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Belvedere. What a lush, languid word it is, spoken aloud. Easily the most evocative place name in the North Bay and maybe the Western Hemisphere, so much more romantic, mythical even, than perfunctory "Ross" or merely serviceable "Mill Valley," a name worthy of Arthurian legend or a strolling Florentine minstrel. Italian, indeed, in meaning, the municipal signpost translates into the English as "beautiful view," and like the citadel in Firenze and the palazzetto in Rome that share its moniker, Marin's Belvedere lives up to its lovely name.

It commands its dazzling vistas by the happy expedient of being situated on hilly waterfront terrain overlooking the profile of Mt. Tamalpais, the spires of San Francisco, regularly scheduled sunsets behind the Golden Gate Bridge and one of the most beautiful natural harbors in the world. Belvedere juts southwestward into Richardson Bay from the much larger Tiburon peninsula, from which it is almost entirely separated by a lagoon (hence the city's "island" designation).

Its shape vaguely resembles those of Florida and Italy and Baja California, three aquatic playgrounds of at least equal celebrity, while its city limits extend about a third of a mile offshore, sharing tidal currents and microclimates with Angel Island, the Sausalito waterfront and other handsome landmarks. Another "island," Corinthian, edges into the water east of Belvedere proper, forming a cove ideal for yachting.

Known in its earliest days as "The Pasture of Shark Point" ("Tiburon" is Spanish for shark), for 30 years the whole mile-by-half-mile island was the home of one Israel Kashow. He settled here in 1855, raising Australian sheep and Texas cattle, tending an orchard and an aviary of exotic birds and establishing a codfishery where 700 tons of seafood was cured each year by 100 Chinese workers.

Kashow lost ownership of the island to attorney James C. Bolton in 1868, who won the real estate on behalf of the heirs of John Reed, the Irish wayfarer who had been granted the enormous Corte Madera del Presidio rancho from the Mexican government 30 years earlier. Bolton's fee: half of the land in question. Kashow, however, refused to leave for 16 years, despite the efforts of President Andrew Johnson, who claimed Belvedere for the military in 1867, and Bolton's successor, Thomas B. Valentine, who brought his case all the way to Washington and in the process won 7,845 acres of Marin's choicest real estate, gloriously undeveloped.

Valentine gave the island its evocative name and helped create the Belvedere Land Company in 1890. M.M. O'Shaughnessy, the engineer who had devised Mill Valley's unique footpath-and-staircase setting, laid out the new town with hill-hugging roads, stone walls and country lanes; then the slopes were terraced and subdivided, 3,500 trees were planted and the likes of Willis Polk, Julia Morgan and Golden Gate Park landscape architect John McLaren designed a glorious mishmash of Mission Revival mansions, Norman manor houses, Queen Anne gingerbread, Mediterranean villas and the occasional pagoda for wealthy San Franciscans in search of country living. (One Classical Revival estate was even shipped by barge from Pacific Heights to West Shore Road.)

Lacking any easily accessible cultural opportunities (Tiburon's raucous Main Street, regularly looted and pillaged by crews of thirsty codfishermen fresh from several months in the Arctic, wasn't exactly Belvedere's cup of tea), concerts, recitals and art exhibits were presented in private homes. One such featured the great Ignace Paderewski performing on the estate's 3,000-pipe Aeolian organ. (The organ now entrances moviegoers at the Paramount Theater in Oakland.) Otherwise neighbors would call on one another for evenings of conversation, parlor games, poetry, musicales, alfresco evening picnics, amateur theatricals and elaborately costumed revels.

Mansion-dwelling nabobs weren't the only inhabitants of this sceptered isle. Arks—-flat-bottomed houseboats built to settle comfortably on marshland when the tide was out—-were an attractive local presence for decades. Persian rugs, pipe organs, potted palms and skylights decorated these often elaborate dwellings. (One beautifully preserved and transplanted example can be seen at 12 Laurel Ave.)

