Neighborhoods in Burlingame and Hillsborough, CA

Easton Addition: The Most Exclusive, Best-Documented Neighborhood

Easton Addition takes its name from Ansel Mills Easton, who subdivided his parents' ranch and developed the area west of El Camino Real in the decades before and after World War I. It's widely described as one of Burlingame's most exclusive neighborhoods -- and, by several local real estate accounts, perhaps its most sought-after -- with a housing stock mixing 1920s bungalows, genuine Craftsman-era homes, and newer construction built in a matching New Craftsman style. Its location west of El Camino Real puts it closer to the Hillsborough border than to the bayfront, and its picturesque, tree-shaded streets reflect Burlingame's broader City of Trees identity at a neighborhood scale.

Burlingame Park: Historic Estates Meet Contemporary Luxury

Burlingame Park is described consistently as an upscale neighborhood blending historic estate-era homes with newer contemporary luxury construction -- a real mix of eras rather than a single architectural period, and another neighborhood positioned closer to the Hillsborough side of the city than the bayfront. Like Easton Addition, its character reflects Burlingame's early-20th-century development pattern, when wealthy Peninsula families built substantial homes on generously sized lots.

Ray Park and Mills Estates: Burlingame's Postwar Neighborhoods

Ray Park and Mills Estates both developed on portions of the former Darius Ogden Mills family estate, which historically extended from Mills Creek to El Portal Creek near present-day Mills Avenue. Ray Park is described as a picturesque, rolling neighborhood in North Burlingame, built out during and immediately after World War II. Mills Estates is a distinctly more modern neighborhood by Burlingame standards -- generally 50-to-60-year-old homes, many single-level ranch-style houses, with a recognizable collection of mid-century modern architecture. Together they represent Burlingame's mid-20th-century growth phase, a different housing era and price point than the older Easton Addition or Burlingame Park districts.

Downtown, Burlingame Village, and the Broadway District

The neighborhoods closest to Burlingame Avenue -- the city's pedestrian-friendly, tree-lined main shopping and dining strip -- and to the separate, quieter Broadway shopping district trade larger lot sizes for walkability, proximity to the Caltrain station, and easy access to downtown's restaurants and independent retail. This is the part of Burlingame most directly shaped by the city's civic and commercial identity rather than by any single historic estate subdivision, and it's covered in more depth on this site's Dining and Things to Do pages.

The Bayfront: A District of Hotels and Offices, Not Homes

The Airport Boulevard and Old Bayshore Highway corridor along Burlingame's own roughly 2.5 miles of Bay frontage is functionally a separate district from Burlingame's residential neighborhoods -- hotels, office campuses (including Meta's Reality Labs facility at Burlingame Point), and public parkland (Bayside Park, Anza Lagoon), rather than a residential neighborhood in its own right. This page did not find confirmed evidence of a meaningful residential population living directly within this bayfront corridor, covered in more depth on the Waterfront vs. Non-Waterfront page.

Hillsborough: Split by School Zone and Terrain, Not by Water

Hillsborough's internal geography runs along different lines entirely than Burlingame's, since there's no waterfront to organize around. The town splits roughly into a hillier, more secluded western half (closer to Interstate 280, with steeper terrain and larger, more private estate lots) and a flatter, more accessible eastern half closer to the Burlingame and San Mateo borders. Its three elementary school zones -- North Hillsborough Elementary (opened 1950), South Hillsborough Elementary, and West Hillsborough Elementary (opened 1954) -- and single middle school, Crocker Middle School (opened 1959, a 2026 California Distinguished School and one of only three middle schools nationally to have received four National Blue Ribbon awards), define much of how residents describe different parts of town, alongside named historic estate districts. Lower North Hillsborough is cited by at least one local real estate source as the town's top-ranked neighborhood by certain listing-activity measures; Country Club Manor, once home to a number of Hillsborough's original grand estates, was itself subdivided in the 1950s and today sits at a different, somewhat more accessible price point than the town's still-intact largest estates.

The town's oldest and most architecturally significant properties -- the Carolands chateau, Uplands, La Dolphine, and others commissioned between 1910 and 1920 by San Francisco's elite -- are scattered across both halves of town rather than concentrated in a single named subdivision, a real difference from Burlingame's more legible, subdivision-by-subdivision neighborhood structure.

What This Page Does Not Know

This page does not have confirmed current median price data broken out by individual Burlingame neighborhood, confirmed boundary maps for Burlingame's or Hillsborough's named districts beyond the general descriptions cited, or a confirmed comprehensive list of every named subdivision in either town. Get current neighborhood-specific market data and boundary details from a local buyer's agent before narrowing a search to a specific district.