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Piedmont Avenue is a street in North Oakland, California. It is also the name of the neighborhood which surrounds the street.

Piedmont Avenue the street stretches diagonally from Broadway to Pleasant Valley (51st Street), and the Piedmont Avenue neighborhood is generally considered to reach laterally from Broadway to Oakland Avenue and the border to the City of Piedmont, which is a separate, land-locked municipality within Oakland.

Piedmont Avenue's namesake commercial strip boasts numerous locally-owned small business, including shops, bars and restaurants, the famous Fenton's ice cream parlor, an art house/independent movie theater, and more.

Piedmont Avenue is a haven for caffeine. Gaylord's Cafe Espresso (formerly known as Uncle Gaylord's), Peet's Coffee have both been in the neighborhood since the 1980's. Starbucks arrived more recently, directly across from Gaylord's. L'Amyx Tea Bar serves several varieties of tea and desserts.

The Piedmont Theater a small movie theater that typically shows avante garde movies. The seating configurations can be odd and the screens smallish, but the theater is fairly popular. The theater is owned by Landmark Theaters.

A local neighborhood association, the Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League (PANIL), is very active in protecting the neighborhood's charm and livability.

Piedmont Avenue Elemtary School, located north of the business district, has grades Kindergarten through 5th. Attendance is roughly 350; average class size about 20. Average test scores are somewhat below average for American schools, but have been approving in recent years. The Catholic Church of Saint Leo the also operates a school on Piedmont Avenue.

There are several landmarks in the area. The center of the Piedmont Avenue commercial strip is a beautiful Julia Morgan-designed 1916 red brick building, the Fred C. Turner Stores, which is between 41st and 40th. Near the north end of Piedmont Avenue and Pleasant Valley is the gorgeous, hillside Mountain View Cemetery, which was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and contains the Julia Morgan designed Chapel of the Chimes. Kaiser Permanente's flagship hospital is located on the south end of the street.

Piedmont Avenue was once the terminus of the Key System's C line. The station building at 41st Street is still there, but a parking lot now occupies the land where the tracks were. AC Transit's 12, 57, 59, and C lines now serve the neighborhood.

External links

• Template:Mapit-US-hoodscale
• Piedmont Avenue Neighborhood Improvement League
• East Bay Neighborhoods: Piedmont Avenue, Oakland - Guide from the San Francisco Chronicle
• Mountain View Cemetery
• Echo Creek

• Oakland, California neighborhoods
• Streets in California