Happy New Year!
I'm behind on uploading new pictures and history and more keep coming in.
New finds:
A 1928 Piedmont book with incredible amounts of local history that has never been told before,
A new book by Piedmont resident and PHS class of 1966 author Lucille Lang Day with insights into the 60s in Piedmont,
Wile searching murals in Piedmont I came across a painter named Hideo Benjamin Noda. He painted a mural at Piedmont High School, later
Noda Hideo (Hideo Benjamin Noda) was born in California in 1908 to a family of Japanese immigrants. His parents came from Kumamoto, and they sent him back there as a child to receive a Japanese education. After graduating from the equivalent of high school in Japan, he returned to California and attended Piedmont High School in Oakland. After Piedmont, he entered the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA—later becoming the San Francisco Art Institute until its closure in 2022), majoring in fine arts. In his late twenties, Noda produced a mural for his high school, entitled School Life (Piedmont High School mural). “Noda apparently became involved in producing the Piedmont High mural as a result of meeting Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who created a large fresco at CSFA. Noda began working on murals, including serving as an assistant for Rivera’s mural at the Rockefeller Center in New York, which was destroyed after nearing completion. While he was pursuing his career in murals, he was persuaded by his high school art teacher to produce the mural at his old school.” [Link]
More postcards, documents, photos (trains, Requa family, homes, etc.
