The Northside Neighborhood

"Northside San Jose is the old town. It is nostalgic with turn-of-the-century charm, stained glass leaded windows in Victorian homes, flowered front yards, 50-year-old shade trees, and the stable fierce pride of established foreign-born families. Its blocks are anchored by Italian, Chinese, Japanese and Filipino ancestry, with a later influx of Mexican, Latin and Negro residents. It is like a little United States.

"The Northside is San Jose's most conveniently located district. . . . Ringed by expressway and freeway, adjacent to Civic Center and downtown, resistant to the sterile middle class monotony of suburbia tracts, and rampant with 'we'll do it ourselves' independence, the Northside is re-establishing its earlier prestige.

"One desiring the challenge of refurbishing the baroque gingerbread trimmed two story home massed with roses, pines and palms, needn't hustle off to Los Gatos. It's all here awaiting in Northside - and more reasonable too."

San Jose News, May 3, 1966.

"I wouldn't live anywhere else."
--Mae Ferraro, as told to San Jose Mercury News, July 18, 2002


Northside People

The Northside neighborhood, in close proximity to downtown San Jose, is and always has been, among the city's most diverse. "Northside is as well integrated as a Coca Cola commercial and nearly as harmonious," crowed a 1979 San Jose Magazine article. "It is the most cosmopolitan neighborhood in San Jose," the old San Jose Mercury reported in 1966. The area was once virtually all Italian, but as the Italians spread throughout the Valley, black, Filipino, Mexican, and later Vietnamese families moved in.

Today, almost two-thirds of Northsiders are of Hispanic ancestry. Eighteen percent of the population is Asian-, and 3.5 percent African-American. By comparison, San Jose as a whole has a population which is only 31 percent Hispanic. The percentage of Asian- and African-Americans is slightly higher city-wide than in our neighborhood.

The average Northsider is 33 and a half years old, marginally older than the city-side average of 32.8. The average Northsider is slightly more likely to be male than female, and is more likely to be single than married.

More than half of Northsiders 25 years or older have graduated high school, but only 12 percent have college degrees. This compares disfavorably with San Jose as whole, where more than 25 percent have attained at least a four-year bachelor's degree. And in the entire metropolitan area, which OED characterizes as "one of the most highly educated" in the country, 33 percent have college degrees.

The average household income in the Northside was $46,044 in 1998, only two-thirds the city-wide average of $69,135. The median Northside household income (meaning that half the households earn more and half less) was $40,798, compared with $58,476 for all of San Jose.

In 1998, less than five percent of Northside households had incomes exceeding $100,000, while more than 30 percent have incomes under $25,000. Income was more equitably distributed city-wide, with about 20 percent of all households with incomes under $35,000 and about 20 percent with incomes over $100,000.

Forty percent of the Northside workforce is considered white collar, including technical and administrative support and sales. An almost equal number, 39 percent, are employed in blue collar jobs, such as manufacturing, repair work, transportation or labor. The remaining workforce consists of service employees.


Northside Streets

"I'd say individuality of houses and gardens, and a go-with-what-you've got attitude, makes this neighborhood a San Jose on Foot winner."
-- Joe Rodriguez, San Jose Mercury News, July 18, 2002

"At the turn of the 19^th century, San Jose was a very vibrant community, busy growing fruits and vegetables, packing them and loading them onto railroad cars and wagons, cutting, planing and milling thousands of board feet of the redwoods growing in the surrounding hills and all the way to the coast of Santa Cruz. Many of the workers lived in boarding houses, if they were not married, and usually wished to purchase a house if they did marry. New land was necessary for the new houses, and real estate agents were extremely happy to oblige.

"One such was the Cook and Brandon subdivision of county land, platted out in 1894, again in 1898, a third time in 1902, and a final time in 1904, when some of it became known as the Hancock Tract. The City of San Jose had ended at 11th Street and St. James Streets, with some city streets as far north as Taylor. The Cook and Brandon subdivision ranged from Taylor on the north, Coyote Creek to the east, St. James on the south and 11th Street to the west.

"The streets were quite wide in the 1894 version. Haven't you wondered why some streets are wide [in our neighborhood], while others are narrow? The wide streets are the locations of the original platted streets. Twelfth Street, 1894 version, is now 13th, or the Old Oakland-San Jose Road. 1993's 15th Street is 1894's 13th Street. Twenty-first Street today was 16th Street.


"In 1898, the land was subdivided and platted again, and each block was split down the middle. Originally, the split was to be an alley, a narrow service road to the backs of homes. Most of the Cook and Brandon subdivision had been pasturage before, with a few small gardens tended by people who lived elsewhere. Julian Street had a horse-drawn rail line that turned around at Coyote Creek and went back.

"Some of the land of this subdivision had been sold, but much had not in 1898. In 1902, the city decided to enlarge the alleys to make them streets, and the width of the new blocks became the same as the blocks between 1st and 11th, east of 11th Street. St. James was known as Lick Lane. Nineteenth was known as Clay Street, 20th as Carey Avenue north of Alum Rock (as Santa Clara was called). Twenty-first Street was Sullivan north of Alum Rock, Jones Street to the south. Twenty-second did not go north of Alum Rock; it was known as Monroe Street to the south."

- Larry Jean, N. 20th Street resident, Northside Newsletter, Winter 1994

Northside Homes