{"nrhp_refnum":"83001173","name":"Oakland Public Library","other_names":["Charles S. Green Library Building","Oakland Carnegie Free Libr"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"659 14th St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Oakland","county":"Alameda County","state":"CA","lat":37.80608121900008,"lon":-122.27610618499995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1983-08-11","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Art","Education","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A two-story Beaux-Arts library building at 659 Fourteenth Street (southwest corner of 14th and Grove Streets) in downtown Oakland, Alameda County, California. Built 1900-1902 to designs by the San Francisco firm of Bliss and Faville with a Carnegie gift, it is also known as the Charles S. Greene Library Building.","why_significant":"The nomination calls it a distinguished work of American Beaux-Arts architecture whose free use of classical forms achieved a richness later lost in more academic designs. It retains major interior murals by Marion Holden and Arthur Mathews. It served as Oakland's main library from 1902 to 1951 and as a branch until 1971.","narrative":"Located at 14th and Grove Streets in downtown Oakland, this two-story library was financed by a $50,000 gift from Andrew Carnegie in 1899, after the Ebell Society raised $20,000 to buy the site. The San Francisco firm of Bliss and Faville won the design competition. The building has tan face brick and terra cotta facades, round and segmentally arched windows, and incised names of writers and disciplines. Inside are an oak-paneled stairhall and a coffered barrel-vaulted upper room. Librarian Charles S. Greene insisted on good art, and the interior holds murals by Marion Holden on the staircase and by Arthur Mathews in the delivery room. The library suffered about $5,000 in damage in the 1906 earthquake and was repaired, with a new steel book stack added by 1909. It served as the main library until 1951 and as a branch until 1971. It now houses city offices and sits within a planned three-block preservation district that includes the Pardee Mansion and First Unitarian Church.","period_of_significance":"1900-","architect_builder":"Bliss and Faville","architectural_style":"American Beaux-Arts","criteria":[],"status_note":"Occupied and used as miscellaneous City of Oakland government offices; interior subdivided by temporary partitions in 1972. Library use ended in 1971 (newspaper room until 1973).","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:28.117136-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/83001173.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83001173/b5d750fd94-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/83001173/b5d750fd94-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Oakland Public Library","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_American_Museum_and_Library_at_Oakland_(2008).jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Oakland Public Library</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:African_American_Museum_and_Library_at_Oakland_(2008).jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123858299","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Museum_and_Library_at_Oakland","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4689671"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/alameda-county/oakland-public-library-83001173/"}