West Oakland, Oakland, California

The Village Bottoms is a historic cultural district in the predominantly Black neighborhood of West Oakland, California. Its current revitalization and cultural arts renaissance is being catalyzed by artist/cultural worker Marcel Diallo and a neighborhood of young, black artists including Githinji wa Mbire, Eesuu Orundide, letitia ntofon, and rappers Boots Riley of The Coup, Zumbi of Zion I and Adimu Madyun of rap group Hairdooo.The Village Bottoms Cultural District contains The Black Dot Cafe, The Continental Club, Ester's Orbit Room, Pacific Cannery Lofts, 16th Street Train Station, Velocity Circus, Lower Bottom Playaz Community Theater and Environmental Indicators Project and more.The "Village Bottoms" is a name that many in Oakland's black cultural community, including the late Oakland poet laureate Reginald Lockett prefer to call a small section of the old West Oakland neighborhood that their parents, grandparents and/or great-grandparents lived in. Although the city of Oakland officially calls the larger district Prescott, the 1980s generation called it the boondocks and then The Lower Bottoms, and many of the new gentrifying residents prefer the even older Oakland Point, what ever one believes the name to be, its many names point to the overwhelming fact that the neighborhood is indeed gentrifying and is undergoing an intense transition and struggle for its very identity similar to what occurred in New York's Lower East Side neighborhood two decades earlier.

16th Street station (Oakland Central) is a former Southern Pacific Railroad station in the Prescott neighborhood of Oakland, California, United States. The Beaux-Arts building was designed by architect Jarvis Hunt, a preeminent railroad station architect, and opened in 1912. The station has not been served by trains since 1994.

The Campbell Village Court housing projects are a series of complexes located in the Campbell Village part of the Lower Bottoms area of West Oakland California. Campbell Village Court is bound by Willow Street to the west, Campbell Street to the east, 10th street to the north, and 8th street to the south.It is not far from the abandoned 16th Street Train Station and the Mandela Parkway.

The Cypress Village housing projects (officially named Peralta Villa Public Housing Community) are a series of housing complexes stretching from 10th Street to 14th Street and Kirkham Way. Cypress is located in between the Acorn neighborhood and Lower Bottoms neighborhood in West Oakland. Cypress Village is one of the three housing projects in West Oakland, along with the Campbell Village Court and the Acorn Projects. Cypress Village was built by the Oakland Housing Authority after World War II, when many African-Americans began to migrate to Oakland. It was one of four all-black segregated projects built at the time. After the Cypress Freeway was built in 1954-1957 immediately in front of the project, most whites and middle-class blacks left the neighborhood to avoid the noise and pollution. By the 1980s Cypress Village was a "drug supermarket" where Huey P. Newton purchased drugs. The neighborhood suffered further disruption in 1989 when the freeway collapsed in the Loma Prieta earthquake. However, at the city of Oakland's insistence, the State of California rebuilt the freeway to avoid the neighborhood and instead cleaned up contamination on its property and, fifteen years later, completed a boulevard on the site named the Mandela Parkway, with a landscaped park in the median. Cypress Village is the home of rapper J Stalin of the Livewire record label.Due to close proximity, skirmishes between Cypress Village and neighboring Acorn as well as Lower Bottoms occur frequently. In order to reduce the violence between the two housing projects, in 2003 rappers from both Acorn and Cypress released an underground mixtape titled Acorn & Cypress inspired by other unity rap albums like the Bloods and Crips Bangin' on Wax releases. Since then, West Oakland based rap label Livewire Records founded by J Stalin (who originates from Cypress Village) has signed numerous rappers from both housing units including Acorn resident Shady Nate.

Campbell Village is a neighborhood of Oakland, California in Alameda County, California. It lies at an elevation of 16 feet (5 m). Campbell Village is the site of the Campbell Village Court housing projects.

