American Bag Co.-Union Hide Co.

The American Bag building appears eligible for the National Register under "Architecture", as one of Oakland's most outstanding examples of early twentieth-century utilitarian brick warehouse/industrial structures. This building was evaluated as National Register eligible in Oakland's Cultural Heritage Survey of 1983. At that time the survey found the building "the most decorative of all of the surrounding warehouses that had been constructed during the early 1900s. The American Bag building is distinguished by the rich textures and patterns of its fine three-dimensional polychrome brickwork and by the rhythm of its arched windows. The building's integrity, including period signs, is especially remarkable, reflecting the building's continued occupancy by its original user until 1987.

The American Bag building's history began in 1916 when Kalman Gluck's burgeoning bag and hide company outgrew its quarters a block away at Second Street and Webster Street and decided to locate in a larger space along the newly built Western Pacific Railroad's Third Street tracks near the Port of Oakland's growing facilities. The permit (#45500, May 4, 1917) was originally for a one-story brick factory but was revised on June 18th, 1917 to its final three-story form. The building was designed by Leonard H. Thomas at the request of Kalman Gluck, proprietor, and manager of the Union Hide and American Bag Company. Thomas was well known in Oakland as a member of the Thomas Brothers map family. He had become a partner in the firm of Olver and Thomas and had begun to make his mark as a significant architect of masonry buildings in the Oakland area. In 1913 - 1914 Thomas designed and constructed Charles Booth's Armory Hall building at 535 Twenty-fourth Street This building was determined eligible for the National Register in 1988. Also in 1914, he designed the Hotel Harrison at 1401-15 Harrison Street, now listed on the National Register as part of the Harrison and Fifteenth Street District application of 1996.

Early in 1917, Thomas participated in the design of Swan's Free Market at 901 Washington Street (determined eligible for the National Register in 1982). It was with these credentials that he turned to the design of the American Bag building.

The location selected for the erection of the new commercial building was reflective of the industrial blossoming of the Oakland waterfront area in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Between 1906 and 1910 the legal overthrow of the Southern Pacific's ownership of the waterfront, bringing the arrival of Western Pacific, specifically down Third Street, coincided with the passage of harbor improvement bonds and fueled the commercial development of adjacent properties. In 1917, the American Bag building became one of the first commercial/industrial buildings in the area east of Broadway and adjacent to the new Western Pacific tracks. Another early arrival was the Wholesale Produce Market centered on Third and Franklin Streets (1916-1917). Early pictures show housing surrounding the new structure. Within another 10 years, the area now known as the waterfront warehouse district had evolved as a distinctive cluster of low-rise masonry buildings centering along these tracks.

In its design and materials, the American Bag building is reflective of the traditional heavy brick and timber construction typical of the industrial buildings of this era, embellished with the decorative brickwork just becoming popular in commercial architecture. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century industrial buildings were utilitarian in appearance, incorporating tall regularly spaced windows with a relatively large expanse of the wall surface. Brick factories and warehouses into the 1900s generally had segmental arched windows set in thick industrial brick, and some minimal quasi-structural design detailing such as corbeled cornices, low-relief pilasters, or raised pilaster caps. In Oakland, the local brick manufacturers Remillard and Fortin supplied the bricks for many of these structures.

As commercial buildings proliferated in response to the industrial and population growth of the early twentieth century, so brick itself evolved into a multitude of colors and textures. Around the turn of the century yellow and tan brick had broadened the choices that had previously been limited to red and gray. Creme and white brick became popular in the 1910s and the choices peaked with the polychrome and poly-textured brick of the 1920s. An August 1913 editorial in the Architect and Engineer praises the opportunities of brick: "Brick... is now made in almost every conceivable color and shade, the permanency of which is unequaled...; with such a ‘palette,' therefore, at one's command, and by a skillful use of color, the brick builder of today can readily add to his design that living touch which the painter gives us in his painting.”

Indeed it is this kind of inspiration we see used in the American Bag building. In 1917 Thomas used all available options open to him in the arena of brick masonry building materials. Maintaining the overall utilitarian nature of the industrial building, he augmented its design with a richly patterned creme brick detailing. He placed these elements both at the first story base and, repeated them with variations at the upper story levels. Adding details to the segmentally arched windows floor by floor, he provided creme brick sills, arches, and, on the top floor, vertical frames. The archivolts utilize both the creme and polychromed brick in both gauged and paneled patterns. The newly introduced polychrome brick is again used across the top of the building edging the deep corbeled cornice. Considering the time it was built, one might suggest that the designer was at the forefront of mixing the multitude of brick choices available.

The American Bag building is one of Oakland's half-dozen outstandingly embellished industrial buildings of the early twentieth century and is unique among them for its traditional construction and vigorous ornament incorporated into the structure.

Other Oakland buildings of comparable significance include the California Cotton Mills building (1091 Calcot Place, 1917; City Landmark), the glass and concrete Montgomery Ward warehouse ( 2825 East 14th Street, 1923-26; determined eligible for the National Register in 1998), the tapestry brick MercoNordstrom Valve Company building (2401-49 Peralta Street, 1926-27; determined eligible for the National Register in 1990) and the brick and terra cotta Mutual Stores-Safeway building (5701-25 East 14th Street, 1927-28; City Landmark).

The American Bag building continues to reflect the best of Oakland's early twentieth-century commercial/industrial architecture. It typifies the construction and architectural treatments typical of the warehouses of that era while embellishing that treatment with details reflective of the best materials available. It does this while maintaining an economy of scale and utilitarian nature characteristic of the commercial/industrial buildings of the period. The building's corner location, relatively large scale and distinctive detailing make it an especially prominent and familiar landmark in the area.