List of mayors of Oakland, California

On May 17, 1852, thirteen days after Oakland was incorporated, the board of trustees who governed the city granted Carpentier rights to the entire waterfront for a period of 37 years (soon amended to "in fee simple forever"), in exchange for $5 and the building of three wharves and one school house. Besides ownership of the waterfront, Carpentier also built up a ferry monopoly and a toll bridge across present day Lake Merritt, so that "he and his associates were collecting a fee on virtually every passenger, animal, or item of cargo that entered or left Oakland."Bagwell, Beth (1982). Oakland: The Story of a City. Novato, Ca: Presidio Press. p. 48. ISBN 0-9640087-0-X. Vehement efforts to overthrow Carpentier's monopoly of the waterfront began almost immediately and were later centered on the Central, or Southern Pacific Railroad, which had title to most of the estuary transferred from Carpentier in 1868.

In 1852 he was elected to the State Assembly in what was generally viewed as a highly fraudulent victory, but in the legislature he pushed for the creation of Alameda County and/or Oakland's incorporation as a city in 1854. He was then elected Oakland's first mayor on April 17, 1854, defeating S.J. Clark, 192-92, in another election whose legitimacy has often been questioned. Only 29 years old, Oakland's first mayor was also the youngest ever elected. He lived at a "sumptuous estate" at Third and Alice Streets (the latter was named after his only sister): Although reviled as the man who tied up Oakland's waterfront for personal gain for the entire 19th-century, Carpentier was also fully committed to the development of the new city, and he delivered a far-sighted inaugural address calling for, among other goals, Oakland becoming the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad (fifteen years before this goal was accomplished), and for strict preservation of the city's native oaks.

An unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for State Attorney General ended his political career, and for the next ten years he was president of the California State Telegraph Company, which built the state's first telegraph system, and president of the Overland Telegraph Company, which linked California to the East, as well as a founder of the Bank of California. He returned to New York in 1880 and died at his home at 108 East Thirty-Seventh Street in New York City on January 31, 1918, at the age of 93. He is buried at Galway, New York.

Carpentier had been elected to the boards of trustees of both Columbia University and Barnard College in 1906, at the age of 81, and served on the boards until his death. He was described as the "most progressive, enlightened, financially generous trustee" of his era, who endowed the first chair in Chinese studies at any U.S. university (which he had named after his Chinese valet, Dean Lung); pressed for alumni representation on the board, and for the recruitment of Catholic and Jewish trustees; championed the place of Barnard women within the university (out of respect for his mother, whom he described as a remarkable woman who had been denied an education); and continually pressed the president of the university, Nicholas Murray Butler, to make the university not only "great" but also "democratic." Carpentier, who lived with several servants and his collie dog for many years before his death, was also a trustee and benefactor to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A lifelong bachelor without any immediate descendants, he left an estate of $3.5 million, and gave over $2 million of that to Columbia University and Barnard College (in addition to the $2 million he had left those institutions previously), $100,000 to the University of California and $100,000 to the Pacific Theological Seminary in Berkeley. He left nothing to Oakland institutions.

Carpentier has been described as "obviously a man of immense energy, who in his unorthodox and often ruthless tactics had become a land baron of great significance...he was held in both contempt and esteem at the time of his death... in 1877 the Oakland Daily Transcript wrote, "If the early settlers had taken Horace Carpentier to a convenient tree and hung him, as they frequently threatened to do, the act would have been inestimably beneficial to immediate posterity." A Columbia University librarian concluded, "He was a real man of mystery – even the trustees who served on the Columbia board with him knew nothing about him or his past." When the Society of California Pioneers once asked him for an outline of his life and achievements, he wrote:

"Of no unworthy parentage – puritan of the Puritans – I was born, much as others are born, a diminutive savage, in 1824. Without education or culture I have lived a rather long and busy life doing many things in a common way and perhaps a few things well; a life, as I see it, of mixed good and ill, and with little or nothing in it of special interest to others or even to myself, or that can be worth a remembrance in the annals of your society. There may be others, masters of fiction and rhetoric, who could invent for me a larger and more rounded history, but this seems to be about the best that I can do."

