Originally appeared in the 06/96 issue of 'Off the Shelf'

In 1891, the city of Oakland began to create what was to become Lake Merritt, named after the visionary mayor who initiated the project. Around the time this was taking place, the neighborhoods north of the lake, including Trestle Glen and the Lakeshore district, were experiencing their greatest growth. The immigration of San Francisco residents after the 1906 earthquake spurred a residential construction boom in Oakland, and a high demand for housing continued into the 1920's. By this time, Oakland had a number of neighborhood libraries, including Elmhurst, Melrose, Piedmont Avenue, Dimond, Golden Gate, Temescal, and Rockridge, all of which had been in service before 1920. Residents of the growing Grand Lake area began to clamor for a branch library of their own.

The Lakeview Branch Library was established in large part due to the advocacy of the local parent-teacher associations in the late 1920's. These groups submitted numerous petitions to the library board for a branch library to serve local children who did not have easy access to reference books for their studies at school. In 1929, the library board options for a Grand Lake area library. The board chose to establish a branch in a one-room portable school building on the Lakeview Elementary school grounds on Santa Clara Avenue. The board had also considered renting store space on Grand Avenue. At the time, the library board expected the Grand Lake district to eventually outgrow the library facility. The board chose to provide service in what it may have viewed as a temporary facility rather than delay establishing a branch for the community. The branch opened in January 1930 with 1,500 new books, including a large reference collection.

Fifteen years later, in 1945, Oakland voters passed a bond measure to build our current Main Library and two branches, Lakeview and Elmhurst. The new Lakeview Branch was built on a site near the lake on property donated by the Oakland Park Department. The wood-frame and stucco building, which cost $45,000 and took seven months to build, opened in April 1949. This building has served the community for over forty-five years.

The Lakeview Branch offers a number of services and programs. They include weekly preschool storytimes, Lawyers in the Library, a magazine room, and an extensive children's collection as well as adult fiction and non-fiction. The library offers a meeting room seating forty people that is used for library programs, as well as meetings of local neighborhood organizations, such as the Rose Garden Neighborhood Preservation Association, who have been strong supporters of the Lakeview Branch and the Oakland Public Library.

The Lakeview Branch is open on Sunday afternoons. It's the only branch with Sunday service hours. (The Main Library is also open on Sundays.) If you haven't been to Lake Merritt or the Lakeview Branch recently, make a point of visiting both this summer.

Note: Oakland, The Story of a City, by Beth Bagwell, was an important source of information for this article.