This large-scale, free family-oriented "Day of the Dead" festival has traditionally been one of the largest one-day events of its kind in the United States. It is sponsored by the Unity Council, a 40-year-old community development organization dedicated to implement ing economic and social revitalization projects in Oakland's Fruitvale district.

Local artists will be creating altars and displays along the boulevard and throughout the Fruitvale Village area, and four entertainment stages featuring Salsa, Merengue, Afro-Cuban music, and Ballet Folklorico and Aztec Dancers will be among the highlights of the day's event, which gets under way at 10 a.m. and continues until 5 p.m. Food vendors will offer an array of ethnic specialities.

The Fruitvale Main Street booth will have exhibits on the district's history, as well as displays on two of the neighborhood's most prominent landmarks: Peralta Hacienda, the 19th century-era home to members of the Peralta Spanish land grant family, on 34th Avenue, and the historic Cohen-Bray House built in the 1870's on 29th Avenue.

Copies of the newly published "Fruitvale on Foot" will be available. It is a handy, travel-size illustrated booklet outlining three different self-guided walks through the neighborhood.

"The booklet contains capsule histories of the area," says one of its authors, Pamela Magnuson-Peddle, who turned to the City's Cultural Heritage Survey office and the Main Library's History Room when she started gathering research.

"The files we looked at described the Fruitvale of the 1880's as 'the garden spot of California ... lined with elegant residences and villas surrounded by beautiful lawns and gardens,'" Magnuson-Peddle explains. "Other articles commented on the lovely climate, good sewage system and water supply, adequate roads, excellent fire protection by a volunteer fire brigade, and, last but not least, half hourly train service to San Francisco."

Fruitvale had a small main street along 14th Avenue with its own post office, fraternal lodge meeting halls, churches and banking institutions. A tidal canal was dredged in 1902, separating the Alameda peninsula from Fruitvale and opening up the waterfront to new industry. Tracts of small, Victorian-style cottages housed workers (many of Portuguese and German origins) of the California Cotton Mills. The neighborhood was affectionally called "Jingletown" because on pay day the mill workers would come home with coins jingling in their pockets.

"With the help of the Oakland Heritage Alliance and the Unity Council, we are going forward with a new city landmark application next month," says Magnuson-Peddle. "It will be for the Fruitvale Masonic Temple, built in 1909, located on International Boulevard and Ignacio De La Fuente Way, the gateway to the transit village."

The walking tour booklet describes the former lodge "temple" as a grand, Classical Revival-style building that has housed a number of fraternal orders during the years, starting with the Masons, who retained locally prominent architect Hugo W. Storch, whose German-derived name means stork.

According to the files, the architect was born in Mexico in 1873 and later came to live in San Francisco and trained in an already established architect's office before going out on his own.

The lodge was home for a time to Babe's Gym, files say, where many notable boxers, including former heavy weight champion George Foreman, trained. In 1998, as construction got under way for the nearby transit village complex, the Unity Council acquired the aging structure in order to rehabilitate it and make it a cornerstone of the new development.

Take BART to the Fruitvale Station for easy access to next week's event. For more information, call 535-6929, or log on to www.unitycouncil.org