• Kaiser Center for the Arts
• Alameda County Courthouse
• Oakland Fire Alarm Building
• Civic Center Post Office

Oakland's Civic Center neighborhood took shape around a vision championed by Mayor John Davie, whose administration from 1915 to 1931 pursued his long-standing dream of a "Civic Center" at the south end of Lake Merritt. To make it possible, the city dredged and filled nearly 100 acres of swampy shoreline between 1st and 7th Streets, turning tidal marsh into buildable civic ground.

That reclaimed land became home to some of Oakland's most enduring public buildings, including the 1914 Beaux-Arts landmark now known as the Kaiser Center for the Arts — an Oakland Designated Landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places — along with the Alameda County Courthouse and the city's historic Fire Alarm Building.

A neighborhood built from reclaimed land to house the institutions that still anchor Oakland's civic life is exactly the layered history MY-NHD's Civic Center collection is designed to represent.