Oakland Public Museum

The Oakland Public Museum was established at the turn of the 20th Century. Inspired by the City Beautiful movement, Oakland's thirty-fifth mayor, Frank K. Mott was determined to realize this shared American vision by creating new parks, new libraries, and a new museum to be known as the Oakland Public Museum. To achieve the latter, under his direction, the City of Oakland created Lakeside Park to surround Lake Merritt in order to allow greater public access to the Lake and to create a setting for the new museum. All of the private residences encircling the Lake were bought up and removed with the exception of the old Italianate Victorian on its southwest shore. In 1907, two years after Mott's election, the City purchased this lake front property from John and Terrilla Wright and altered the Victorian structure to house ornithological, anthropological, and ethnographic collections. Simultaneously, Mayor Mott hired Charles P. Wilcomb as curator to establish and develop the Oakland Public Museum.

Like Dr. Samuel Merritt before him, Frank K. Mott saw the lake as Oakland’s unique centerpiece. However, the progressive and civic-minded Mott worked successfully to establish parkland and cultural environment around Lake Merritt for everyone to enjoy. The Oakland Public Museum, founded in 1910, was a key component of his vision and for decades, while other Victorian structures that had once dominated the lake area slowly disappeared from the scene, the House survived by virtue of serving the public. The Oakland Public Museum flourished in a time when municipal museums were rare. Staying true to the tenets of CP Wilcomb, it had the distinction of being the first teaching museum west of the Mississippi River.

After fifty-seven years of service to the public, in 1967, the Oakland Public Museum closed its doors to permit preparation of exhibits for the new museum then in the planning stages. Two years later, the Oakland Museum of California opened nearby - unifying the three museums that had grown up independently within the city: the Oakland Public Museum (1910), the Oakland Art Gallery (1916), and the Snow Museum (1922).