The MacDermot Mansion was the home of the wealthy MacDermot family at 1407 - 8th Street in Oakland. The estate was the block bordered by 7th, 8th, Center and Cypress (now Mandela Parkway) Streets. The house was built sometime before 1873. 3,5 For a time in the late 1920s, the City considered acquiring the MacDermot property for a City park, in part because the property "was once the show place of Oakland." 6 A number of oak trees allegedly imported by the MacDermot family from Paris were removed from the property and taken to Hillsborough in 1930, so that Louis MacDermot could construct a peewee golf course on the property. 6 The home itself was razed in 1942 in order to construct a housing project on the site for "newly arrived war-industries workers." 1 That housing project was originally called Peralta Village Annex.
c.1926. Note PPIE railroad car in lower right 4
Links and References
- From Panama to Poly; The Saga of the Overfair Railway Pacifics, Walter Rice Ph.D. and Karl Hovanitz, on the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco
- San Francisco Social Register, 1918
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PPIE San Francisco 1915 "Overfair Railway" Miniature Railroad on YouTube
- Swanton Pacific Railroad on Facebook
- Forgotten Tunnel Revives Dimming Memories Oakland Tribune March 23, 1961
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Putting the "There" There: Historical Archaeologies of West Oakland; Chapter 2, A Brief History of West Oakland
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Overfair Railway Inventor on ppie100.org
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Eight Street Tract Splendid Lots - Olney & Co. March 18, 1876
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BANC PIC 1996.003:Volume 27:39b--fALB I0051715a.tif Courtesy& UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library
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Ad offering Elegant Residence and Cultivated Grounds of C.F. MacDermot, Esq. in Oakland for lease Daily Alta California August 6, 1873
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Old Park Oaks Uprooted to Make Way for Peewee Golf Oakland Tribune August 24, 1930