Owing to a defective land title he lost his Oakland home and moved back to San Francisco, afterwards going East to live. He came out again to visit a son who lived in Oakland and died here on January 19, 1876. He is buried at Mountain View.

Although he has been described as "one of the most cultivated men who ever filled the office of chief magistrate of this city," Williams will probably always be best remembered as the stepfather of the writer Bret Harte. Henry Harte, Bret s father who died when his son was nine years old, had attended Union College at the same time as Williams. They became close friends and years later Williams courted the young widow, Elizabeth Ostrander Harte, in New York, though they were actually married in San Francisco in 1853. The following year Bret and his sister came out to be reunited with their mother and to stay, for about a year, at her new household in Oakland. Williams has been described as a "good-natured, rather windy and pompous gentleman...just smart enough to prosper in business and politics," and biographers of Harte generally agree that Williams served as a model for Harte's rather bombastic character, Colonel Starbottles.

A Republican, described as "Union to the core," he served as clerk to the initial Oakland Board of Trustees in 1853, was elected city council member in 1856 and served as council president in 1858. He was elected to the county Board of Supervisors in 1857 (serving until 1869, including seven years as chairman) and to the state Legislature in 1859. While serving simultaneously as Oakland mayor and state assemblyman(!), he used these positions to promote, unsuccessfully, Oakland as the state capital. He had built the first city office building, at Eighth and Broadway, in 1867, which housed the city government until the first city hall was built in 1871. He died on September 9, 1898 in Berkeley and is buried at Mountain View.

Blake was elected to Oakland's very first city council in 1854, and once again in 1861, before his election as mayor in 1862. Blake settled in Oakland as a lawyer, and his wife, Millicent Kittredge Blake, who was Francis Shattuck's sister, was the proprietress of Oakland's first girls' school, the Blake Seminary (also known at the Oakland Seminary), located on Washington between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets in one of the finest buildings in Oakland at that time. Blake died on October 16, 1875, and is buried at Mountain View.

The system of farming out the indigent sick that prevailed here for many years was very repugnant to him, and he induced the Board of County Supervisors to establish a hospital, or infirmary, the plan for the building of which he drew out, and when established, he gratuitously gave the county the benefit of his services for one year, as physician," according to Halley's 1876 history of Alameda County. He returned to the East in 1868 and did come back to California until 1873, the year he was nominated for the State Senate by the Independent Convention and elected by a "handsome majority." He died on May 30, 1886 in Calistoga and is buried in Mountain View.

"Nothing further has been elicited regarding the suicide of Judge Ferris, than was published in the Sacramento Bee of Saturday. That paper states a gentleman supposed to be B.F Ferris, but answering to the name of H.A. Johnson, was seen and spoken to by a runner on board the steamer Amador early Saturday morning. He was then setting on the guards of the upper deck with his feet tied together. The runner left him but soon returned only to find him missing. He is supposed to have jumped overboard and drowned. In his stateroom was found a note addressed to 'his Dear Wife and Daughter', stating that he was about to take poison and then drown himself, which was signed 'H.A Johnson, alias B.F.F.' He also wrote a letter addressed to Mrs. B.F. Ferris, Oakland and gave it to the clerk on the boat to forward."

In 1952, Dwinelle Hall on the University of California, Berkeley campus was named after John W. Dwinelle to honor his responsibility for the "Organic Act," which established the University of California in 1868, as well as the fact that he was a member of the University's first Board of Regents.[1]

In 1875, he moved from 946 Myrtle to his new home at Tenth and Market, where he died on July 31, 1883. He rests at Mountain View.

