Neighborhood History

Our neighborhood is called Golden Gate. Here is a little history from Wikipedia. "The area was originally developed by Charles Alexander Klinkner who built 75 homes there and called it Klinknerville, established in 1885. A Klinknerville post office was established in 1887. The name was changed to Golden Gate in 1888. The town was annexed to Oakland in 1897." Our house was built in 1894, three years before the town was annexed to Oakland.

According to Inside Oakland...

Golden Gate Neighborhood is Within the stretch of a mile, San Pablo Avenue cuts through three cities: Berkeley, Oakland for a short ten blocks, and then Emeryville. The span that is Oakland's domain is the old Golden Gate neighborhood, named for its views (now absconded by development) of the Golden Gate Bridge across the Bay. This is a largely African-American community, but now many of the businesses operating in the area are owned by Asians or Middle Easterners, many who have only recently gained citizenship in the United States.

Since we bought the house, we've been slowly meeting the neighbors. There is a plot of land over grown with grass across the street from us. We met the caretaker of this lot on Sunday and had a nice conversation with him. His name escapes me right now, but he grew up in our neighborhood and remembers well the railroad that ran down the middle of the street. The warehouse across the street from the front of our house used to be a fruit drying plant and the train would stop at the factory to pick up the finished goods and ship them to the east coast for retailers. He currently lives on nearby street and had leased the empty lot to grow vegetables and donates them to the church down the street. He recalls fondly about the good neighbor fence in the area during his childhood and the close knit community feeling it had back in the days when most of the residence worked for the dry fruit plant across the street. Everyone walked to work and knew everyone on the block. He does not think highly of the idea that some developer wants to redevelop the street we are on, because he doesn't want his neighborhood to change/gentrify. From him, we also found out that our house's previous owner had some legal problems with his tenants due to among other things, sexual harassment with a female tenant and a backed up sewage pipe. Yucky! Anyway, he is glad that we bought the house and will be taking care of it after all these years of neglect. I am looking forward to the day when we can officially move into the house and make it our home sweet home.

Screen shot of the lot from Google street view. The lot is much greener now that we've had some rain. I can almost see there being some goats and chicken roaming around...I know someone has chickens in their yard because I can hear them cackling nearby.