How the Laurel Got Its Name

by Dennis Evanosky

By 1900, a string of real estate developments dotted the area that would become the Laurel District. One of these was Laurel Grove Park—the residential tract that eventually gave the district its name. The tract was laid out in 1900 with School, Kansas and Quarry streets as three of its boundaries. Quarry Street was Maple Avenue's original name, as it once led up the hill to O'Brien's Quarry. Peralta Creek and property lines that later became Midvale Avenue served as the tract's fourth boundary.'

The land first belonged to Don Luis Maria Peralta, who had procured it as part of his 1820 land grant from the King of Spain. The Peralta family deeded the property to a farmer with the patriotic-sounding name George Washington Adams. By 1869, attorney Sidney L. Johnson owned the tract.'

Johnson held the property until 1900 when his family sold it to Henrietta and Joseph Westall. The Westalls also owned a tract on the other side of today's Laurel District centering on Maybelle Avenue, which the couple had named for their youngest daughter, Mabel.'

The Westalls turned to civil engineer George E. Fogg to subdivide Laurel Grove Park and to real estate developer Henry Z. Jones to develop and sell the lots. Fogg laid out streets running from School Street toward the hills, naming them for states, in succession: Maine, Vermont, Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Georgia, Idaho, Florida and Kansas.

Fogg evenly divided the tract with Laurel Avenue, to echo the subdivision's name, running up the center.

How the tract got its name remains a mystery. The Westalls may have named the subdivision for a grove of laurel trees that grew along Peralta creek and created the property's boundary near School Street. Perhaps Adams had named his farm "Laurel Grove."'

Another of the Laurel's earliest developments appeared on today's 39th Avenue above Bayo Street. Thirty-Ninth Avenue appears on early maps first as Brooklyn Avenue (named for the Brooklyn Development Company), then as Franklin Avenue. At first Franklin Avenue was accessible only from above on Redwood Road. Hopkins Street (MacArthur Boulevard) did not run through today's Laurel until after Franklin Avenue was developed.'

By 1900, Attorney O.L. Shafter held title to much of the land bordered by today's 38th Avenue, MacArthur Boulevard, Wisconsin Street and Redwood Road. In 1907, the Transbay Realty Company purchased the property which had made up the bulk of Shafter's estate and began transforming it into "Fruitvale Heights." By 1909, the Realty Syndicate owned the land and changed its name to Key Route Heights. (Francis Marion "Borax" Smith had his fingers in both the Realty Syndicate and the streetcar "Key System.")

Henry Z. Jones, the realty salesman who had sold lots in Laurel Grove Park for the Westalls, owned and developed property nearby, the Jesse Jones tract near today's Bayo Street and Vale Avenue. Jones had taken a page from the Westalls' book and named the tract for his daughter Jesse.'

Other tracts sprouted up as farms, orchards and dairies gave way to homes. The area had myriad parcels with a confusing array of names. Key Route Heights and Laurel Grove Park began to take on their own identities; the Fruitvale Progress newspaper didn't help matters with its "Key Notes" and "Laurel Grove Leaflets." Nor did the Oakland Tribune; in its article about the opening of the #11 streetcar line on 38th Avenue, the newspaper referred to the area as the "Westall district."'

Elizabeth Sillers, who lived on Patterson Avenue, had enough of the confusion. She led a grass-roots movement that named the entire district for the Laurel School near her Patterson Avenue home.

In September 1978 she sat down for a chat with a writer for the Laurel Glad Rag. Sillers told the Glad Rag that she had come to the area in 1907 at age 22. She lived on Patterson Street with her husband and three children. All her children attended Laurel School; she recalled the predecessor to the handsome 1910 school as a wooden, rickety structure.

Sillers says that when she moved here, most called the area "Redwood." But she did not feel a part of the Redwood District. She formed a community group that met at her home. The group agreed to adopt the name "Laurel" for the district around the school with the same name. She then successfully petitioned the merchants and a wider circle of her neighbors. "An election was held," Sillers explained to the Glad Rag reporter. "And Laurel was the winning name."

Adapted from History Is All Around Us: Oakland's Laurel District by Dennis Evanosky. Dennis can be reached at evanosky\@pacbell.net.