Community
On the morning of Saturday, May 19, Oaklanders will participate in the 7th Annual Walk to End Poverty. The event is hosted by the Alameda County-Oakland Community Action Partnership (AC-OCAP), and is one of many initiatives in Oakland and nearby communities that the partnership is spearheading to combat hunger, staggering unemployment rates, and homelessness.
The city of Oakland has a program that charges fines for banks that fail to maintain blighted homes that have been foreclosed upon that the bank now owns. On Tuesday night, the city council voted unanimously to expand those controls to include homes going through the default process.
Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every Tuesday, Oakland Animal Services will spotlight an “Animal of the Week” that’s up for adoption at their facility. This week it’s Vanilla.
The sleepy Rockridge district was an unlikely home for scandal. But in 1927, it came to light that a small Rockridge bungalow had become the international headquarters of a mystical society called the “Great White Brotherhood.”
“Rock Ridge—a part of the city below, yet apart from it.”
“Rock Ridge—a city beautiful where dreams come true. Where successful men are building their homes apart from the noise of a great city.”
“Rock Ridge—a private park residence place built to an ideal—planned in the Broadway hills for successful men.”
These advertisements were a part of a 1910 campaign by the Laymance Real Estate Company which spent the then-whopping sum of $38,000 to attract the rich to buy in a new part of Oakland, in the hills among sandstones known as “Rock Ridge.”
Oakland North is taking a look at the history of Rockridge. Go here to check out our page: We have stories on its early beginnings as a home for Oakland’s upper class by Ryan Phillips, a profile of one of Rockridge’s founding fathers by Amna Hassan, as well as what the area used to look like, in the words of some of its earliest settlers, by Megan Molteni. We also have photos of what the area looked like at the turn of the century.
Compare historical photos of Rockridge to those taken in 2012.
Take a look at some early photos of Rockridge, before the hills were built up and the BART station arrived. Photos courtesy of the Oakland History Room.
In 1954, local historian Frank X. Flood interviewed many of Rockridge’s first settlers about what it was like back in the “good old days.” These are their reminiscences in their own words.