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history
Lakeshore Highlands: Twenties Residence Park in Trestle
Glen
"...a veritable fairyland of rolling hills and wooded dales
right in the heart of Oakland near famous Lake Merritt and
its flower filled parks-six minutes by motor, nine by car,
from Oakland City Hall, and 36 minutes by the Key route from
San Francisco. Nothing approaching Lakeshore Highlands in
attractiveness ever has or ever will be offered to the seeker
for ideal home conditions in the Bay Region ... Beautiful
homesites, of varying sizes, $1250 to $3000..."
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Illustration for promotional materials for Lakeshore Highlands
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Sound too
good to be true? These were the promises of a 1922 San Francisco
Social Register advertisement of the Walter H. Leimert Company,
describing Lakeshore Highlands. The area, above the Lakeshore
commercial district and below Crocker Highlands school, includes
such picturesque streets as Rosemount, Longridge, Larkspur Lane,
Hillcroft Circle, and Trestle Glen. |
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As remarked in another promotional article describing Leimert's
"ideal home park", it was "a far cry from Indian teepees to
stately mansions, from a stretch of tule growth to sweet rose
gardens, from wilderness to paved streets, electric lights,
streetcars and automobiles" (Home Designer, November 1924).
Indeed it was, and there were those who regretted the passing
of the old at the same time Leimert sang the praises of the
new. |
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Once a laurel-lined area along a mossy creek running into what
is now Lake Merritt, the glen was known as Indian Gulch to early
Oaklanders, though the Indians were long since displaced by
the Spanish. In 1820 the Spanish crown granted most of what
is now Alameda County from Albany to San Leandro to a retired
army sergeant named Luis Maria Peralta. What use the Peraltas
made of Indian Gulch can only be surmised, but they used the
entire rancho primarily for cattle raising. Later, with the
discovery of gold and the emergence of the "instant city" of
San Francisco, the family sold lumbering rights to redwoods
in the hills. Eventually the hills were bare save for scrub
oak and buckeye. As Oakland grew, and especially after the devastating
drought of 1862-64 killed off the cattle herds, interest in
the outlying land shifted from ranching to recreation. |
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| An 1871 birdseye
map labels the area that is now Trestle Glen as Lake Park, and
shows roads winding over the hills and past three small lakes.
In the 1880's the area belonged to banker Peder Sather (memorialized
by Sather Gate at the University of California). After his death
in 1886, his wife Jane allowed the land to be used as a park.
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Train
Trestle near Holman
and Grosvenor - 1895 |
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The name Trestle Glen dates back to this period, to approximately
1893 when Francis Marion "Borax" Smith's Oakland Traction Company
extended a trolley line from downtown Oakland up Park Boulevard
to Grosvenor Place. From a point just above where Holman Road
crosses Grosvenor to about Underhills Road, a large wooden trestle
bridge was constructed to carry the carloads of picnickers across
Indian Gulch and into Sather Park. As one visitor recollected:
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Salvation
Army Annual Camp Meetings
Trestle Glen - Late 1800s |
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"In those
days Trestle Glen was a long ways from the city of Oakland...
on the floor of the glen at the end of the bridge a pavilion
was erected and suitable outbuildings for restaurants, etc.,
were built nearby. Dances, conventions, camp meetings, and gatherings
of various kinds kept the glen pretty well patronized during
the summer months. The Salvation Army held its annual camp meeting
there on several occasions at which time Trestle Glen was about
the busiest, liveliest place in the Eastbay region... "
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| The electric
trolley that trundled over the bridge featured double-deck seating
and brass handrails. Mark Twain is among the notables known
to have made the trip. |
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Sunnyhills
Station at Northvale 1948 |
Borax Smith quickly consolidated the various East Bay railway
lines into the Key System, and connected it to San Francisco
by way of an elaborate ferry system. In 1895 Smith joined Frank
C. Havens, a real estate magnate who controlled 13,000 acres
of East Bay hilltop land, to form the Realty Syndicate. At that
moment, the days of leisurely picnicking and romantic strolling
in Sather Park became numbered. |
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Lakeshore
Avenue - 1946
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The Realty Syndicate acquired the Sather Estate in 1904, and
by 1906 the Trestle Glen crossing was gone. In 1911 Wickham
Havens, Frank's son, filed a subdivision map for Crocker Highlands.
