The handwritten captions on the back read 1) "Downtown Oakland in smog, 2) pierces through smog as breezes begin to blow it away." In the foreground there is a housing tract, on 14th St. in the Oak Center neighborhood, composed of either newly built or modernised Victorian houses. In the middle distance freeway # 980 bisects the photo laterally. In the background, the skyline of downtown Oakland appears, with City Hall at center, and the Tribune Tower slightly to the right. A construction crane and the framework of a new steel building cuts off the lower portion of the Tribune Tower.