A LOCAL CURIOSITY / OAKLAND, CA

OAKLAND.

HOUSE
BY HOUSE

Find your house. Meet your city.

A LIVING CITY. A RECORDED HISTORY.

1850 — 2020

Loading parcel records

Recorded years in this collection. Not a reconstruction of the past.

THE CITY, PARCEL BY PARCEL

Getting to know the neighborhood.

Loading the local record collection…
1 km
Drag to wander · Click a parcel to look closer
COLOR = RECORDED YEAR
Before 19001900–191920–391940–591960–791980–992000+No year recorded
NOW, YOUR CORNER OF THE CITY.

What’s at your address?

Opening Oakland’s records…

THE PLACES WITH SOMETHING TO TELL.

There’s a story here.

Unexpected beginnings. Previous lives.
Places you might walk past every day.

Opening the address files…

Opening the address files…

ANOTHER WAY TO LOOK BACK.

What was
here before?

Before the house. Before the block looked like this. Historic maps record another Oakland underneath the one we know.

Slide between a 1912 downtown map and aerial photography of the same blocks. The old map is approximately aligned to today’s streets.

Opening the map cabinet…

FIELD NOTES / THE ATLAS

A city worth
looking at twice.

Oakland, House by House is a free, independent way to explore the city through its recorded construction years. Search your address, wander the map, or slide through time. Open an address file, find a documented story, or explore a historic map. Save a place to keep or share.

What you’re looking at

The map uses a bundled snapshot of City of Oakland parcel records.

Colors describe the recorded building year associated with a parcel. Shapes are land parcels, not building footprints. One parcel can contain more than one building. Missing years stay gray; later records fade as you move the timeline back. This shows the surviving parcel collection in the source data, not everything that once stood here.

Good records have their limits

Assessor and survey dates can be approximate, incomplete, or reflect later changes. This is a starting point for curiosity, not an appraisal, survey, permit determination, or complete building history. A date alone does not establish an architectural style.

151 stories across Oakland

Search by a place, person, or previous life. Filter the collection by neighborhood or follow a subject, from homes and industry to community and culture. Each story links to its historical sources. Moved buildings, former sites, and surviving buildings are identified separately.

More in this edition

Address files include available building and lot area, units, buildings, stories, and assessment use classifications. Historic narratives link to their sources. The city context describes an era and does not establish a property’s role in an event. Aerial photography is USGS / USDA NAIP imagery; capture dates vary. The 1912 Sanborn comparison is approximately aligned using street intersections and is for visual exploration.

Photography credits and reuse terms appear with each image and in the bundled image manifest. Some historic places use approximate site markers because a matching assessor parcel is unavailable.

Go to the source

Snapshot: October 2026. Records are bundled with the site; there is no live property feed. Address searches run locally. Opening an aerial photograph requests imagery from USGS using map coordinates. No accounts, tracking, or owner names. Fonts: Barlow Condensed and DM Sans (SIL Open Font License). Map attribution and dataset notes are included with this site.

 YOUR LOCAL CONNECTION

Carl Lee.
Right here.

This atlas is a small invitation to get to know Oakland a little better. For a conversation about buying, selling, investing, or managing a property, get in touch with Carl.

510.520.4893 ↗happycarllee@gmail.com ↗
LEE Realty & Investments
LRI Property Management
4096 Piedmont Avenue, Suite 305
Oakland, CA 94611
Save Carl’s contact ↗

CA license #01336133 · Fax 510.288.1398
carllee.net
A LITTLE PIECE OF OAKLAND

Your address file.

An address file made from public records and cited historical sources. Dates and characteristics may be approximate.