Our Piedmont Recreation Department’s Walking on Wednesdays group had a good turnout of 37 walkers and two K-9 best friends at the Exedra on an overcast morning this past Wednesday.
It was cloudy, so we thought we should look on the sunny side of the situation and take a walk to Sunnyside Avenue. This was an early Piedmont street with some history and there are interesting things to see along the way. We headed off down Magnolia going all the way to Nova Drive before the street turns into Wildwood Avenue. We went up a hidden path between 81 and 75 Nova to the lower portion of Fairview Avenue. The land between lower and upper Fairview was originally a right-of-way for the early 20th Century Key System 12 Line. It went from today’s Jerome and Fairview Avenues to Grand Avenue and downtown Oakland. Early homeowners wanted to easily get to the Key System trains, and pathways were drawn into neighborhood master plans to accommodate them.
We went down to Grand Avenue, crossed it at Ace Hardware, walked up to Sunnyside, and started our climb of it. We stopped to talk about the house at 228. Lois P said it is the home of Daryl R, her contractor and a decorative metalwork artist. The house was built in 1879 and has a waving brick wall surrounding it. Daryl wasn’t home, but Lois called him, and he said it would be fine for us to walk around his front yard. We took the attached group photo and continued on. There were more early Piedmont homes further up the street. One was built in 1893 and another in 1896.
At the end of Sunnyside is 110. This was the site of the home of Lieutenant Egbert Beach and his parents. Beach was killed in 1918 during action in World War I and was the first California officer killed in the war. Later that year the Lake Avenue School was renamed in his honor. Interestingly, Zillow says 110 Sunnyside was built in 1930, so possibly the Beachs’ home was rebuilt at that time.
Sunnyside ends at Lake Avenue. We went down it, and then back through Linda Park past its dog run. We emerged on Oakland Avenue at the Oakland Avenue Bridge. In 2019 black, iron guardrails were installed on both sides of the road. This project was part of the Piedmont Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan that was adopted by the City Council in 2014. The guardrail project was made possible by a matching grant secured by then Vice Mayor, now former Mayor Teddy King from the Alameda County Transportation Commission. The guardrail project’s total cost in 2019 was $414,000.
The Oakland Avenue Bridge was the historic entrance to Piedmont. Albert Farr designed it in 1910 as a significant entrance to Piedmont. Farr used the same Spanish design that he had used in the Piedmont City Hall and the Bonita Avenue School, which later became Havens School. The bridge replaced an old wood trestle that was built in 1890 for the cable cars that served the area in its early years. The bridge was built in 1911 by Engineer John Buck Leonard of Union City, Michigan, who was a pioneering bridge engineer, architect, and early advocate for reinforced concrete. There are architectural motifs such as steep walls and overhangs which were once used to prevent entry into medieval fortresses. This seemed appropriate then and now for Piedmont. It is a concrete arch bridge over Linda Avenue with a 160-foot arch span and retaining wall supported approaches in a closed spandrel concrete deck arch design. The largest span is 159.1 feet, and the total length is 343.2 feet, which is more than a football field. The relatively new lampposts, lights, and now the guardrails make the Oakland Avenue Bridge a lovely entrance to the city, and the guardrails make the bridge safer for walkers, like us.
We went down and then up Oakland Avenue to Arbor Drive and the upper portion of Fairview, where the upper portion of the Key System 12 Line once ran. Then it was back to Oakland Avenue for a short walk up to the upper portion of San Carlos Avenue and a return to the Exedra via Magnolia.
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