Rockridge, Oakland
| Rockridge | |
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| Neighborhood of Oakland | |
College Ave in Rockridge
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 Location of Rockridge in Oakland |
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| Coordinates: 37°50′34″N 122°14′46″W / 37.842778°N 122.246111°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | California |
| County | Alameda |
| City | Oakland |
Coordinates: 37°50′34″N 122°14′46″W / 37.84278°N 122.24611°W
Rockridge is a residential neighborhood and commercial district in Oakland, California. Rockridge is generally defined as the area east of Telegraph Avenue, south of the Berkeley city limits, west of the Oakland hills and north of the intersection of Pleasant Valley Avenue/51st Street and Broadway. Rockridge was listed by Money Magazine in 2002 as one of the "best places to live".
It lies at an elevation of 187 feet (57 m). Some residential portions of the neighborhood consist mainly of relatively large homes built between the 1920s and the 1950s, although some homes date even earlier to 1909–1912. Other portions of the neighborhood consist of small bungalows and cottages. In other sections, multi-family apartment buildings add density which supports nearby transit and retail.
Rockridge is named for the outcroppings of rock at the northern end of the long shutter ridge formed by the Hayward Fault which encloses the linear valley in which the Montclair district of Oakland is situated. An example of this rock can be seen at an abandoned quarry adjacent to the Rockridge Shopping Center on Pleasant Valley Road. This quarry was operated well into the 1950s and is now used as a reservoir for the Claremont Country Club. Prior to the construction of the shopping center in the late 1960s, the Broadway side of the shopping center had a used car lot.
Much of the buildout of Rockridge in the 1920s was powered by the desire of middle-class white protestants to avoid 'undesirable' racial groups, powered by racial covenants that prohibited ownership of property by certain ethnic groups. This is reflected in the current racial makeup of the area—it, unlike most of Oakland, is mostly white.
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