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The Joaquin Miller Abbey

Photo(s) by

noehill.com

The Joaquin Miller Abbey

Location

3081 Joaquin Miller Rd.

Oakland, CA

Architectural Style

Gothic Revival

Year Built

1886

Property Description

The Abbey is a small gothic-revival building built by Joaquin Miller in 1886 in Oakland, CA. The house is in Joaquin Miller Park, a 500-acre oak and redwood wilderness in the hills of Oakland. Joaquin Miller purchased the land in 1886 and left the property to the City of Oakland when he died in 1913.

The Abbey comprises three single rooms, two of which are gabled and have narrow sides to the front, and the third has a flat roof, overhanging eaves, and sits broad side to the front.

The house is accompanied by four monuments made of concrete and rubble by Joaquin Miller in the nearby hills. Three monuments were built in dedication to historical men he admired, including a cylindrical castellated monument memorializing Robert Browning, an elongated cube with two pointed and two slit windows memorializing John C. Fremont, and a pyramid dedicated to Moses, the biblical figure. The fourth monument is a funeral pyre intended for his own cremation; however, the location was ultimately only used to scatter his ashes.

Adapted from

noehill.com

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