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Overview

While the Claremont Hotel's had a Berkeley, CA, mailing address, the building itself lay within the confines of Oakland, CA. Oakland architect Charles W. Dickey (1871-1942) designed the hotel for the Oakland businessman Francis Marion "Borax" Smith (1846-1931), founder of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, whose main detergent brand was "20 Mule Team Borax," and Berkeley attorney and real estate investor, Frank Colton Havens (1848-1917), Construction on the hotel began in 1906.

Building Notes

Proprietors of this landmark hotel said of it in 1940: "Like a country estate yet in the heart of a throbbing metropolitan area." It featured rooms at this time between $2.50-$5.00 per day. (See "California's Hotel Beautiful," Architect and Engineer, vol 141, no. 2, 05/1940, p. 59)

PCAD id: 18307