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Christmas lights on East Oakland’s Picardy Drive evoke storybook holiday spiritAs twilight falls in East Oakland, the storybook homes along Picardy Drive come alive with light.

East Oakland’s Picardy Drive holiday light show shines through the pandemicThe traditional holiday string of lights connecting some of the street’s storybook homes to one another has taken on a special meaning.

For almost 80 years, this unique East Oakland community has come together and put on a 5-block light show for the holidays unlike any in the Bay Area. — San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 14, 2008)

80-year holiday tradition on display in OaklandThe hundred or so residents of Picardy Drive in East Oakland fought back the gloom...

It wasn't the Christmas decorations on all the little gingerbread houses of Picardy Drive in East Oakland that inspired M.T. Silvia to make a documentary film. — San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 22, 2002)

Night Lights / There's a passion for Christmas on Oakland's Picardy Drive[...] there are the people who want to let kids play on the grassy divider and those who...

If Walter W. Dixon visited Picardy Drive in East Oakland today, 80 years after designing it, he'd be a happy man. The "modest mansions" that he and his partner, builder R.C. Hillen, offered for sale remain just that. Half- timbered and bedecked with dovecotes, fake-thatch roofs, birdhouses and archways, the houses are all different inside, and their owners love them. — San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 20, 2005)

SIGNATURE STYLE / Modest mansions / Walter W. Dixon's Storybook homes offered escape during stressful times