Home Remodeling in Alameda County

The original neighborhood of Piedmont was larger than the current municipality of Piedmont, with the Mountain View Cemetery considered full part of the Piedmont neighborhood.

Residents initially sought incorporation in 1907. Two elections were held among the citizens of Piedmont in 1907, both of which narrowly upheld the decision for Piedmont to become a separate city, rather than become a neighborhood within the city of Oakland.

Piedmont has a history of violent racial segregation. In 1925, the city’s first African-American homeowners, Sidney and Irene Dearing, got around the city’s housing covenants by purchasing a home using a white family member as a proxy. They were soon forced to sell it to the city after a mob of 500 Piedmont residents surrounded their home and demanded that they leave. While the Dearings initially refused to leave, bombs were left around their property. Piedmont’s chief of police at the time, Burton Becker, was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan, and could not be counted on to protect them from violent threats against their lives.