Oakmore

Oakmore is a small, triangularly shaped neighborhood tucked away in the Oakland hills. It is a relatively inviting residential neighborhood, bounded by Park Boulevard, Highway 13 and Lincoln Avenue. The district is somewhat uncharacteristic of the average Oakland community, isolated by many windy roads, rolling hills and neatly groomed front lawns. Residents are predominately white, middle-class residents while Asian and African American families make up a small percentage of the population.

Oakmore seems to be split between high-priced homes to the north and a handful of ragtag blocks anchoring the southernmost end of the neighborhood. Of these homes to the north, many are perched on a hillside, offering refreshing views of the Oakland skyline. Many of them are charming two-story homes, giving way to considerably narrow streets that climb steep inclines.

As you travel south, the neighborhood mixes in a handful of smaller homes and ragtag blocks. It’s almost a crapshoot to have a neighbor keeping with the relatively nice aesthetic appeal the area is trying to cultivate. While some homes are bordered with charming picket fences, others are surrounded by bushy, unkempt shrubbery. However, most of the neighborhood is lined with leafy sidewalks.

Looking to unwind, Dimond Canyon Park, a lengthy wooden open space that edges the western border. The outdoor recreational grassland offers plenty of open space to go hiking or mountain biking.

Public transportation is rare to almost non-existent considering the neighborhood’s relatively isolated location.

Oakmore is yet another of these tucked away hilly neighborhoods that hide out in the Oakland Hills. As with the other neighborhoods in this area, you can roughly divide the neighborhood between its eastern and western ends.

On the western end, near the freeway, the neighborhood is pretty much a middle class neighborhood. The lanes here are long and without side streets for long stretches and the homes that populate these streets are California Bungalows, Ranch Homes and the occasional Mission Style deals on small lots. The streets are leafy and mostly straight.

On the eastern end, as you move farther up into the hills it is pretty much a wealthy neighborhood. The streets up in the hills snake around the hills, offering up great views of the Bay and of Oakland. The homes perch along the hillside in various styles, all of which take advantage of the sight lines by pointing themselves out towards the Bay. Lots of porches and bay windows thus stick out along the hills.

The homes on the eastern end also vary greatly in terms of architectural styles so that you can find everything from unusual Contemporary houses, Modernist homes, some Tudors and some California Bungalows, about a third of these dating back to the 1920’s when this neighborhood was (like adjacent Piedmont Pines) carved out of the hills.

One of the cool features of the neighborhood is the Leimart Bridge that crosses over Dimond Park to connect Crocker Highland and Oakmore. Right by the bridge, there is a little commercial village area with a little market, a pizza place and some local businesses just so that residents don’t have to find their way down into Oakland to get basic necessities.

This neighborhood borders both Highway 580 on the western end, but also Highway 13 (right at the point where it turns into Piedmont Pines). The connection between these two sections thus gives the highly expensive area along Highway 13 a much more secluded feel than the other section on the western end of the neighborhood. You feel on the eastern side as if you are far away in the middle of woods. (Or you would if there were not so much traffic on the Warren Freeway.)