A recent tour of the old 16th Street Station in Oakland took Exedra contributor Meghan Bennett on a fascinating journey into the past. In an update on her History of Piedmont website, she chronicles the grand history of the abandoned station and links to the streetcar network that once ran through Piedmont.
Oakland Heritage Alliance and other preservation advocates are working to ensure that new development around the site includes meaningful restoration and reuse of the historic station and signal tower.
An excerpt from Bennett’s blog follows; you can read the full story HERE.
For more than a century, an enormous Beaux-Arts railroad station has stood at 16th and Wood Streets in West Oakland. Its three monumental arched windows, soaring waiting room, elevated platforms, and surviving signal tower hint at a time when thousands of people passed through this part of Oakland by train.
Today, Oakland’s 16th Street Station is silent.
Passenger trains no longer stop beside it. The tracks have been moved away, its grand interior has deteriorated, and the building has spent decades awaiting a restoration that has never fully materialized.
Yet this is far more than an abandoned railroad station. It was one of Northern California’s great transportation gateways. It helped shape West Oakland. It welcomed generations of people migrating to California. It became closely associated with the Pullman porters and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, whose labor organizing contributed to the modern civil rights movement. It later served as a setting for movies, music videos, performances, parties, and community events.
And perhaps surprisingly, it is part of Piedmont’s history, too.
For a period beginning in 1912, a streetcar line originating at Wildwood Avenue at the Piedmont city limits traveled directly to Southern Pacific’s 16th Street depot. From that station, Piedmonters could enter a transportation network capable of carrying them across California and, ultimately, across the country.
It was, quite literally, a route from Wildwood to the world.
From Wildwood to the World: Saving the Station That Connected Piedmont to the World by Meghan Bennett Sept. 6, 2026