SFGate, San Francisco<\/p>\n
(TNS)<\/p>\n
Apr. 4\u2014The historic\u00a0Camron-Stanford House\u00a0in\u00a0Oakland, the last of the Victorian houses that once surrounded\u00a0Lake Merritt, suffered damage in a fire early Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
The Oakland Fire Department\u00a0responded to calls about a fire at\u00a014th Street\u00a0and\u00a0Lakeside Drive\u00a0shortly after\u00a012:40 a.m., and were able to get the blaze fully under control by\u00a01:30 a.m., Battalion Chief\u00a0Nathan Leal\u00a0told SFGATE by phone.<\/p>\n
A total of 28 firefighters responded to the scene and the first fire engine arrived within two minutes of the initial call to the fire department, according to Leal.<\/p>\n
“I’m really proud, our crew did an incredible job,” Leal said. “This is one of\u00a0Oakland’s\u00a0most historic buildings, and we were able to salvage a tremendous amount of art and precious items that are historic to the city.”<\/p>\n
The fire was determined to have originated on the exterior of the building, on the east side facing nearby\u00a0Lake Chalet Seafood Bar & Grill, before advancing inside and rising up to the third floor, according to Leal.<\/p>\n
The quick response time and swift action on-site enabled fire crews to contain the fire to primarily the east side of the building, saving time and minimizing damage to artifacts inside the building, he said.<\/p>\n
Leal also noted that a key design element to the Camron-Stanford House, as well as other Victorians from the era, allows distinct avenues for fire to travel from floor to ceiling, which played a critical role in extinguishing the fire quickly.<\/p>\n
The cause of the fire is under investigation and remains unknown as of Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
The Camron-Stanford House was built in 1876 by\u00a0Samuel Merritt\u00a0and became a museum in 1907,\u00a0Oakland’s\u00a0first, according to its website. The house was listed on the\u00a0National Register of Historic Places\u00a0in 1972.<\/p>\n
Since the end of its last lease in\u00a0August 2024, the House had received notice to discontinue operation and has been closed to the public, but efforts to reopen it are mentioned on the website. Despite Saturday’s fire, Leal is hopeful that the fire department’s actions on Saturday will keep those hopes alive.<\/p>\n
“I’m unsure on the building’s future, but given the stop we made, the building should be able to get back into operation,” Leal said.<\/p>\n
The timeline for the building’s potential reopening remains unknown.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 2026 SFGate, San Francisco. Visit\u00a0www.sfgate.com<\/a>. Distributed by\u00a0Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff Carillo SFGate, San Francisco (TNS) Apr. 4\u2014The historic\u00a0Camron-Stanford House\u00a0in\u00a0Oakland, the last of the Victorian houses that once…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-254164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}