Serving one-and-a-half terms as mayor, Merritt succeeded, with the assistance of city counsel and future mayor, John B. Felton, and Horace Carpentier, in bringing about the "great waterfront compromise." After Merritt personally hosted about half the members of the State Assembly and Senate to dinner in Sacramento, legislation was passed which allowed Oakland to concede to Carpentier continuing control over half the waterfront, while conveying the other half to the Central Pacific Railroad for use as the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad. Merritt also initiated construction of the first municipally-owned city hall, introduced the city's first public health department, and brought Oakland's boom to sensational proportions. He contributed liberally from his private fortune to the construction of the Twelfth Street Dam which created Lake Merritt, and pushed to have the lake declared a wildlife refuge by the state legislature in 1870, the first official such refuge in the United States. As one of the original eight regents of the University of California, he was active in effecting the "highly advantageous" exchange of the Oakland property of the College of California for additional lands in Berkeley, and, as chairman of the regents' building committee, for much of the original planning of the Berkeley campus. He had constructed more than one hundred buildings in Oakland, "mostly from his own designs, and all erected with his capital" including the legendary Grand Central Hotel on Twelfth Street, which burned to the ground in 1880. His mill provided lumber for many structures of the time, including the Pardee Home.

Six feet, three inches (190 cm) tall and weighing 340 pounds, Merritt was truly a larger than life figure. He lived for years in a grand estate located between present-day Fourteenth and Fifteen, and Jackson and Madison Streets. A lifelong bachelor, he returned often to Maine to tend to his family there, and he died on August 17, 1890, at his Oakland home in the company of his sister and Chinese valet. Funeral services were held at his estate, with Congregational and Unitarian ministers presiding. His estate of approximately $2 million went to the building of Merritt Hospital (now part of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center) and to Bowdoin College. He is buried beneath one of the grandest monuments at one of the highest points in Mountain View Cemetery, which he had served as the first president of the cemetery association.

"In religious matters he has inherited the Unitarian principles professed by his parents, and he has been an earnest member of the Independent Church of Oakland, where he has been a director and president of the society during many years."

Spaulding moved to Oakland in 1866 to "take possession of a home which forms one of the most elegant architectural features of that city." A Republican, he was elected to the city council in 1869 and 1870, where, as chairman of the streets committee, he played a major role in securing Oakland's status as "being one of the most conveniently and beneficially laid out, best lighted and best macademized cities in the Union."

He was elected twice as mayor, in 1871 and 1872, without opposition. Spaulding initiated the move to bring the county seat from San Leandro to Oakland, which was finally approved by the state legislature in 1874, with the county accepting Franklin and Washington Squares as sites for a new Courthouse and Hall of Records. He served two more terms on the council (1873 and 1874) after being mayor, and also served for four years as Assistant U.S. Treasurer following his appointment by President James A. Garfield. A high-ranking Mason, as founder and first master of the Oakland Lodge No. 188 and grand high priest of the California royal arch masons, he died on October 8, 1903, in New Britain, Connecticut, but he remains today at Mountain View.

Pardee was elected mayor against the backdrop of a nationwide economic depression, with growing labor unrest and agitation against "the Chinese" here in Oakland. He was confronted with mass demonstrations demanding an end to all immigration and issuing threats to burn down Oakland's Chinatown, then consisting of seventeen buildings located between Grove and Jefferson Streets, beside the railroad on Seventh Street. Pardee fought off a revolt within the Republican party and won re¬election in 1877, but his second term was characterized by such turmoil as the suspicious fire which destroyed City Hall on August 25, 1877; the declaration of martial law by Mayor Pardee; the creation of a deputized committee of safety, or Posse comitatus (common law), of almost 1,000 men; and the formation of two dissident political parties – the Workingmen's and the Citizens'. When not engaged in civic affairs, Pardee was also a nationally renowned marksman, an ardent Mason, and a co-founder of both the First Unitarian Church of Oakland and the Athenian Club, which he served as its first president. He died on September 21, 1896, and is buried at Mountain View, beside his son, George, the twenty-ninth mayor of Oakland.

