Oakland Store Front

The Oakland Store

The store to the left was built in 1923-24, by Harold C. Holmes. We have had six or seven bookstores run by Robert or Harold C. Holmes. There were four Holmes Book stores in Oakland and two or three different store locations for Holmes Books in San Francisco.

The bookstore at 274 14th Street in Oakland became our main branch. The Holmes Book Co had a paperback annex that was located next door to the main branch store on 14th Street in Oakland. The third bookstore was on Broadway in Oakland, located near 19th Street and Broadway, and the fourth store’s location was on the second floor of the Kaiser Center Building over looking Lake Merritt. Our 5th store was on 3rd and Market Street in San Francisco and there is an early picture of a sixth store in San Francisco at the link to the left, in our San Francisco store photos posted on this site. The seventh store, which I have read about in Harold’s book called “Some Random Reminiscence”, was behind another shop located somewhere in San Francisco.

This seventh or really the very first bookstore of the Holmes Book Co. that is discribed in Harold’s book, I found to be difficult to understand, so I will post an update here after I reread the part that discribes the location.