Belvedre

I’ve always liked neighborhoods like Belvedere. First of all there is the name, which has a kind of pleasant quaintness. (Probably why those 80’s TV people choose it for their show.)

This neighborhood also stands out because it is a little bit older than other Pleasanton neighborhoods. The Ranch and Eichler style homes here seem to date back to at least 60’s. They are well kept though, so that when you drive through this neighborhood you feel not like this is an 80’s neighborhood, but rather that you are transported back into the 80’s. Or to put this another way, you don’t really see the signs of age in Belvedere. The streets are really well maintained.

I can tell these homes were built before 1980ish or so because these home embody that 1960’s and 70’s ethos of individualism. Unlike more modern neighborhoods where each home is almost an exact replica of the home next to it—here, each home takes on its distinct individual style. There is nothing homogenous about this neighborhood.

Take Croce Court, for example, a cul-de-sac with just 6 homes on it. You get a nice little older home with garage and stairs leading up to the front door on the corner. Next to this is high roofed home whose cathedral style windows make it look like church. Next to which is another high roofed home but this time with a square patterned garage with a touch of brickwork and a side front-door walkway, with spaced stone steps and high columns. This is next to a more modest looking home with adobe and brick and a tree (it is almost like a transition home mixing styles from each side of its street). This home is next to a home with a recessed garage and long driveway whose front yard is so covered in foliage that you cannot even make out the house from the street. Completing the circle of the cul-de-sac is a contemporary style home with a pattern of circular topiary surrounding the brick steps that lead up to front second story front door; the first story garage is located below. (And I could go on like this to describe the house across the street from the cul-de-sac that has a white picket fence and a wooden arch along the sidewalk…)

My simple point being that each home here is distinct. It is the kind of neighborhood where you can say: “our house is the one that looks like a church” or “our house is the one with the wooden fence and so much tree cover you can’t see what it looks like.” This is not the kind of neighborhood where you could on an absent minded day walk into your neighbor’s house accidentally, have dinner with his wife, put his kids to bed and only notice you had made a mistake when he comes home late and pushes you out of bed while getting in himself.

It’s the individuality of this neighborhood that really appeals to me. It’s an individuality which is in short supply in bland, flat Pleasanton.

Which brings up another thing about this neighborhood, which is that it is on a hilly portion of Pleasanton which doesn’t give you too many views, but does give you a bit of variation from the perfectly flat spaces that inspire grid-like neighborhood design.

On the eastern end of the neighborhood you get a couple of churches: St. Augustine’s (a Catholic Church) and St. Mary and John’s which is a Coptic Orthodox Church.

But Belvedere is not just a residential neighborhood with some churches. On its western end, Belvedere borders Main Street and that whole section of “Downtown” Pleasanton which is by far the most attractive for the young and young at heart. So you could basically walk from your house to one of the restaurants or bars downtown.

Put simply, this is my favorite spot in Pleasanton and if I had the money and wanted to settle down in Pleasanton, this is where I would move.