Emeryville Veterans Building
When Emeryville’s Veterans Memorial Building was completed in 1930, the Great War—“the war to end all wars”—lay twelve years in the past. Few would have guessed that peace would last barely another decade. Then would come Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini: and finally, a nightmare flash a few hundred feet over Hiroshima would change the course of history.
Yet the Veteran’s Memorial Building was intended, not as a monument to the glory of war, but rather as a genteel gathering place—a small token of appreciation to the men and women who risked their lives in what we now call World War I. In 1930, it was dreamed that the Great War truly was the last world conflict, not merely the first in line.
A Time Capsule
In its heyday, Emeryville’s VFW Post 1010 had two thousand more members—4,500—than the city of Emeryville had residents. The Veterans Memorial Building, on Salem Street between 43rd and 45th Streets, served as the hub of this great post, as well as the town’s largest meeting hall. Today, the building is obscured by its side street location, and save for the dilapidated “VFW” roof sign, is all but invisible to passersby on San Pablo Avenue.
That’s a pity, for the building is a virtual time capsule of its era. Other than an unobtrusive addition dating from 1950, few changes have been made since its construction, and walking through it is eerily evocative of an America some generations removed.
Architecturally, the building is a curious hybrid of old and new styles, having been constructed during the transition from old-hat Revivalism to what became known as Streamline Moderne. Moderne was a radical departure from the rampant Romance Revival architecture of the 1920s. It discarded the then-popular Gothic, Mediterranean, and similar throwback styles in favor of largely blank surfaces decorated with shockingly non-traditional features such as large-scale bas-relief panels and curved walls (hence the name Streamline).
A Vital Gathering Place
The exterior of the Veterans Memorial is thoroughly Moderne, foregoing Classical ornament for nontraditional features like bold bas-relief panels and the “Stars and Bars” pilasters which decorate the facade. Inside, however, the architecture is more eclectic. Coffered and vaulted ceilings—a Modeme favorite—coexist with anachronistic 1920s-style quarry tile floors, painted Mexican tile baseboards, and elaborate lighting fixtures. The stair railings are of ornamental bronze, another holdover from the 1920s, rather than the chrome-plated steel a purely Moderne building would sport. It’s as if the architect were hedging his bets on which style would ultimately win out.
In the final run, they both did. After World War II, the basic tenets of Streamline Moderne melded into just plain Modernism: and the romantic traditional styles of the 1920s returned to us in the guise of the Retro styles so popular today.
The Veteran’s Building remains a vital gathering place for east Emeryville citizens and the beloved headquarters of the Senior community; it’s well worth a Visit. both for its mix of architecture. and to acknowledge its era-a brief span of years when people dared to envision a world without conflict.
This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical essays book.
