Athenian-Nile Club Building - Oakland

The Athenian-Nile Club Building is located at the corner of 14th Street and Franklin Street that was originally home to the Athenian-Nile Club. It was designed by Walter J. Mathews, and built in 1901.

Designed by architect Walter J. Mathews, the building was originally a Beaux Arts derivative - Colonial Revival commercial building and meeting hall. he four story stuccoed brick turn of the century store and hall building sits on a corner lot, with stores in the ground floor base and club rooms in the upper three floors. The upper floors have a cylindrical corner bay and slightly projecting end bays. Most of the second and third floor windows are arranged in groups, with panels substituting for some of the windows.

All the upper floor windows have deeply recessed double hung wood sash, most with twelve light upper sash.

The window heights decrease toward the top floor. A cornice and pent roof wrap around the top of the corner bay, forming a low pitched conical roof with ball finial, echoing the canopy roof over the hall entry on 14th Street. Some of the ground floor storefronts retain glazed wood entry doors and greenish black marble splash panels.

One of the earliest surviving buildings in the Downtown district, this building for 90 years housed the Athenian-Nile Club, an exclusive men's club patterned after the Bohemian Club, whose members included many of downtown's business, financial, and political elite, among them its architect Walter J. Mathews.

This building is #44 on the list of District Contributors for the Downtown Oakland Historic District Registration Form. ¹

No one was injured in a serious fire in 1906, but it caused $6,000 in damage to The Curtain Store and its contents on the ground floor. ³

Since 1993 the building has been occupied by a club, Geoffrey's Inner Circle. Other tenants include the Joyce Gordon Gallery, and in 2016, the local Hillary Clinton for President campaign office. ²