ALAMEDA COUNTY Transcribed by: Linda Jackson 5/19/2008
The Ideal Place for Your California Home
by Henry Anderson Lafler
A GIANT BANANA PALM IN AN OAKLAND PARK
THE
FEATHERY TOPS OF THE EVERGREEN EUCALYPTUS MAKE
AN ADMIRABLE BACKGROUND FOR THIS OAKLAND
HILLSIDE HOME
Fortunately, before these hill slopes were laid out, the ruinous plan followed in so many cities of making the streets checker-board fashion, whether the land was flat or hilly, had been abandoned. So the avenues in sections picturesquely named with such names as Piedmont-by-the-Lake, Rockridge, Claremont, Cragmont, Northbrae, and Thousand Oaks, follow the contours of the hills, now swinging around the bold shoulder of a grassy knoll, whence the delighted visitor may look over seven counties and one hundred square miles of hill, sea, bay, city, mountain and plain, or again dipping into a wooded dell, where charming residences, embowered in vines and flowers, closely nestle. Dwellers on these happy hill slopes of Alameda County, just far enough from the sea to escape the chill of the fog, yet near enough so that even on the warmest day, as already mentioned, there is always a welcome touch of coolness in the air, occupy, as has been well said, "loges in the balcony" at the vast and splendid panorama of San Francisco Bay.
VIEW FROM THE PIEDMONT AND BERKELEY HILLS LOOKING
STRAIGHT OUT THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE
TO THE PACIFIC
With the changing lights from dawn to dark, the Bay, with its scattered islands, alters color. Sometimes it is a deep blue, almost purple; as the sun sinks toward the Golden Gate, it gilds the tops of the little waves and makes of the Bay a burnished mirror. Through wisteria-hung windows, the hill dwellers may see the coming and going of great liners, bound for the warm south seas, for China, or the island continent; or, perchance, tall white-sailed ships that carry California grain through the Panama Canal to New York, or Europe; or still again, in the late fall when they come sailing through the Golden Gate, clipper ships and steam schooners with their holds full of salmon from Alaskan waters; or squat, black brigs and barks, home from whaling voyages to the Bering Sea. And always, to and fro, between San Francisco and the East Bay cities, pass the brightly painted ferry boats with their long and snowy wakes.
Probably nowhere else in the country is the value of land so largely determined by the view as in all the charming hill slopes fronting the Bay. A lot which commands a particularly fascinating vista, through the evergreen eucalyptus, toward Mt. Tamalpais, rearing its dark and shaggy head twenty-five hundred feet in air, may sell for fifty per cent more than one adjoining, which permits only an elusive glimpse of blue water or
A TYPICAL HOME ON THE HILLSLOPES OF PIEDMONT WITH A
VIEW EMBRACING ONE HUNDRED SQUARE MILES OF
LAKE, CITY, BAY, HILLS AND OCEAN
AN
ALAMEDA COUNTY GARDEN--GREEN THE YEAR ROUND
bluer mountain ranges. Fortunately, far-sighted pioneers in the East Bay Cities had the wisdom to plant trees along these hills and to the natural groves of live oak (which keeps its leaves green all the year long) has been added to the tall, graceful form of the eucalyptus, which also is green winter and summer.
It is no wonder that such a climate, such a view, and proximity to the great population center of Western America, famous for its achievements in art, music, drama and letters, should attract beauty-lovers the world over.