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In a neighborhood synonymous with Mountain View's earliest history, change is easy to see.

Once an enclave of cottage houses, today Castro City features a growing number of newly built, narrow, two-story homes squeezed onto tiny lots in the six-square-block area located across the street from Rengstorff Park.

"It's been a plus because the houses that were coming down were really, really old and in need of some serious reconditioning," said Chris Burley, 33, who moved to the area in 2000. "I think it's one of the last neighborhoods where you can get a house under $800,000 or $900,000."

Yet the upgrading of residences carries a different price — greater density and a threat to premium street-parking outside older houses stuck with one-car garages.

"Depending on what time you walk through the neighborhood, before 8 or after 5, our streets are lined with cars," said Burley, who works from home for a data-processing firm.

The area's namesake is Mariano Castro, whose Spanish rancho included most of the land that Mountain View occupies.

The Castro mansion stood across the street in what is now Rengstorff Park, and the neighborhood's bygone train stop was called Castro Station. Castro family members rode free on Southern Pacific trains that otherwise breezed past the station by using secret hand signals to flag down a ride, according to a 1953 Palo Alto Times article.

Two years after the 1906 quake, a land speculator divided up the area with the hope of turning it into a country suburb for Stanford professors and San Francisco vacationers, using such street names as University and Fair Oaks avenues.

Instead, real estate men moved cannery shacks from Campbell over to Castro City, and Latino fruit pickers and other laborers settled in the bargain neighborhood, where homes sold in 1941 for $150, according to the Times article.

Surrounded by farms, the unincorporated nook developed its own civic identity and eventually was annexed to Mountain View.

"Our house was more like somebody had built a tent cabin more than a real house," said Jim Early, 49, a contractor who moved in the late 1980s to College Avenue in Castro City. "It was as-is because it was one of the original constructions."

He said several of the houses there served as duck- and pheasant-hunting lodges for train-borne San Franciscans but that his remodeling skills turned his property into a real residence for himself, his wife and the four children they raised there.

"I enjoy the neighborhood for the compactness of it," Early said. "There's still some form of community that you don't find in a lot of neighborhoods these days. We still all know one another. Our houses get watched over."

"It's a real cool, eclectic neighborhood," said Burley, who rented a house on University Avenue before making an offer on it. "It is really ethnically diverse. It is primarily Hispanic and Asian."

Kalwant Sandhu, 51, an entrepreneur from Singapore, moved to the area in 2002 and lives on College Street with his wife, Pamela, and three sons.

"My house is sometimes like a community center for the area. Kids come by to play," said Sandhu, who coaches youth soccer in Mountain View and is chairman of the city's human relations commission. "It's a great neighborhood."


FACTS


CHILDCARE AND PRESCHOOLS: Oak Tree Nursery School, 2100 University Ave.; Wonder World, 2015 Latham St. (nearby)

FIRE STATION: No. 3, 301 N. Rengstorff Ave.

PARKS: Castro Park, Toft Avenue at Latham Street; Rengstorff Park and pool, Rengstorff Avenue at Crisanto Avenue

POST OFFICE: Mountain View, 211 Hope St.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Mountain View Whisman School District — Mariano Castro Elementary School, Graham Middle School; Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District — Los Altos High School

SHOPPING: Mi Pueblo Food Center, 40 S. Rengstorff Ave. at Leland Avenue; Walgreens, 112 N. Rengstorff Ave. at Central Expressway

MEDIAN 2008 HOME PRICE: $685,000 ($530,000-$839,999)

HOMES SOLD: 2

— Todd R. Brown