United States · California · Oakland
Elmhurst, Oakland — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Elmhurst is a residential neighborhood at the southernmost edge of Oakland, a separate town until 1909 and reckoned part of East Oakland since.
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Where to stay in Elmhurst
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Beds are an Oakland question here. Elmhurst is housing rather than hotel ground, so the practical choice runs between a room in the wider city and a base out in East Oakland, from which the southern streets are a short drive. Rooms cluster north.
Anyone whose reason for coming is Elmhurst itself will book in Oakland and travel down, which has been the shape of things since the annexation of 1909.
Few places to stay in Elmhurst — most visitors book in Oakland nearby.
About Elmhurst
What are the main landmarks in Elmhurst?
Oakland's monument list skips over Elmhurst. Streets of houses run south from the older core of Oakland, and the neighborhood's interest sits in that ordinary fabric rather than in any single building a guide would name. That is the East Oakland pattern too.
Visitors after set-piece California sights look to the rest of the city, while Elmhurst keeps the plainer record of a town annexed in 1909 and absorbed into a larger street grid.
What is the history of Elmhurst?
Elmhurst began as its own town. Unincorporated and separate from the city that surrounds it, the settlement kept its own name and its own affairs until Oakland annexed it in 1909, folding the southern farms and streets into the larger municipality. California city limits moved often in those decades.
What survived the annexation was the name, which still marks the southernmost part of Oakland and, in the broader shorthand of the city, sits inside East Oakland.
Where is Elmhurst?
Low ground, and flat. Elmhurst holds the southernmost part of Oakland at 39 feet, with East Oakland reaching north from its streets.
Common questions
What is the best area to stay in Elmhurst?
Oakland: travellers wanting the room supply of Oakland with Elmhurst a drive south.
More areas in Oakland
Updated September 2026