Piedmont Avenue (Oakland, California)

This article is about the street and neighborhood in Oakland. For the street in Berkeley, see Piedmont Avenue (Berkeley). For other uses, see Piedmont Avenue (disambiguation).
Piedmont Avenue (Oakland, California)
Neighborhood of Oakland

A look up Piedmont Avenue

Location in Oakland
Coordinates: 37°49′35″N 122°15′09″W / 37.8264°N 122.2524°W / 37.8264; -122.2524
Country United States
State California
County Alameda
City Oakland

The Piedmont Avenue neighborhood is a district in North Oakland, California. It is named for Piedmont Avenue, the main commercial street of the district. The neighborhood is bounded by Broadway on the west, Oakland Avenue and City of Piedmont (a separate municipality, an enclave within Oakland) on the East, the Mountain View Cemetery on the north, and the MacArthur Freeway (Interstate 580) on the south.

Historically, the Piedmont Avenue shopping area has provided retail shopping for the upscale city of Piedmont, California, as well as Oakland's own affluent Montclair neighborhood, which along with the city's wealthy Rockridge district, converge on the north and east borders of the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood. Many trendy and highly rated restaurants –– including the renowned Baywolf, Dopo, and the Michelin-starred Commis –– and an eclectic array of boutique retailers line the street.

There are several landmarks in the area. The center of the Piedmont Avenue commercial strip is a Julia Morgan-designed 1916 red brick building, originally built as the Fred C. Turner Stores, which is at the corner of 40th St. and Piedmont Avenue. It now houses several gourmet food merchants. Next door is the location of the original Longs Drugs store, which is now home to a tapas bar.

The Piedmont Ave. branch library is part of the Oakland Public Library system.

At the north end of Piedmont Avenue and Pleasant Valley Avenue is the hillside Mountain View Cemetery, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and is just up the street from the Julia Morgan designed Chapel of the Chimes.

Piedmont Avenue was once the terminus of the Key System's C line, which provided interurban train service to San Francisco until the late 1950s. The station building at 41st Street is still there, but a parking lot now occupies the land where the tracks were. A mural formerly appeared on the old station building and memorial plaque commemorate the Key System days. Several AC Transit bus lines now serve the neighborhood including the C Transbay line, an express bus with WiFi internet service, which takes passengers directly to the Transbay Terminal in Downtown San Francisco, without bus transfers.

Kaiser Permanente's flagship hospital is located in the southern part of the neighborhood.

Piedmont Avenue Elementary School, located north of the business district, has grades Kindergarten through 5th. Attendance is roughly 350; average class size about 20. The Catholic Church of Saint Leo the Great also operates a school on Piedmont Avenue. A small private school, Park Day also has a middle school campus located on Ridgeway near Piedmont, and the Archway School (grades K-8) is at 41st and Gilbert .

A small park east of Piedmont Avenue contains an open-air section of Glen Echo Creek.

Fentons Creamery, an ice cream parlor on Piedmont Avenue

The Piedmont Avenue commercial area features numerous locally-owned small businesses, including shops, bars, restaurants and bookstores. Piedmont Avenue has recently become known as the Bay Area's Book Row, with six independent bookstores concentrated within a six-block radius.[1] The oldest still-operating theater in Oakland (built in 1917), a gym, and numerous specialty stores. There are several coffee shops, a tea shop, and a number of restaurants with diverse types of food. There is a full-service grocery and several smaller food stores. Piedmont Avenue's Fentons Creamery, founded in 1893, was featured in Pixar's 2009 movie Up.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Drummond: Oakland's Piedmont Avenue show bookstores' death reports exaggerated". www.marinij.com. Retrieved 2016-02-13.

Coordinates: 37°49′35″N 122°15′09″W / 37.8264°N 122.2524°W / 37.8264; -122.2524

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