Pardee ran for mayor, not as a Republican, but as the nominee of the Citizen's Municipal League, formed in 1893 to take immediate action toward recovery of the waterfront from the Southern Pacific, to end the alleged graft and incompetence of the Chapman administration, to achieve strict enforcement of liquor laws, to dredge Lake Merritt, and to insist that the proposed lake boulevard should be paid for by neighboring property owners. The new Populist Party nominated John L. Davie (see below), who surprised everyone by coming in second to Pardee – 2,776 votes for Pardee; 2,328 for Davie; 2,191 for Democrat R.M. Fitzgerald; and 946 for Republican Timothy Barker. One other candidate, Dr. E.H. Woolsey, an Independent, received only 47 votes, but citizens flocked to his Magic lantern slide shows, depicting the shortcomings of his opponents, during the campaign. Like his father, the Pardee fils faced major labor unrest, including striking railroad workers seizing trains, marines being called in from Mare Island to quell riots, and hundred of "Coxey's Army" adherents being herded into box cars and shipped to Sacramento, an incident which earned the mayor the epithet of "pick-handle Pardee" for his alleged use of such an instrument against the strikers – an allegation which he always angrily denied.

Pardee went on to be elected governor of California in 1902, defeating his Democratic opponent, Franklin Lane, a fellow alumnus of Oakland High, by only the narrowest of margins. As governor he presided over the aftermath of the greatest natural disaster in California history, the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906, coordinating emergency relief to San Francisco from the old City Hall in Oakland. Following his years in Sacramento, he went on to become a leading voice in the early conservation and progressive movements, a founding commissioner for the Port of Oakland, and, most importantly, the "father" of East Bay MUD (East Bay Municipal Utility District) and the eponym for the Pardee Dam, which has provided the East Bay with one of the highest quality water supplies in the world since 1929. Pardee died on September 1, 1941, at his Oakland home, and was buried in the Mountain View Cemetery, next to his father, Oakland's eighteenth mayor, following a grand funeral at the Masonic Scottish Rite Temple overlooking Lake Merritt.

In the late 1880s, he moved to Oakland, where he and his family settled on a "small ranch at what is now 33rd and West Streets – ten acres, good house, barn, and outhouses." Here he opened a hay, coal, and feed business on Washington Street, as well as a bookstore next door, where he enjoyed the company of the city's literati. He conducted a "David and Goliath" struggle with the Southern Pacific Railroad over their throttle hold on the Oakland waterfront, first when he constructed a wharf to serve his business and then when he introduced ferry service which was the only competition to the railroad's, and, after earning a law degree and arguing his case all the way to the Supreme Court, he was able to claim at least partial victories over the reviled Southern Pacific.

In 1895 Davie ran for the mayor's office as a Populist, as he had two years earlier in his defeat by Pardee, but this time he drew 4,543 votes to 3,861 for J. Nelson, the "fusion" nominee of the Citizens' Municipal League, the Democrats, and the Republicans. This was to be his first of two tenures as Mayor of Oakland. His pledge not to allow any tax rate above $1 was the downfall of his administration, as all city services suffered, and finally Davie was expelled from the Populist party. He ran for re-election as an Independent and champion of the small taxpayers, and narrowly lost to W.R. Thomas.

Snow's life came to an extremely bizarre end on the night of March 27, 1912, when he and Adolph Goldman, a San Francisco clothing merchant, murdered each other in the sanctuary of the First Congregational Church at Clay and Thirteenth Streets. This duel, which occurred just as the Wednesday evening prayer meeting was about to commence, was the "closing chapter of a strange history watched by and involving many prominent men, a history which for strangeness and grotesque tragedy outrivals the weird studies of erotics made by Havelock Ellis," as the Tribune exclaimed on its front page the following day. For some two weeks before the tragedy, the former mayor had been living under an assumed name at the Merritt Hotel at Ninth and Franklin Streets, and had been exchanging letters threatening murder with Goldman. Snow had asked for protection from the district attorney and had had his mail routed through the chief of police, while Goldman had hired a San Francisco private detective to help him physically locate Snow. When the detective learned that Snow regularly attended the Congregational Church, which he had once served as president of its trustees, it was just a matter of time before the fatal attack occurred.

