[History of Housing Discrimination] East Piedmont Heights.

Description

“BUILDING RESTRICTIONS under which all lots are sold assures high class of residences and establishes the section as one of attractive and eminently desirable social tone.”

This early 20th-century promotional pamphlet is a period advertisement for a new residential neighborhood established in Oakland’s East Piedmont Heights, northeast of Lake Merritt. It reflects the idealized housing development of the era, complete with restrictive racial covenants.

The pamphlet was printed on both sides and folded. We find a detailed cadastral map of the area on the recto. As expected, this delineates the neighborhood, including streets and the numbering of all individual plots. The new neighborhood is essentially laid out between the thoroughfares of Lakeshore Avenue and Mandana Boulevard – hence the pamphlet’s “on the Boulevard” subtitle. Various texts describe the area and its connectivity to San Francisco to underline the investment value. They refer to it as “a place of residence de luxe.” At the bottom of the map, the patrons and property agents are identified as Wickham Havens Inc.

The verso is the more dramatic side. Here, six color images provide readers with an evocative visual view of East Piedmont Heights. The images vary in size and orientation, with one functioning as the pamphlet’s original front page. This image shows a view of the area and is topped by the pamphlet title, while Wickham Havens’ contact information is provided below.

The artist behind the images is the American painter and illustrator William H. Bull (see bio below). In addition to the frontispiece, Bull’s beautiful depictions include a birds-eye-view of the area before construction, a map positioning the neighborhood about Lake Merritt and the rest of Oakland, two nice aerial views, and a small prospect view of a ‘Type House.’

The pamphlet is undated, but the librarians at UC Berkeley have tentatively dated it to 1907, when Wickham Havens Inc. sold the initial tract of land (OCLC no. 27199400).

Census

This pamphlet was issued by the property agent Wickham Havens Inc., presumably as part of their first sales initiative in 1907. The OCLC lists only two examples (nos. 19732385; 27199400), held by the California Historical Society and the library at UC Berkeley. We have found no historical sales or current examples on the market.

Context is Everything

East Piedmont Heights is a residential neighborhood northeast of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California. The area was developed in the early 20th century by the Wickham Havens Company. The initial tract was established in 1907, with an extension added in 1910.

During its initial development, East Piedmont Heights was marketed with explicit racial restrictions. While this earlier pamphlet touches on the issue more subtly as building restrictions, by 1910, Wickham Havens advertised the area as “rigidly restricted,” a terminology indicating that sales were limited to white buyers. This practice was standard then, with developers often promoting new neighborhoods as exclusively white to attract specific demographics and maintain property values.

The history of such covenants and related issues such as redlining, as well as efforts to challenge them, is well-documented in neighboring Piedmont, an exclusive enclave surrounded by Oakland rather than part of Oakland. The situation in East Piedmont Heights is less well-known, but like Oakland more broadly the area became racially diverse over the course of the 20th century. In the postwar period, it attracted Black professionals and became a rare case of a middle to upper-middle class integrated suburban neighborhood.