Longfellow, Oakland, California - Geography and Education

Geography and Education

The area that is today known as the Longfellow was originally considered part of the Temescal district. Through the late 1800s, the Temescal encompassed the area north of 36th Street to the Berkeley border and from the Emeryville border at the west to Broadway at the east. The introduction of the Grove-Shafter Freeway in the 1960s physically divided the neighborhood resulting in a splintering of the historical Temescal district into smaller neighborhoods: Santa Fe (northwest quadrant), Longfellow (southwest), Temescal (southeast) and lower Rockridge (northeast).

Evidence of the roots of the name Temescal remain in the Longfellow neighborhood. Temescal Community Garden, the first community garden in Oakland, was established on 47th Street in 1984 and falls within Longfellow’s borders. Temescal Creek, now culverted, runs beneath the rear property line of the garden and ostensively acts as the physical geography that defines the northern edge of the Longfellow neighborhood.

The name Longfellow was introduced to the neighborhood with the opening of the Longfellow Elementary School on Lusk Street between 39th and Apgar streets. It is assumed that the school is named after the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1982, Nancy Reagan visited the school as part of a national tour to warn children about the dangers of illegal drug use. When one fourth-grader at the school asked Mrs. Reagan what she should do if approached by someone offering drugs, Reagan responded: "Just say no" and thus the moniker for the national campaign was born. The Longfellow Elementary School closed in 2004, and the property is now used by the Oakland Military Institute, a college preparatory school that relocated to the site in 2007.

Other schools in the neighborhood include North Oakland Community Charter School (NOCCS) and St Martin De Porres Catholic School. The Oakland Public School that serves the Longfellow, Santa Fe Elementary, will close by summer of 2012.