Pill Hill

Tucked away next to Highway 580 and Highway 980, Pill Hill is a predominately lower-class African American residential neighborhood. It maintains a somewhat isolated feel, with run-down houses, plain-looking apartment buildings and small public parking lots peppered throughout the community. On many of the main drags, there are a handful of bottom floor retail stores and outlet shops which give locals a convenient option. However, many of the stores’ windows are lined with bars, which give the neighborhood a rather seedy quality.

One of the main attractions in the neighborhood is the well-known nursing school of Samuel Merritt University. Those who live within the vicinity have the option of housing in the moderately neat apartment buildings that lie adjacent to the school. Moreover, the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center anchors the northeastern corner of Pill Hill. Along Telegraph Avenue, there are a few more satellite hospital buildings, which serve many of the community’s medical needs.

Telegraph and Broadway Avenue cut through the heart of the neighborhood, offering a wide selection of goods and services including food marts, pizza places and delicatessens. The area also boasts a couple religious quarters including Augustine Episcopal and Temple Sinai. Houses along these strips are a bit nicer. They are commonly described as thin, two-story homes with shallow front yards. Street noise is a complaint among the locals especially with two highways edging the north and west borders. As you get into the the side streets of the neighborhood, many of the homes are old and unkempt, but the sidewalks are lined with lush trees and well-trimmed bushes.

Street parking is typically rare, especially around the nursing school. And even some of the neighborhood side streets are packed with parking on busy commuting hours. Public transportation is also scarce, with buses traversing Telegraph and Broadway Avenue somewhat infrequently.

This is the home of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and several other satellite medical related businesses like chiropractors and diagnostic labs. Summit is a widely respected medical facility that can treat everything from gun shot wounds to cancer. This is the central feature of the neighborhood.

One of these satellites is Samuel Merritt University—a nursing school that helps graduate many of those who work in the hospital.

To the west of Telegraph, the neighborhood is largely residential with older Victorians and unusual looking two story bungalow style homes characterizing the area. The neighborhood is right at the junction between the MacArthur Freeway (580) and the Grove Shafter Freeway (24).

The predominantly African American neighborhood is home to at least two places of worship that I know of. On the western end is St. Augustine Episcopal—in a big red painted church that dates back to 1920. St. Augustine is a welcoming family church with a fairly diverse congregation and a charismatic rector. On the eastern end of the neighborhood is Temple Sinai which is equally well-loved by its Jewish congregation. Both are great for kids. (Abyssinian Missionary is also on the north of the neighborhood but I don’t know much it.)

This is largely a poor urban neighborhood with the usual urban problems you might expect. However there are a few cool night spots and it is very close to the trendy Temescal neighborhood—so you would definitely have a place to go for dinner if you lived here.

On the southern side of the neighborhood you also have a great little nightspot, Z Café and Bar. A cool place to go on a Friday night you if you are single. There is also the Korean Restaurant, Wore Raing, but I have never been there to vouch for its quality or lack thereof.