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The area immediately north of the University campus, bounded by Hearst Avenue on the south, Cedar Street on the north, Spruce Street on the west, and Highland Place on the east was subdivided in the late 1880s by a man named Daley, who called his subdivision Daley's Scenic Park.  

Frank M. Wilson purchased the subdivision in the 1890s built his large shingled home on one of the most prominent lots. It is his house in the background of the post card pictured here. It was located at the top of Scenic Avenue where the Graduate Theological Union Library now stands. 

In1904 the neighborhood was described by the San Francisco Chronicle: "Wander if you will on the Berkeley slopes north of the University of California campus to have your faith in human kind renewed. Wander up Ridge Road until you come to the shingle and clinker brick houses set in the midst of gardens, a lesson in peaceful, harmonious, artistic and natural living, an architectural picture rarely attained, [and where] 90% of the houses are built in brown shingle."  

A rustic natural style was advocated by the neighborhood Hillside Club as a means of retaining the natural beauty of the hills. Some of the houses noted in the 1904 article were Ernest Coxhead's Beta Theta Pi House (1893), now the School of Public Policy, at Hearst and Le Roy, and Bernard Maybeck's first commission in Berkeley, for Charles Keeler, on Highland Place (1895).  

It was not until around 1909 that the streets were paved in Daley Scenic Park and the paving of the streets also included a comprehensive plan for sidewalks, divided streets, retaining walls, paths, staircases and the planting of bushes and flowers. To soften the rigidity of the grid pattern some property owners donated land for rounded corners.  

The double-curving staircase featured on the post card was removed in the 1960s, but other staircases still exist in the area. The largest and most complex are the steps and divided road at La Loma, Virginia, and La Vereda streets. Other portions of this project include the divided roadway on Le Conte between La Loma and Le Roy, the divided curved roadway and steps on La Loma at Hilgard, the Le Roy Steps, the divided roadway on Hearst Avenue between Scenic and Euclid, and the retaining wall and stairs on Arch Street at the crest of the hill. They are made of thickly textured gray concrete wall surfaces capped with smooth concrete of the same natural gray color. The simplicity of the walls and balustrades is consistent with the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Hillside Club.  

Susan Cerny is author of “Berkeley Landmarks” and writes this in conjunction with the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.