H77.114.1V

Realtors photo album including a list of residents and letters of reference. "East Piedmont Heights & Crocker Highlands from Warfield Ave." (jl 3/93) According to the Tract List for Northern Alameda County, this tract was in Oakland, was filed in 1907, and the owner/agent was Wickham Havens Inc. (D. Cooper, 10-97) From the San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 5, 1997; Real Estate section: Lakeshore Highlands, which is also commonly referred to as Crocker Highlands or the Trestle Glen, is the second oldest subdivision in California after St. Francis Woods in San Francisco...The neighborhood's beauty has not been left to chance. In 1937 it was among the first neighborhoods on the West Coast to establish CC&Rs (Covenants Codes and Restrictions) and an association to enforce them. You want to cut down a tree? It's prohibited unless the association's Board of Directors give the ok. You cut it down anyway? The fine is $600 per tree. Painting your house? Call the association for color approval. Modernizing your double hung windows? Adding a deck? You get the idea...In fact, just about everything that affects the exterior of the 1,050 homes in Lakeshore Highlands must meet the association's standards as well as those set by the City of Oakland....Some of the homes were built by the original developers, including 10 fully decorated model homes on Trestle Glen Road that opened to the public for viewing as a firts-of-its-kind sales gimmick in 1922 to promote development. Tens of thousands of curiosity seekers and potential home buyers responded to the Lakeshore Highlands promotion, strolling from house to house as hostesses demonstrated the convenience of an "electrified kitchen" among other modern amenities. Until then, so-called "model homes" were staged in exposition halls - never on location. Most of the homes are custom designed - each one different from the next. Many of Oakland's best known architects worked in the neighborhood, including Julia Morgan, Bernard Maybeck, William Wurster, Frederick Reimers and William Schirmer....The Lakeshore Highlands Development and its Lakeshore Homes Association were born in 1917 when Wickham Havens and Walter H. Leimert filed a subdivision map for an upscale "residential park" along Trestle Glen Creek between Lakeshore Ave. to Park Blvd. The Olmstead Brothers, sons of the New York Central Park designer, Frederick Law Olmstead, were called in from Brookline, Mass. to lay out the tract. Instead of imposing a traditional grid of streets on the wooded and hilly site, the brothers drafted a plan with curvy streets that were responsive to the hilly natural landscape, leaving small pocket parks scattered throughout the tract. The developers' master vision was to create beautiful homes in a beautiful environment, thus creating a lovely bucolic neighborhood in the middle of a city for wealthier professional families and - just as importantly - offer these homeowners assurance that it would stay that way for generaltions to come. From the beginning all homeowners were required to belong to the Association and pay annual dues, which helped finance a small army of gardners that meticulously groomed the pocket parks as well as for a small clerical staff to enforce zoning convenants. The only other such association in California at the time had been established five years earlier in 1912 by the developers of St. Francis Woods in San Francisco. Because of its legal status, the Lakeshore Homes Association could enforce its covenants, inlcuding the racial restrictions explicitly stating that: "No persons of African, Japanese, Chinese, or of any Mongolian descent, shall be allowed to purchase, own, or lease said property or any part thereof or to live upon said property or any part thereof except in capacity of domestic servants of the occupant thereof." It wasn't until 1979, following a series of court rulings outlwaing racial restrictions as unconstitutional, that the association lifter the whites-only policy and formally opened its neighborhood to people of all colors. While the restrictions were not officially removed from the bylaws until 1979, they were deemed legally unenforcable in 1948. "My grandparents moved here in 1953, so they were probably the first Japanese Americans in the neighborhood," said Dean Yabuki, a third generation resident in the neighborhood. After World War II, Japanese American realty agents rallied to introduce Japanese American families into the racially restricted neighborhoods throughout Oakland, Yabuki explained. His grandfather, who was the founder of Market Laundry in Oakland in 1909, was a successful businessman with a respectable family, and were thought to be excellent ambassadors for their ethnic group....Over the last four decades, the complexion of the neighborhood has changed dramatically, and although a recent spike in home prices has resulted in a growing number of white families, there's also a strong contingent of black, Asian, and gay homeowners. "We knew about the historical restrictions. But when we were driving around it didn't look like everybody was white and when we moved in, we realized it was really diverse," said attorney Liane (CQ) Randolph..."It's a nice racial mix, lots of different ages, there are gay couples in the neighborhood. I am looking forward to when an if we raise a family, I think it's a good neighborhood," she said..."

Used: Chas. A. Smith ~ realtor