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	Photo: by Kristen Loken

As towering palm trees sway gently in the breeze, the rustling sound evokes a timeless quality. Susan Johnson steps out from her bungalow home onto the sunny back porch to tend to her lush garden. A throwback to an era of simpler days, life on Burbank Street is a soothing breath of fresh air, and the history of this charming block and its kind inhabitants makes it even more alluring.
    In 1909, a development project called Bay Park Tract introduced a new street called Burbank-named in honor of famed California horticulturist Luther Burbank. Soon thereafter, 40 Mexican palms, then a mere four feet tall compared to their 50-plus feet today, were planted up and down both sides of the block. In 1912, three men-the Strang Brothers-bought several lots on the new street. They were the design/construction team behind the unique bungalow-style abodes, which are known for their prominent front porches. In 1913, the Evening Times-Star reported that "V.N. Strang is an artist in his vocation, and his plans combine attractive exteriors, artistic, comfortable and practical interiors. This combination has served to attract and hold purchasers who want the best and most useful in a home."
    Indeed, the residents of Burbank Street today would be the first to agree that these are homes "to hold."
 
  "It had good bones," says Bill Hood of his house when he first saw it seven years ago. "I found it by pure chance. I was driving around San Francisco, Berkeley, looking at homes. I didn't even know Alameda very well. I just happened to see the 'For Sale by Owner' sign. The owners were out front, I convinced them to let me take a look, and I saw the potential."
    His then-to-be wife, Susan Johnson, visited the new home on their first date. "He'd just moved in and there was construction stuff everywhere, but the place just felt wonderful," she says. "He had the louvered windows open, and there was a nice breeze moving through the rooms. It felt like a beach house." The house actually was on waterfront property before the landfill of 1956. "There's a historic beauty vibe about the area," says Hood.
    Across the street, Sally and Peter Tonningsen share the same sentiment. Their house used to be a brothel, they proudly reveal. When the couple bought the two-story bungalow eight years ago, they discovered that it had a spirits license, which was revoked in the early 1930s. Rumor has it that the sycamore trees in front of the home-the only two on the block-indicated that visitors had come to the right place. "The johns were told to stop at the gnarly trees," Sally Tonningsen explains.
    While some made whoopee, others made peanut butter. Back in 1914, a man named Joseph Rosefield began making the yummy concoction in the garage behind his Burbank Street house. A year later he and his sons invented an improved manufacturing process and launched a little product by the name of Skippy.
    Two homes down from the "Skippy House," Pam Galtelli still lives in the same house she grew up in. "I'm kind of the reigning matriarch," laughs the 51-year-old. "My house is probably one of the most intact. I've still got the old yellow Formica in the kitchen that was there when I was a kid."
    A few years ago during a Fourth of July block party, Galtelli invited a few neighbors in to see her practically unchanged bungalow. "We started talking about how it would be so great if we could just go through every house on the block. Then we turned around and went down to their house. We thought 'Wow, wouldn't it be cool if we could just do this on a regular basis?'"  This sparked what is known today as the Open House Program, thanks to the guiding force of Peter and Sally Tonningsen. For the past five years, once a month the residents of Burbank Street have been gathering at varying neighbors' homes for appetizers, wine and conversation. Stories flow like small-town gossip here.
    "We like that," Peter Tonningsen says. "It's like walking back in time 50 years: the neighborliness, the slow pace, people hanging out, sharing stories, getting a little tipsy." He pauses. "I have nothing in common with most of my neighbors, but it's so great we can work around that and we actually care about each other and watch each others' backs and hang out."
    Sally Tonningsen concurs. "The day we moved in, I had a U-Haul, and as I was unloading it, some neighbors I'd never met just showed up with finger food and wine. The camaraderie is wonderful. And the unity of the houses makes it easier to become a community."
    "Burbank is the single-most spectacular concentration of bungalows in Alameda," says architectural historian Woody Minor, author of the Burbank-Portola Heritage Area booklet. A few years ago, he was informed about the Open House Program. "There is a unique relationship of neighbors here," he says. "I feel proud that my booklet might have encouraged that. I'm thrilled to be the honorary member of such a great neighborhood."
    Charles Kasdorf, 83, a Burbank Street homeowner for 55 years, counters: "It wasn't always like that. When my kids were young, they had friends up and down the street, but beyond that there just didn't seem to be much of a relationship with the neighbors. That's changed now.
    "A few years back we even started decorating the palm trees for Christmas. We took the palm fronds that blow off the trees and cut off the bottoms of them and turned them upside down and nailed them to the tree and they looked like antlers. We put a little red ball at the bottom and it looked like a red-nosed reindeer," he says.
    Burbank Street recalls that Hollywood classic film, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, in which the characters come to find that there is treasure to be found under the enormous palm trees.