The boats' exact location was determined by the season. Back then the cove and the lagoon were linked by a narrow channel spanned by a drawbridge (today's Beach Road). The arks would winter in the sheltered lagoon, and come spring the drawbridge would be raised and a parade of arks would make its way to the salt-sprayed freedom of the cove (the apocryphal forebear of Opening Day on the Bay). In the autumn, the process was reversed. In between there was the quasi-annual, nationally famous Night in Venice extravaganza, when the arks, yachts, barges and canoes anchored in the cove were dazzlingly illuminated to the music of the Third U.S. Artillery Band, fireworks exploded over the water and a 10th century Venetian invocation was crooned by a chorus of 30.

The city of Belvedere was officially incorporated in 1896. By 1900 the island boasted 50 houses and one hotel, the Belvedere, a splendid 50-room expanse of tennis courts, panoramic verandas and a beach with imported sand (Belvedere's natural coastline is pebbly, not sandy). There was even a nine-hole golf course in the city's uncharted northern reaches. Then Corinthian Island was parceled and developed. Like Belvedere Island, in the pre-bayfill days it was only accessible via sandspit, and then only at low tide.

In 1888 the mariners of the Corinthian Yacht Club had chosen its southern tip as their anchorage and gave the island its name into the bargain. (The club's current facility, handsome indeed, dates back to 1912.) Half of the island is in Belvedere, half in Tiburon, and for several years homeowners straddling the city limit paid two (presumably hefty) tax bills.

Taxes were Belvedereans' primary concession to the Great Depression. With a population made up of 456 Republicans and one Democrat (future state appellate court justice Richard M. Sims), the townspeople were not entirely enchanted by President Roosevelt's tax-driven poverty-relief programs, although the tiny city library did boast its own WPA mural, and a WPA-funded nursery school opened next door.

In 1939 the Union Fish Company out on the island's west side closed down. For several decades, the two plants—-Kashow's and the Union—-made Belvedere, by God, the cod-processing capital of the Pacific Coast. Now the Union was converted into artists' lofts, giving the island a certain bohemian charm.

But the biggest change to befall Belvedere in these years was the development of its lagoon. Several years earlier it had been used as a dumping ground for dredging operations in the cove and construction on Tiburon Boulevard. (One aspect of all this civic improvement was the leveling of Belvedere's enormous Miwok shellmound, skeletons and all.) Eventually this now brackish, mosquito-ridden swamp was dredged, peninsulas to the mainland were created to replace the Beach Road and San Rafael Avenue bridges, a conduit was dug to allow an influx of Richardson Bay water and 243 homes and 30 duplexes were built to create a new marina community. There were now flatlanders in low-slung, sheet-glass examples of postwar architecture sharing the island with the old be-castled hill-dwellers.

As the island's population nearly tripled in the postwar years, the locals struck an early blow in the great environmental-protection battles to come. Developers' plans to convert 879 acres of Richardson Bay tideland into a commercial harbor and housing development were averted when the citizenry purchased and otherwise acquired the land and leased it at a dollar per year to the National Audubon Society.

In the same spirit, special zoning ordinances were passed to preserve vistas, wildlife and the island's special character. Nevertheless, many a mega-mansion managed to get itself built in the affluent '80s and up until today. (A nominal balance was struck with the construction of 11 affordable housing units in 1989.)

Today's Belvedere is as serene as it's been since Israel Kashow was banished from paradise 123 years ago. Even more so. The Belvedere Hotel was supplanted by the sedate San Francisco Yacht Club in 1937. The island's two thriving codfisheries are less than a memory. Beach Road's produce vendor, iceman and blacksmith have departed; there are no restaurants or shops to be patronized, although there are two churches, a city hall, a nursery school, a beautiful community playground and several real estate agents. (The citizenry make more money per capita than the residents of any other community in the United States with a population of over a thousand, and how else are you going to afford a house in the low eight figures?) What's eternal are the wooded hills, the winding streets, the lush gardens, the pocket-sized parks, the positively Neapolitan ambiance. Nice views, too.

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