 .1 fn houses the Agency now owns will someday be for people. Thats what upsets Bornholdt, Mrs. Love, Williams and others.

In fact, Bornholdt knows the very woman who hopes to move into the house where he found the doors all stripped of their doorknobs. What will I tell her? Shell have to wait. If they vandalize it some more; we may have to find another home for her. Shell have to wait more months, Bomholdt sighed. The Agency cant allow the original householders to remain.

Williams explains: We need to get them into housing elsewhere when that housing opens up. If we wait until the house rehabilitation begins and the family has to move, the housing we founi earlier will have been occupied by someone who is not a displacee from the project You would find people in your housing with no place to go. Until Williams gets his patrol or some equivalent the area must make do with the seven Oak Center Neighborhood Association block leaders, the Agencys eight-man community maintenance squad in the daytime and the sharp eyes and ears of neighbors. The neighborhood assocla tion has asked Williams to se up a central warehouse where Victorian items can be storec and guarded by Neighborhood Youth Corps volunteers assigned to the Agency. These items would come from homes facing demolition.

But they would grace other Oak Center homes the Agency rehabilitates Williams likes the plan. The Agency has already opened a nursery where it stores shrubs and trees from various building sites. In the house of the sixteen doors, Bornholdt rubbed mahogany paneling which needed only polish to come alive again. He imagined hdw the rooms would look when their walls were freshly painted and sunlight bathed them. He scratched his beard.

The paneling is still here; I dont know for how long, he said. Hed seen enough. It would take a millionaire to recreate some of the carvings and other work in these houses. All this was part of an era of extravagance when Oakland was the Orinda of its day, says Durst. Bomholdt sadly watched the flies swarming over the litter.

His account of the sacking of the house can only make lovers of historical preservation wince: Plywood over the cant keep them out. They break it away and ransack the house for booty. They tear wood fireplaces from the walls of three rooms. In a fourth room, cney np a marble fireplace off the wall, leaving brick, green tile, broken plaster and smashed floors. In the kitchen, they wrench a water beater from its moorings.

They loot the bathroom fittings. They pry up fine flooring everywhere to get at lead water pipes. -v Outside, they turn acetylene torches against wrought iron fence enclosing the front yard. They bum the fence apart and -make off with it. One more house gone.

Hie despoilers remove fireplaces first off. Berkeley antique dealer Vernon Sholin says, marble fireplaces sell from $35 to $134 depending upon style and craftsmanship. Antique dealer D. J. Davis of Oakland has run across fireplaces priced from $50 to $350.

Victorian soap dishes go for eight dollars; glass holders for $12; towel bars from $10 to $12. But Sholin and some other antique dealers dont believe a formal ring trafficks in Victorian stolen goods. They call it more of a case of individual arrangements, individual thefts. Oakland antique dealer William L. Cross thinks everyone is now wise to the value of old things.

Once a house is empty, everyone seems to know. Everyone goes into it. They dont call it stealing. Its just another empty house and doesnt belong to anyone in their mind, Cross saidr -But Agency staffers insist thats just the point: the HURRY! BRIGHTEN YOUR WARDROBE NOW! PRICES ARE LOW AND SAVINGS ARE HIGH ON ALLTHE GREAT NEW STYLES FOR MEN AND GALS Continued from Page 1 housing relocation, the Redevelopment Agency reports. Displacement of the poor is considered an important causal factor in the vandalism by both Cobb and Moore.

Cobb himself has been victimized by vandalism. His father lives next to Oak Center. Bandits coolly walked into the house in the daytime, apparently knowing no one was at home. They trucked away a marble firtplace with carved dra-gonfaces peering from it. They looted Cobbs own ex-tensive collection of rare books including a manuscript of Richard Wrights Native Son." Agency director Williams and Mrs.

Lillian Love, Redevelopment Agency commissioner and president of the Oak Center Neighborhood Association, discount the hostility factor behind the vandalism. Williams, Love and project architect Roger Durst all believe theres a. highly. organ-. ized procedure to deal with the Victorian loot a ring if you will Like Cobb, redevelopment worker Bomholdt also knows the vandalism first hand.

He is an architectural representative for the Redevelopment Agency in Oak Center. With growing anger and frustration, he also watches the waves of assaults upon the Agency-owned unoccupied homes. A few days ago Born-holdt toured houses like an official-assessing damage after a bombirt raid. Bomholdt braced himself for what he would see inside the boarded up house. He pulled a section of plywood aside and entered through the window.

Withirr a darkened room, he shook his head at 18 doors huddled er on their edges. He had dragged them there from where they were tom off their hinges and dumped throughout the trash and glass-littered The vandals- had stripped the eight-foot-high giants of their ornate doorknobs -and other brasswear. But the loving-care worksmanship remained. You know, todays ceilings are only eight feet high, no higher than these doors, Bomholdt said. Look at these ceilings 12 feet high.

Imagine. How many of todays homes have that much breathing space? Bomholdt admired a plaster ceiling rosette whose grace only hinted at the beauty of a chandelier it once encircled. MEMS SUIT SAVIM: originally 89.50 to $95 -WORSTED aSIUMSKIIIS originally $75 to 79.50 wonsno SUITS originally $115 to $135 FASHION SUITS SPORTCOAT $6 KKIT SEEHTS SPC3T S03TS Come Inland choose from a wide selection. 3.65 originally 59.50 BETTER SPORTCOATS originally 47.50 spring weight BLAZERS SPORTCOATS 3 (DaKlanbmritittne READER SERVICE 1.5D CEimiSBED ROSE Great selection of colors AA. for dress or sports wear.

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