This Oakland auto body shop has been run by the same family since 1877

George V. Arth arrived in Oakland in 1877 after emigrating from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. A trained blacksmith, he bought a small operation called the Oakland Carriage Manufactory at Oak and 10th Street and put his own name on it.

Carriages gave way to automobiles, but the corner and the family name never changed. Now 142 years and six generations deep, George V. Arth & Son is recognized as the oldest auto body shop west of the Mississippi River, still run by Arth's descendants out of the same Chinatown location.

It's a rare kind of continuity for a single Oakland address — one family, one trade, adapting the work itself (blacksmithing to coachbuilding to auto body repair) without ever leaving the block.