And in 1917 the Lakeshore Highlands Company, of which Wickham
Havens was president, filed a subdivision map covering the hills
on either side of Trestle Glen, from Lakeshore Avenue to Grosvenor
Place, in what had been known as Sather Park.
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Meanwhile a movement had arisen to preserve Trestle Glen as
a public park. As early as 1909, consulting New York landscape
architect Charles Mulford Robinson proposed to Oakland's newly
established Park Commission a comprehensive plan for an unprecedented
system of public parks for Oakland. The purchase of old estates
like DeFremery and Mosswood parks was one of his proposals;
another was acquisition of the privately owned land around Lake
Merritt. A third proposal, not acted upon, was a greenbelt connecting
the lake with a park area along Trestle Glen, up Park Boulevard,
winding around the city of Piedmont, through Mountain View Cemetery,
and back to Lake Merritt. In 1914 under the sympathetic administration
of Mayor Frank Mott, the Park Commission actually acquired an
option to purchase Trestle Glen, but was unable to arrange financing
during Mott's term. In 1915 John L. Davis, a fiscal conservative
and opponent of the park project, was elected mayor, and he
defeated a plan whereby the city could have purchased the land
on an installment basis. |
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So
Wickham Havens took action to create his "residential park" in
Lakeshore Highlands. He retained the Olmsted Brothers (whose
father, Frederick Law Olmsted, designed Mountain View Cemetery
as well as New York's Central Park) to prepare a site plan for
an exclusive, restricted, upper-income residential suburb along
the lines of San Francisco's 1912 St. Francis Wood.Inspired by
England's "garden suburbs," the Olmsteds laid out winding
streets following natural contours, leaving natural areas along
the creek (later Trestle Glen Road) and smaller park areas
scattered throughout the tract. The monumental entrance portals
to the tract were designed by Bakewell & Brown, architects of
San Francisco City Hall and a number of opulent houses in Adams
Point, and the sales office by the similarly eminent Louis
Christian Mullgardt.
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Leimert instituted a Lakeshore Homes Association to enforce
controls on land use, building cost and design, and neighborhood
upkeep. Drawn up at a time of strong and open anti-minority
feelings, the tract's racial restrictions against people of
African or ">The Lakeshore Highlands Company itself built many of the
houses during the tract's first years, but later it was more
common for the homeowner to buy a lot and commission his or
her own house. The tract's building restrictions required
that each house cost at least $3000 more on some lots-and
some owners spent as much as $50,000, an enormous sum at the
time. Lakeshore Oaks too was initiated with company-built
homes, ten fully decorated model homes which were shown as
the California Complete Homes Exposition in the fall of 1922,
and drew tens of thousands of visitors.
Most lots were filled during the halcyon days of the 1920's,
but building continued into the 1930's and a few lots remained
even after World War II. Many of Oakland's best known architects
worked in the neighborhood over the years: Julia Morgan, Maybeck
& White, Charles McCall, A.W. Smith, Hamilton Murdock, William
Schirmer, Kent & Hass, Frederick Reimers, William Wurster,
Irwin Johnson, and others.
Shielded by private restrictions against multiple dwellings
as well as by zoning, the area retains its period character
up to the present day. The houses are by and large romantic
and picturesque, exhibiting post-World War I taste for country
charm and European culture. Italian Renaissance, Tudor, Spanish,
Monterey, French provincial, and Colonial styles abound. As
Walter Leimert would be the first to point out, the Lakeshore
Highlands/Trestle Glen area remains one of substantial architectural
interest as well as natural beauty.
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Excerpted from an article by Deborah Shefler and Dean Kabuki.
Reprinted courtesy of the authors and the Oakland Heritage Alliance.
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