Liberty Hall is a historic meeting hall used by African-American organizations in Oakland, California. The building, located at 1483-1485 8th St., was built in 1877 as a store and residence. The building was designed in the Italianate style and features projecting bays at its northwest and southwest corners, a bracketed cornice, a frieze with dentils and crown moldings, and a hipped roof.Local 188 of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the African-American fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey, purchased the building for its headquarters in 1925. Founded in 1920, Local 188 was the largest chapter of the UNIA in northern California. The chapter renamed the building Liberty Hall, the name used by all of the UNIA's meeting halls. During its time in the building, the UNIA used it for its meetings, activities, and holidays such as Lincoln's Birthday and Garvey Day. A fire burnt the building's roof in 1931, and the UNIA's activism in Oakland declined afterward. The organization sold the building in 1933.After the UNIA left the building, one of Oakland's chapters of the International Peace Mission movement took over the building. The International Peace Mission was a religious movement led by Father Divine, an African-American preacher from New York. Father Divine, who was considered the Second Coming by his followers, was known for hosting free banquets at his home during the Great Depression. The International Peace Mission continued to operate in the building until the 1950s, though its activities declined after the early 1940s.The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 30, 1989.

Peralta Villa is a neighborhood in Oakland in Alameda County, California. It lies at an elevation of 20 feet (6 m). It was formerly an unincorporated community.

The West Oakland Yards are a rail yard facility in West Oakland, Oakland, California, in the United States. Formerly a major facility for the Southern Pacific Railroad, the yards have been operated by Union Pacific Railroad since 1996. Under SP, the yards were home to a variety of railroad facilities, including a signal shop and a creosoting plant.SP was said to "dominate" West Oakland with its "massive switching and maintenance yards, roundhouses, car assembly and repair shops, creosoting plant, and shipyards".

Prescott (also known as The Lower Bottoms or The Bottoms) is a residential neighborhood and commercial district in West Oakland in Oakland, California. The neighborhood boundaries are Mandela Parkway to the east, 7th Street to the south, West Grand Avenue to the north, and Frontage Road to the west.

West Oakland station is a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station serving the West Oakland neighborhood in Oakland, California, United States. It has two elevated side platforms, and is located near the eastern end of the Transbay Tube. All lines except the Richmond-Berryessa/North San José line stop at the station. The Oakland Wye is located to the east of the station.

The Oakland Army Base, also known as the Oakland Army Terminal, is a decommissioned United States Army base in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. The base was located at the Port of Oakland on Maritime Street just south of the eastern entrance to the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.Construction of the base commenced in 1941 as a part of the expanding San Francisco Port of Embarkation which was headquartered at Fort Mason on the San Francisco waterfront. Initially named the Oakland Sub-Port of the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, the base was renamed the Oakland Army Base in 1944. The installation moved in excess of 8.5 million tons of cargo during World War II, and 7.2 million tons of cargo passed through the terminal during the Korean War.In 1946, the Oakland Army Base expanded to incorporate the administrative and cantonment area of the Port formerly known as Camp John T. Knight in honor of World War I Brigadier General John Thornton Knight.In 1955 the San Francisco Port of Embarkation became the U.S. Army Transportation Terminal Command Pacific, and the Oakland Army Base became the Oakland Army Terminal. In 1964 the headquarters of the command moved from Fort Mason to the Oakland Army Terminal, and in 1966 the terminal was renamed back to the Oakland Army Base. During the Vietnam War, Oakland Army Base served as a major transit station for U.S. soldiers en route to and returning from all deployment locations in East Asia—such as Vietnam and Korea. The base decommissioned on September 30, 1999.In 2007, the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the City of Oakland and the Port of Oakland, commenced a comprehensive oral history project documenting the history of the Base from when it was commissioned in 1941 to when it was shut down in 1999, and thereafter.

The Cypress Street Viaduct, often referred to as the Cypress Structure or the Cypress Freeway, was a 1.6-mile-long (2.5 km), raised two-deck, multi-lane (four lanes per tier) freeway constructed of reinforced concrete that was originally part of the Nimitz Freeway (State Route 17, and later, Interstate 880) in Oakland, California. It replaced an earlier single-deck viaduct constructed in the 1930s as one of the approaches to the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. It was located along Cypress Street between 7th Street and Interstate 80 in the West Oakland neighborhood. It officially opened to traffic on June 11, 1957, and was in use until October 17, 1989. At approximately 5:04 p.m. that day, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck the Bay Area, resulting in a large portion of the freeway's upper deck collapsing onto the lower deck. The collapse killed 42 people and resulted in the subsequent demolition of the structure.The Cypress Freeway Memorial Park is located in Oakland, at 14th Street and Mandela Parkway.