History

In the early 1950s, Henry J. Kaiser decided he wanted to construct a campus, including several large high-rise buildings that would serve as the headquarters for all Kaiser Industries. The first Kaiser Center building was to be a visual symbol of the important position Kaiser held in the San Francisco Bay Area and in California. A 1955 memo from Fritz Burns (head of Kaiser’s construction division) summed up the major objective to construct a building that would “everlastingly reflect public relations credit to the Kaiser name as well as aiding in the establishment of Oakland as an important national center...[and] demonstrate the importance of the Kaiser Industries to the City of Oakland.” Although some Kaiser executives urged that he locate the building in San Francisco and others suggested Los Angeles, Kaiser preferred Oakland. In 1955, he purchased the College of Holy Names property adjacent to Lake Merritt in Oakland for this building project.

Photo © Tom Fox

 

Initially there was no intention of installing a full garden on top of the parking garage adjacent to the Kaiser Center. However, as early as March 1956, there was a reference in the Kaiser papers to a proposed adjacent hotel (on the 20th Street side) overlooking a roof garden on the parking garage, possibly consisting of some lawn and a few shrubs around a swimming pool. The choice of landscaping the garage roof may not have been entirely voluntary on Kaiser’s part. The city's Planning Commission granted Kaiser variances for existing height zoning (then limited to eight stories) and setback requirements and a portion of Lake Merritt was filled in to allow sufficient widening of the road fronting the building. In return, the commission made stipulations about landscaping the building noting that, "all roof areas, up to and including the roof of the top floor, will be properly landscaped.”

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