Tribune Tower (Oakland)
It took Harry Houdini five seconds. In 1923, the magician hung upside down from the ninth floor of Oakland's newest skyscraper, strapped into a straitjacket, while a crowd gathered on the streets below. He freed himself before most spectators had finished craning their necks. The building was barely complete -- its clock tower had been added that same year to a six-story base built in 1906 -- but the Tribune Tower was already proving that it understood spectacle. Modeled after St. Mark's Campanile in Venice, topped with a copper mansard roof that would oxidize to green over the decades, the tower rose 305 feet above Thirteenth and Franklin streets. It was the tallest building in Oakland built during the 1920s, and it announced its purpose in ten-foot letters: TRIBUNE. This was the home of the Oakland Tribune, and for most of the twentieth century, the tower and the newspaper were inseparable from the identity of the city itself.
A Congressman's Cathedral of Newsprint
Joseph R. Knowland, a former U.S. congressman, acquired the Oakland Tribune in 1915, when the paper occupied cramped quarters in the old Golden West Hotel at Eighth and Franklin. He wanted something grander. When the Breuner Furniture Company vacated its showroom at Thirteenth and Franklin in 1918, Knowland bought the property and began building his vision. The six-story base, designed by D. Franklin Oliver, had been completed in 1906. An adjacent warehouse from the 1890s -- built on the site of the old Pantages Theatre -- became the press room. In 1923, architect Edward T. Foulkes crowned the building with the clock tower that would define Oakland's skyline, blending French and Italian classical elements beneath that distinctive green copper roof. On January 1, 1924, Knowland opened the doors. The tower appeared on the Tribune's masthead from that day forward, and the top floor became home to radio station KLX, broadcasting from above the city until the station was sold in 1959.
Zeppelins, Flags, and Political Dynasties
The tower was built with ambitions beyond journalism. Its designers intended the rooftop mast -- an 86-foot flagpole -- as a mooring point for zeppelins. Airships would tie off to the pole while passengers descended a drop ladder to the twentieth-floor walkway. The zeppelin era faded before the plan was tested, but the infrastructure remained: the upper floors still contain a water tank designed as a gravity-fed reserve for fire suppression, a precaution in case the city water main was breached during a disaster. Knowland's legacy extended well beyond the building. He mentored his son, William F. Knowland, who became a U.S. senator, and served as a political mentor to Earl Warren, who rose from California attorney general to governor to Chief Justice of the United States. At various times, the tower has flown a flag emblazoned with a single word: THERE. It is Oakland's wry answer to Gertrude Stein's famous dismissal that in Oakland, "there is no there there."
First in Ownership, Then in Ruin
The Tribune changed hands in 1979 when the Gannett Company purchased both the newspaper and the tower. Four years later, Gannett sold the paper to its editor and publisher, Robert C. Maynard, and his wife, Nancy Hicks Maynard -- making them the first African Americans to own a major metropolitan daily newspaper in the United States. Their ownership lasted until 1992, when ANG Newspapers acquired the Tribune. But the building's most dramatic chapter came on October 17, 1989. The Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the tower severely enough to force the Tribune staff out to temporary offices in Jack London Square. The tower sat empty. In 1995, developer John Protopappas bought the vacant landmark for $300,000 -- a price that reflected how far the building had fallen. His company spent years renovating, and when the tower reopened in 1999, the Tribune moved back in. The clock mechanisms were rebuilt that same year by Kevin Binkert, though the clock faces would not be restored and relit until December 22, 2006, when the famous TRIBUNE lettering glowed above Oakland once more.
A Tower Between Fortunes
The Tribune left the tower for good in 2007, relocating to a building on Oakport Street near the airport, and the landmark entered a turbulent cycle of ownership. Protopappas sold it for roughly $15 million in 2006. It was purchased for $8 million in 2011, seized by a judge in 2016 amid fraud allegations, bought out of receivership by Harvest Properties for $20 million in 2017, then flipped to Highbridge Equity Partners for $48 million in 2019. The pandemic devastated the building's tenants -- many paid just 65 percent of their rent through 2020. By 2023, Highbridge had fallen delinquent on a $99 million loan. The tower endures. Its facade still bears the newspaper's logo above the main entrance, even though the Tribune has been gone for nearly two decades. Branding agencies, therapists, and freelancers in coworking spaces occupy its upper floors, though roughly half remain empty. The green copper roof still catches the light. The clock still marks the hours. Downtown Oakland's most recognizable silhouette keeps watch over a city that has always been more complicated than its skyline suggests.
From the Air
Located at 37.803N, 122.271W at the corner of 13th and Franklin streets in Downtown Oakland. The Tribune Tower's distinctive clock tower and green copper mansard roof are identifiable from the air, rising 305 feet above the downtown grid roughly four blocks west of Lake Merritt. The 86-foot flagpole atop the roof is a useful spotting reference. Best viewed below 2,000 feet AGL. Nearest airports: Oakland International (KOAK, 6 nm south), Buchanan Field (KCCR, 17 nm northeast). The Paramount Theatre and Fox Oakland Theatre are both within a few blocks to the north along Telegraph Avenue.