The New California Jockey Club
The huge grandstand of the New California Jockey Club is a rare example of an exotic oriental style that appeared during the late Victorian era. It ranks among a relative handful of such structures in the Bay Area, ranging from Oakland’s Pagoda Hill—the outlandishly exotic residence of author and world traveler J. Ross Brown (circa 1875)—to San Francisco’s bizarre Vedanta temple (1905).
Fascinated by the Exotic
The Victorian period began with fairly sedate revival styles such as Gothic and Italianate. As the nineteenth century drew to a close. however, the sources of architectural inspiration became increasingly exotic, culminating in the borrowing and intermixing of details as diverse as Chinese pagoda roofs and Russian Orthodox onion domes. That such buildings were built at all attests to the great skill of Victorian era carpenters. who were able to duplicate all manner of complicated details in wood.
Despite their staid reputation, the Victorians were fascinated by the exotic, which they found in the culture and decorations of the Orient. They eagerly read books on the Near East such as Bayard Taylor’s The Land of Saracen and Dr. Richard Burton’s racy translation of The Arabian Nights. which helped popularize Orientalizing styles in the same way Wuthering Heights had boosted the Gothic Revival.
Victorian Hubris
Hence, in Emeryville, we find a racetrack grandstand in the incongruous form of a Chinese temple. Beneath that enormous pagoda roof, which stood a hundred feet tall at the cupola, the 110-by-280-foot structure seated 3000 spectators in relative shelter from the elements. Tucked under the sloping tiers of seats were a betting ring accommodating 4000 patrons, a 50-foot-Iong bar, lavatories and 20 bookmakers’ stands.
With characteristic Victorian hubris, the structure was proclaimed by the Oakland Enquirer as “a magnificent pagoda (which) surpasses in its arrangement any similar structure in the United States…the speed park at Emery’s will be the most modern and complete in the world.” Constructed in eight months and opened on October 24, 1896, the grandstand was one of the most unusual building types to be built in this exotic style, as well as one of the largest.
A Short-Lived Monument
At the turn of the century, it was common practice to construct buildings as many as five or six stories high entirely out of wood—a practice no longer allowed by modem building codes. When fire broke out in these structures, there was little that any fire department could do but try to prevent it from spreading to adjoining properties.
Such a fire began in an outbuilding at the California Jockey Club during the course of its demolition in 1915, and it rapidly involved not only the grandstand but all the other wooden buildings of the complex. Like so many other buildings of its era, this curious and short-lived Victorian monument was quickly reduced to a smoldering ruin.
This story originally published in 1996 for the Emeryville Centennial Celebration and compiled into the ‘Early Emeryville Remembered’ historical essays book.
