She was talking about her hometown (Oakland, CA) and how there was nothing of value or substance left in it.

True, but a little more info would put this in the right context.

From: Gertrude Steins Oakland

Stein’s family moved to Oakland in 1880, when she was six. Her family lived in a home near today’s 13th Avenue and East 25th Street. She lived in Oakland until 1891, and left at age 17 for Baltimore, after her parents passed away. Oakland was a much smaller town then, with a population of just under 35,000 in 1880.

Nearly 45 years later, Stein returned to Oakland on a lecture tour in 1935. By that time, the city had grown nearly 10 times to over 300,000 residents. When she tried to find her childhood home, it was no longer there. When she published Everybody’s Autobiography two years later, saying there was “no there there,” it was written to reflect painful nostalgia about her home being gone and the land around it being completely changed.