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Indian Rock—for strangers to North Berkeley—is an ancient volcanic outcropping in a small city park just above Marin Circle. Though modest in height on the access road side, its flattish top affords splendid panoramic views over a picturesque wooded neighborhood to the Golden Gate, the “City by the Bay,” Angel Island, and Mt. Tamalpais. The Peninsula Hills stretch away to the far left, the grand terrain of Marin to the far right. 

Hardly more than a mile from the UC campus, this singular “view platform” can be reached by Indian Rock Road (tricky: study the map), or on foot up Indian Rock Path, which begins at the top of Solano Avenue. 

As a destination, it is eminently worth the effort. The little public park continues across the street, offering on its northeasterly side shady lawns instead of dramatic views, while up the road at the next corner, Mortar Rock, also a public park, is its own miniature landscape of boulders, writhing trees and grassy hollows—a gorgeous natural garden rather than a viewpoint. 

For generations, loners, lovers and families have made their secular pilgrimage to the rock-hewn view-bench at the top to contemplate the sunset, or, on some crisp February morning, to enjoy the toy city of towers across the water. Others have made as their goal conquest of the rock itself, which has long been a favorite training ground for climbers. Its almost sheer northwesterly side offers a variety of slopes and surfaces ideal for “bouldering”—the rock-climber’s term for climbing without equipment. 

When I was inspired in 1981 to try capturing this locally famous panorama in drawings, I decided to work by direct observation, and not use a camera. The drawing would be strictly informational, not a “work of art,” and not—very important—on expensive paper. Starting with a medium-sized sketchbook sheet, I drew at first, as we mostly tend to do, what fell within my natural angle of vision, but soon found—faced with such a daunting subject—that I needed to expand the original paper, and, in effect, turn myself into a wide angle lens. 

It soon became apparent that the celebrated sunset view centered on the Golden Gate didn’t make it as a balanced composition. Instead, I focused on Albany Hill, the dramatic foreground trees, and the handsome houses in between. A big dark pine on my left-hand edge, and the shaggy windblown redwood on my right, making a squarish format. Later, after much scrambling up and down the precarious stone-cut steps, I decided to include the “view backs” of San Mateo Road to create a wider, more panoramic picture that would promote the sculptural mass of backyard trees into the fulcrum of the whole awkward-yet-typical Berkeley view. 

In the end, the expanded, taped-together ballpoint pen drawing, aided by colored pencil and scribbled notes, became the information sheet for a large watercolor that remains for me the most precious of my pictures. This fond regard is apparently shared by other, for “Panorama From Indian Rock” is by far my most popular “Cityscape” card. In itself this is a revealing comment on the necessity for inventiveness in art, for here, more than usually, I didn’t invent a single thing. Mt. Tamalpais really echoes Albany Hill, the little cameo of the Richmond shore is really there, the enlivening red roofs really exist, and the rock’s jutting edge is exactly as shown. 

The same can be said for my drawing, done in black wax pencil on tracing paper, of the view toward Downtown Berkeley. Here the subject is less dramatic, but it does reveal the seductively picturesque quality of the early 20th Century Northbrae suburbs, those winding contour avenues sprawling out from Marin Circle that are largely the work of the remarkable Mason McDuffie Real Estate Company, which also donated to the city park-parcels around five rock formations, including Indian and Cragmont. Here, pleasant, modest-sized villas are transformed, by a romantic layout and generous planting, into an enviable residential environment whose totality is even prettier than its private panoramas. Sometimes romantic siting even takes preference over the now-mandatory bay view, as demonstrated by two houses set back from Indian Rock Path that directly face the rock itself as preferred “outlook.” 

Specially fine is the cluster of houses from 1911, on Indian Rock Road at Shattuck just below the park itself. Here, the architect John Hudson Thomas has created three Art Nouveau villas, all different in shape and plan but with matching character and details. Note how the garden-edge walls of the front lawns match the stone of the adjacent park—a rare example of city-developer collaboration! Admirers of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the turn-of-the-century Scottish architect sometimes called “the European Frank Lloyd Wright” mustn’t miss this geographically far removed yet closely related work. 

But back to my pictures. Have these views changed much in almost twenty years? In terms of buildings, the answer is no. Protected largely by zoning, the residential areas look much the same. Trees, however, more subject to individual whim, come and go. In both my drawing and my painting, the beautiful pine-oak and the dark pine tree that, respectively, frame the left hand edge, are gone in the cause of more backyard light. As for the distant objects, Emeryville’s commercial skyline (top right in the drawing) is now much expanded, while, in the watercolor the green PG&E gas-holder peeing over the Portrero Hills, has long ago been dismantled. Sometimes good things actually happen!