Home About Time Traveler Map Search Exhibits Additional Info My Exhibit

Member Exhibit HOME   >>  EXHIBITS  >> MEMBER EXHIBIT     Exhibit Name: Mills Gardens     Overview: Mills Gardens is a housing development created in the 1920s. Fred T. Wood, a real estate developer, purchase land from Mills College. The students at Mills had called it the "Old Meadow". The developer held a contest for Mills students to choose a new name for the housing development. Mills Gardens is the name that won. This exhibit is about Mills Gardens.      Exhibit Objects H4463.1 Mills College, built in 1871, was about five miles outside Oakland, down a long dusty dirt road. The school was a sunny farmland that grew its own vegetables and had a milk cow. This is a picture of Mills Hall and some of the students out on the front lawn. H72.131.20M Notice the amount of open land shown in this ariel view of Mills College, which probably dates in the late 1920s. Notice the dense forest of trees surrounding the campus. Cyrus Mills had nearly 6000 trees - oaks, willows, alders and eucalyptus - planted between 1871 and 1873. H72.131.19M In this ariel view you can see the housing that is beginning to surround Mills College. Mills Gardens, built in the mid 1920s, is just at the bottom of the Mills College hill. H89.64.35 This is an image of the "Old Meadow" at the foot of the Mills College hill. Before it was developed for housing, it was part of a fenced pasture. In 1913, the fence ran along 55th Ave. to Roberts; then east to Seminary; then up Seminary to the Mills College campus. Seminary Ave. in 1913 was a narrow, oiled gravel road lined on both sides by Eucalyptus trees. H97.3.98 The steam and electric street cars were an important element in the spread of housing developments throughout Oakland. The Key System K-Leona line came to Mills College in 1896. East 14th Street was a major transportation route linked to Mills Gardens by Seminary Ave. This image shows one of the Leona cars. H89.64.36 The photographer stood on Seminary Ave. looking down Brann St. to capture this photograph of the Mills Gardens housing development. Fred T. Wood was the real estate developer who laid out the lots, put in curbs and gutters and laid out the streets. Different builders built and sold the houses in the development. The house at the left in this image is still there as of 6/2002. H4463.3A This is an old street sign from Brann Street in the Mills Gardens development. It is made of wood. The newer metal street signs are more durable. H75.202.4C This is a backyard on High St. in 1920. High St. is near Mills Gardens. We have a wonderful climate for gardening - a little warmer than the hills and a little less fog than the waterfront. There are many wonderful gardens in this area of Oakland. H72.131.94I Mills College is just up the hill from Mills Gardens. It's a wonderful place to walk.