Mills College, Oakland, CA

The Mills College area is the 135-acre campus in the East Oakland foothills at 5000 MacArthur, a green, self-contained world that feels apart from the flats around it. Founded as a women's seminary and relocated to Oakland in 1871, it became the second women's college west of the Rockies and merged into Northeastern University in 2022. Julia Morgan designed six of its buildings, including El Campanil, often cited as the first freestanding bell tower on a U.S. campus, and the eucalyptus groves planted in the 1870s still define the grounds. This is institutional and parklike rather than residential. Inside the boundary, winding drives, lawns, a small lake, and historic architecture set the tone, and the campus's open space gives the area a quiet, wooded feel. Everyday retail sits outside the gates on MacArthur and Foothill, and Seminary Avenue, which borders the campus, is itself named for the college, having once been the route from the bayshore up to the school. As a place to know rather than to live in, the Mills campus is a leafy, historic anchor in a part of Oakland not otherwise known for green space. Its curb appeal is the institutional-and-landscaped kind, and its open grounds and walkable paths give it a calmer, more sheltered character than the surrounding flatland blocks.