Northside - City of Riverside

Most of the area is situated on the nearly flat ground of a high plateau that steeply
grades to a small post-WWII neighborhood just below. The late 1950s neighborhood
is made up of two streets that form a horseshoe – Carthage Street and Ogden Way,
accessing 33 homes with common setbacks of approximately 20-25 feet. Streetscape
improvements here include sidewalks and wide parkways with streetlights
consisting of slim round steel poles with Town and Country style post top
luminaries, which were installed in the early 1970s during a City streetlight
improvement project (City of Riverside 1995:18). Obsolete mercury vapor lamps
were some of the last in the city to be converted (2000) to efficient, high pressure
sodium. It appears that a street tree scheme was included in the original
development as several mature oak trees are extant in the parkway, particularly on
Ogden Way.
The neighborhood on higher ground is about twice as large. It was first developed
by George D. Carleton, “Riverside’s raisin man,” with a Gothic Revival style home
amid a 20-acre Semi-Tropic Nursery (1870s) of 25,000 small orange and lemon trees
of many varieties and later associated with the Hendry family (1882-1911), for whom
Spruce Street was originally named. While its range of period of development is
comparable with the Fairmount Heights area across Market Street with which it was
subdivided as the Overlook Ridge Tract in 1903, most residences here were
constructed between 1911 and 1959. The overall streetscape in this neighborhood is
disjointed with absent or varied amenities. Lighting consists of few mast arm
streetlights mounted on utility poles, and setbacks are fairly consistent at 20-30 feet,
but there are a number of exceptions, particularly around the curve of Northbend
Street, where limited space due to topographical constraints has shortened setbacks
considerably. Wilshire Street is lined with mature palm trees, and sidewalks and a
narrow parkway are extant on a portion of Spruce Street; the west end of Spruce
Street lacks even curbs and gutters.
These two neighborhoods are separated by topography and period of development,
but the whole seems cut-off from other residential development by land use as it is
bordered by main arterials; commercial, industrial, and manufacturing property;
parkland; and vacant land that is being developed for professional office use.
Southeast Quadrant
The Southeast Quadrant is bounded by First Street to the south, the west side of
Orange Street to the west, Mulberry Street/State Route 91 (SR-91) to the east, and
SR-60 to the north. This area represents the largest geographic area within the
survey area and includes Audubon Place, First Street, Hiawatha Place, Hewitt Street,
Holding Street, Lemon Street, Lime Street, Mulberry Street, Orange Street, Poplar
Street, Russell Street and Spruce Street (Figure 9).
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