Our Piedmont Recreation Department’s Walking on Wednesdays group tries to walk every Piedmont street each year, but in 2024 we didn’t get to the upper portion of Grand Avenue between Kingston and Greenbank Avenues. This roadway is well traveled by car, but not by foot, and the walkers know to really see a street you need to walk it. We could walk the entire length of Piedmont’s Grand Avenue on this clear, sunny morning and see it all. A large turnout of 56 walkers and three K-9 best friends were at the Exedra and ready.
We went down Magnolia Avenue to El Cerrito Avenue and across Oakland Avenue to Latham Street, the only Piedmont roadway named a “street.” There are only three houses on this one-block street. They are long and narrow, built in 1960 and 1961 on right-of-way land that became available when the Key System C Line commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958.
A large dog in a Latham home made sure we knew this was its turf. At the street’s end, we went down Cambridge Way and Holly Place (it only has two houses) to its end at Lower Grand Avenue. The homes in this neighborhood were all built in the 1910s and 1920s. We went up Lower Grand, came out on Arroyo Avenue, and went up it to the busy Pleasant Valley Road/Grand Avenue. A group photo was taken, and some roadway history was shared.
As far back as the 1870s, today’s Grand Avenue was known as Pleasant Valley Road, which described the area well. It ran from Lake Merritt to the Piedmont hills. Today, the roadway in Piedmont is Grand Avenue until it crosses the Oakland city line where it goes back to being Pleasant Valley again.
We crossed the street at the stop light and made our way, three quarters of a mile, down Grand to the Piedmont/Oakland city line at Wildwood Avenue. On the way, we noted homes that were also built in the 1910s and 1920s but were impressed by a new house with an ADU at its base that was completed around 2020. It was built on a lot that was long thought to be unbuildable. We liked its modern design and construction. It is a large home, built with lots of concrete, up a steep incline. Architect Jim Kellogg said with all the concrete in its base it has nothing to worry about in an earthquake. The house is new, different, and beautiful. Jim liked it and so did the rest of us.
We stopped at Grand and Linda Avenues where in 1892 there was a restaurant named “A Mon Chateau” (My Castle). It was built by Axel R. Gruggel. Over time, it had a number of owners and a trouble history with the City and police because of owner and patron behaviors which included no liquor licenses and gambling. In 1914 the building became the Grand Avenue Grocery Company and in 1922 the Del Monte Market. In the 1930’s Piggly Wiggly, as a division of Safeway, opened a second grocery store up the street at the corner of Sunnyside and Grand. It was stiff competition. The Del Monte Market floundered and closed, and the A Mon Chateau building was torn down. A series of gas stations later occupied the site. Finally, in 1987 the current, block-long Piedmont Financial Center was built there. Further down the street, some long-time Piedmonters remembered the site as a not-very-successful “Big T” grocery store, which eventually became today’s Ace Hardware, and a nearby hamburger restaurant.
We crossed Grand at the Ace Hardware and noted that nothing much has been done to the former Shell gas station site since our visit last month. Someday it will be a Shell Recharge station. On the other side of Grand we could see an Oakland City Limits sign that confirmed we had walked the entire Piedmont length of Grand Ave. The walk had taken a little longer than usual, and it was time to climb back to the Exedra via Wildwood and Magnolia Avenues.