Snow and Goldman had first met in 1900, when the former was mayor and the latter, a native of Constantinople and a new arrival in Oakland from New York, owned a clothing store on Washington St. between Eighth and Ninth Streets. Goldman had reportedly approached the mayor for a letter of introduction so that he could visit some wealthy relatives in China, and his extraordinary infatuation with Snow resulted from their very first meeting. In 1904 Goldman shot at and badly injured Snow in the Clarendon Hotel in San Francisco after accusing his daughter of trying to end their friendship; he was eventually found guilty of assault with intent to commit murder and sentenced to five years in San Quentin, but he was released in March 1906 after less than a year of incarceration. Six more years of personal tumult between the two men followed before the fatal duel. Snow was cremated and his ashes interred next to those of his deceased wife in Ventura County; the remains of the 38-year-old Goldman were buried in Salem Cemetery in San Mateo County.

Olney was also an avid hiker and fisherman, who was familiar with the Sierra and Coastal mountains even before he met John Muir in 1889 through their mutual friend, William Keith, the eminent landscape painter. The three would meet first in Keith's downtown San Francisco studio and later in Olney's nearby law office to "talk about the mountains."; The articles of incorporation of the Sierra Club were drawn up by Olney and signed in his office on June 4, 1892, with Muir as president and Olney first vice-president; Olney's office served as headquarters during the first year of the Sierra Club's existence. He became close personal friends with Muir on many family and club outings, but broke with Muir and resigned from the Sierra Club over the issue of the fate of the Hetch Hetchy Valley, which he believed had to be sacrificed to assure municipal control of San Francisco's water supply. Olney resigned from the organization, in 1910, after seventeen years of personal leadership, when its membership voted 589 to 161 in opposition to the Hetch Hetchy project. He lived at 481 Prospect Avenue (29th Street)(demolished), where John Muir, William Keith, and David Starr Jordan were frequent visitors. He was a long-time trustee and benefactor of Mills College, where the oldest dormitory on campus is named after him, as well as a close friend of Cyrus and Susan Mills. A member of the Berkeley Club, the University Club of San Francisco, and president of the Unitarian Club, he died on June 2, 1921 in Oakland, and was buried at Mountain View.

Mott, considered to be "The Mayor Who Built Oakland", presided over the greatest disaster relief operation in Oakland history when an estimated 150,000 people sought refuge in the city from the great '06 earthquake in San Francisco – a mobilization of resources so successful than perhaps 65,000 refugees eventually settled in Oakland. He was re-elected in 1907 by a six-to-one margin, defeating Socialist O.H. Phillbrick, 7,317 to 1,226, and re-elected in 1909 by defeating Citizens' Party candidate Dr. F.F. Jackson 8,352 to 6,045. Following the adoption of a new city charter establishing a commission form of government in 1910, Mott won the 1911 election by defeating Socialist opponent Thomas Booth 11,722 to 9,837. In a fascinating but little-known chapter of Oakland history, Mott survived the city's first recall election, initiated by the radical Industrial Workers of the World, on August 5, 1912, with 17,139 voting in favor of keeping Mott in office, and 10,846 against.

