The Stoer Family Estate
On this corner of San Pablo Avenue and Adeline Street at 3669 Adeline Street once stood the Stoer family estate, home to one of the families most closely associated with Emeryville’s founding.
Following a successful incorporation vote on December 2, 1896, Friedrich Johann (“Fred”) Stoer, Joseph S. Emery, Wallace H. Christie, John T. Doyle, and William Fieldwick were elected as Emeryville’s first trustees, forming the town’s original governing body.
Fred Stoer represented the southern portion of Emeryville, an area closely tied to his family’s early settlement. His father, Johann Friedrich Stoer, a German immigrant, had acquired land here with earnings from the California gold fields and went on to establish a successful general merchandise business nearby.
Fred Stoer—one of ten children born to Johann Stoer and his wife Carolina Heimerdinger, and the family’s only son—helped expand the family’s prosperity through real estate and banking ventures, becoming one of Emeryville’s most influential early civic figures.
As the family’s fortunes grew, the Stoers constructed a substantial residence just a block away from their business. Designed by the architectural firm Arnold & Soderberg and built by contractor Harry Wharton, the residence built in 1901 reportedly cost $12,000. Contemporary accounts describe a house with twelve bedrooms, two garages, and an interior finished in fine woods.
(Clipping: Oakland Enquirer – March 19, 1914).
Johann Stoer died in 1914 at the age of 82. How long members of the Stoer family continued to occupy the estate after his death remains unclear. In 1923, the property was listed for sale by its owner under circumstances suggesting financial strain.
By 1931, the address appears in city directories as the office of Imperial Mutual Life, indicating the former residence had transitioned to commercial use. The final known newspaper reference to the site appears in a 1935 Oakland Tribune legal notice, which lists the address as housing a Division of Highways office.
This transition coincided with construction of the San Pablo Avenue underpass, later renamed the West MacArthur Boulevard underpass. This route would connect motorists to the under construction Bay Bridge.
Construction on the underpass project began in 1934 and was completed the following year. It is believed the Stoer property was either purchased by the state or acquired through eminent domain, as the roadway cut directly through the former estate grounds.
Fred Stoer’s long civic career ended in 1936, when he was defeated in a re-election bid after roughly four decades of public service. He retired to property he owned in Oroville, where he lived until his death in 1955 at the age of 92.
Fred Stoer never married and had no known children. His obituary lists a single surviving relative, a nephew named P. A. Westphal. Shortly thereafter, the Stoer name disappears from Emeryville news accounts.
In the decades that followed, this corner site was redeveloped—first as a service station, then as the Jug Liquor Store, before being razed and replaced by the building now occupied by Lanesplitter Pizza.
