Westbrae is a neighborhood in the northern part of

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

in the

East Bay The East Bay is the eastern region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes cities along the eastern shores of the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay. The region has grown to include inland communities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties ...

section of the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

. Westbrae is "centered" on the intersection of Santa Fe Avenue and Gilman Street, although the main extent is east, south and west of this intersection, with the Albany city limit only a short distance north. It lies at an elevation of 79 feet (24 m). The neighborhood is mainly residential, with a small commercial section along Gilman from Santa Fe to Tevlin Street. In the past, businesses consisted of liquor and grocery stores but now are small restaurants, a natural food store, bakeries, and a nursery. The elevated tracks of the

BART Bart is a masculine given name, usually a diminutive of Bartholomew, sometimes of Barton, Bartolomeo, etc. Bart is a Dutch and Ashkenazi Jewish surname, and derives from the name ''Bartholomäus'', a German form of the biblical name ''Bartho ...

Richmond line cut diagonally across Westbrae, crossing over Gilman in the commercial section. There is a church formerly named the Westbrae Bible Church, now th
Evangel Bible Church of Berkeley
located nearby on the corner of Hopkins and Ordway about three blocks from the center of the Westbrae neighborhood. The current, most notable businesses are th
Berkeley Natural Grocery Company
th
Westbrae Biergarten
an
Westbrae Nursery
Until about 1979, the tracks of the

Santa Fe railroad The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and ...

ran beside where the BART elevated and underground lines are today. Today, the Ohlone Greenway, a bicycle and pedestrian path, follows the old right-of-way. Paralleling the Santa Fe tracks to the east were the tracks of the Key System's G-Westbrae line. The "G" terminated at a small station just short of the city limits at

Codornices Creek Codornices Creek (sometimes spelled and/or pronounced "Cordonices"), long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 15, 2011 is one of the principal creeks which runs out o ...

. The origin of Westbrae is directly connected to the Key System. The Key System was part of a larger enterprise which included real estate, the Realty Syndicate. The name "Westbrae" was given by the Key developers and included tracts north of Codornices Creek in Albany. A street through the heart of this area was, and remains, "Key Route Boulevard". There were future plans to extend the G-Westbrae line northward to serve the development area, but this never happened. The "G" remained a trolley shuttle between the terminal near Gilman and Santa Fe, connecting with the H transbay line at Sacramento Street and University Avenue instead of being extended and transformed into a full-fledged transbay line of its own. AC Transit operates a Transbay express bus line along Key Route designated G, and also an H line to this day; the designations are inherited from the Key System lines.

References

* Neighborhoods in Berkeley, California Streetcar suburbs {{AlamedaCountyCA-geo-stub