He achieved, in 1909, final resolution of the waterfront issue which had preoccupied the leaders of Oakland since the city's founding, with a negotiated agreement with Southern Pacific to give up its rights to the waterfront in exchange for a fifty-year franchise on the property it then held. In 1911, Mayor Mott welcomed President William H. Taft to Oakland. The Chief Executive laid the cornerstone for the present City Hall. The massive harbor improvements which immediately followed were just part of an unprecedented era of public works projects, including the dredging of Lake Merritt, the building of the current City Hall and the Civic Auditorium (now known as the Kaiser Convention Center), establishment of the pioneering Oakland Public Museum in the Josiah Stanford (now Camron-Stanford) House, and vast expansion and improvements to sewers, streets, lighting, electricity, fire and police protection, etc. He retired in 1915. Mott and his family lived at three different addresses as mayor – 1066 Jackson (1905–08), 1509 Webster (1909–1911), and 276 Lee Street in Adams Point (1912–1939) – all demolished. He served as the city's right-of-way agent from 1927 until his death on December 16, 1958, at the age of 92, at the Athens Athletic Club. An Episcopalian, Mott was cremated following his funeral at the Chapel of the Oaks under the auspices of Masonic Lodge 61.

Davie presided over an unorthodox commissioner form of municipal government, in which fifteen commissioners, including the mayor, each headed different city agencies and also acted as the legislative body, and charges that this system fed large-scale "cronyism" were a counterpoint to his popularity with the voters. However, there were many civic accomplishments during the Davie years, including the creation of EBMUD and the Port of Oakland, the opening of natural history and fine arts museums, the building of Skyline Boulevard by city prisoners, construction of the Posey Tube, construction in 1927 of the Oakland International Airport, major improvements to the harbor and Lake Merritt, and more.

He lived at the Bauer Hotel Apartments, at 1770 Broadway, as mayor, but retired to the Hotel Oakland, where he would still "hold court" in the lobby with his trademark red carnation and dapper clothes and walk to his frequent rowing trips on Lake Merritt. Davie, who retired in 1931 at the age of 80 and died on February 2, 1934, authored the only autobiography ever written by an Oakland mayor, His Honor, the Buckaroo, which was first serialized by the Oakland Post-Enquirer and later reprinted in book form. As the title suggests, it is filled with hokum.

Houlihan was both a nationally renowned theorist on urban issues and a convicted felon. He served as a researcher and administrator for major studies on inner-city problems funded by think tanks including the Fund for the Republic and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions before and while he was mayor, and he taught local government at Sonoma State and other Bay Area schools following his release from prison. Houlihan, who had stated publicly and often that his $7,500 mayoral salary was inadequate, finally resigned in February 1966 (effective April 30), because of the salary issue, two months before he was indicted for embezzling $95,000 from the estate of an elderly widow, Sarilla Whitlock (as a private attorney, but while in office as mayor). He was eventually convicted of this charge, and it was also discovered that he had embezzled a further $100,000 from other estates, including a Catholic order in Oakland. He was imprisoned at the minimum-security California Medical Facility in Vacaville in 1967, paroled in 1969, and pardoned in 1973 by Governor Ronald Reagan. He died in Santa Rosa on July 31, 1986 at the age of 75. A Republican and Catholic (St. Pascal's Church), Houlihan and his wife and four children lived at 4994 Stacy Street (near Joseph Knowland State Arboretum and Park) while he was mayor.

During Wilson's tenure as mayor, he appointed the first two African American females to serve on the powerful Oakland Board of Port Commissioners, Christine Scotlan and Carole Ward Allen. In his last three months in office, he convinced the city council to appoint him to the port, which was extremely controversial. Wilson died at the age of 82 on January 23, 1998. He was praised both as a "man drafted to oversee the removal of Oakland's old Republican guard and the rise of African-American politics and politicians" and as a jurist and civic leader who embodied fairness to all of the city's communities.

Dellums was elected to the Berkeley City Council in April 1967, and served during the People's Park crisis of May 1969. While on the Council, he defeated sitting U.S. Representative Jeffery Cohelan in the Democratic primary of June 1970 and won the general election in November. He served in Congress, representing Berkeley, neighboring cities and part of Oakland, from 1971 until his resignation in February 1998, becoming Chairman of the House Committees on the District of Columbia (1979–1993), and Armed Services (1993–1995). Dellums became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War immediately after his arrival in Washington, and in later years he became equally well known on the national stage for his fundamental challenges to the domestic priorities and international initiatives of successive presidential administrations.