Charles Manning MacGregor
September 23, 1871 – October 13, 1954
C.M. MacGregor built thousands of houses and other buildings across Oakland and the East Bay. In Albany alone he put up something like 1,500 of them — enough that he is remembered as the builder of Albany, and enough that a walk through the older parts of town is mostly a walk past his work.
Getting here
He was born in Nova Scotia to Manning MacGregor and Charlotte Anne Hyland. His older brother, John Ryle MacGregor, urged him west, and in 1889 he came to Oakland. He married Lena Gertrude Covert in 1892; they had six children — Charlotte, Leighton, Florence, Dorothy, Marian, and Ethel — and from 1909 the family lived in Piedmont, where MacGregor stayed until his death in 1954. Leighton Street, near Piedmont Avenue, is said to be named for his son.
The work
He started out as a carpenter working for hire and saved until he could build on his own account, which he began doing in 1896. By 1904 he was designing his buildings as well as constructing them. He kept his office in Oakland — at 519 32nd Street in 1907, and at 470 13th Street by 1922.
One-Nail MacGregor
The nickname followed him for the rest of his career, and there are two stories about it. MacGregor's own version was generous to himself: he would walk the job after his men had knocked off for the day and drive one more nail for good measure. His competitors told it the other way, as a jab about a man who never spared a nail he could keep. Thrift or thoroughness, the houses came out well built, and they are prized today.
Albany agreed at the time. The city began marking a MacGregor Day in 1936, and two schools there carried his name — MacGregor High School and a primary school since closed.
About this site
This is a working catalog of MacGregor houses: one page per address, with an exterior photograph, the freely available property statistics, every recorded sale we can find, and notes on the details that make each house identifiably his — the gumwood built-ins, the arched doorways, the breakfast nooks.
Every photograph here was taken by the site owner from the public sidewalk and is used with permission. No listing or MLS photography appears on this site. Property statistics and sale histories come from public records and may lag or contain errors; corrections are welcome.