A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and Philanthropy in Oakland, California

Cities are constantly being built and rebuilt in the United States, resulting in ever-changing skylines and neighborhoods. While the dynamic urban landscapes of New York, Boston, and Chicago have been widely studied, there is much to be gleaned from West Coast cities, especially in California, where the migration boom at the end of the nineteenth century permanently changed the urban fabric of these newly diverse, plural metropolises.

This presentation focuses on architecture, women, and philanthropy in late 19^th and early 20^th-century Oakland, California. It introduces affluent, white, Protestant women, Irish Catholic nuns, and middle-class Black clubwomen who sought to Oakland a better place for children. In the gendered, mixed economy of social welfare that prevailed in California, the government counted on women to care for children and women were more than eager to oblige. Often without the financial means to build from scratch, women turned private houses and even a saloon into orphanages, kindergartens, settlement houses, and day care centers, and in the process built the charitable landscape—a network of places that was critical for the betterment of children, families, and public life.

To frame my discussion, I turn to the philosopher Henri Lefebvre. This paper illustrates his claim that space is made through how it is built, lived, and imagined and that citizens win their rights to the city through struggles in real time and real space. The industrial landscape of Oakland, riddled with the effects of social inequality and racial prejudice, is not a neutral backdrop in this story but an active player. Some charities were racially segregated, children did not benefit equally from adult largesse, and the physical spaces in the charitable landscape worked to ingrain inequalities as well as to endow children with a special, idealized world.