Election Section

Berkeley didn’t always have a city-run Fire Department or professional police force. Back in the late 19th century, when the community was still a small town, volunteer fire companies and elected town marshals provided basic protection.  

All that changed about a century ago. Today, the origins, notable events, and histories of Berkeley’s fire and police departments are being told in consecutive exhibits at the Berkeley History Center.  

The exhibit on the Fire Department closes this coming Saturday. An exhibit on the Police Department opens with a special event from 3-5 p.m. April 10.  

Both exhibits are organized by the Berkeley Historical Society, working in cooperation with the fire and police departments and private collectors and historians. 

Berkeley’s first volunteer company—known as Beacon Number One—formed around 1877, a year before the town formally incorporated. In 1882, after fires destroyed three West Berkeley buildings in quick succession, several volunteer companies were reorganized. 

Two decades later, volunteer fire protection no longer seemed sufficient for the growing community. A city-run Fire Department with paid staff was created in 1904, and a Police Department in 1905.  

James Kenney, who had been chief of the local volunteer fire companies since 1896, was appointed Berkeley’s first paid fire chief in 1904. Kenney, who later died at the scene of a fire, is memorialized by James Kenney Park in West Berkeley. 

Fire Department History 

The current Fire Department exhibit at the Berkeley History Center contains a fine array of materials. There are pictures of the old volunteer fire companies, complete with their horse drawn engines and wooden fire houses, and artifacts of early days of Berkeley firefighting including old helmets, badges, and even an early alarm box.  

In the days before widespread telephone service, fires and other emergencies were often reported by citizens activating alarm boxes that stood at strategic intersections throughout the city. The local newspaper, the Berkeley Gazette, regularly published a list of locations of the alarm boxes.  

There’s also a display of photographs of early fire houses, some gone completely, others replaced by newer buildings at the same locations. Examining these photos you may be struck, as I was, with the different standards of public architecture in decades past.  

Berkeley, it’s clear, once made a credible effort to design fire stations and other public buildings to harmonize with the character of their surroundings.  

No chunky, concrete-block, industrial-style edifices then. Here you’ll see photographs of old firehouses that look more like handsome family homes. 

A rare survivor, the old Hose Company 7 station building at 2911 Claremont just up the street from Ashby Avenue, now houses an art gallery. There’s a photograph in the exhibit of this circa 1914 building in its early fire-fighting days. 

The exhibit also provides vivid vignettes of notable local fires and disasters.  

One panel profiles Berkeley’s devastating 1923 fire, which leveled dozens of blocks and nearly 600 buildings on the northside. A map outlines in red the perimeter of the wind-driven fire, marking the buildings burned and showing how the destruction reached the edge of downtown Berkeley. There are also large, wide-angle, photo panoramas of the fire ruins. 

Two collages of color photographs provide glimpses into dozens of more recent disasters, from the 1991 Berkeley hills firestorm to traffic accidents and residential and commercial fires.  

Although the collage images are a bit jumbled and don’t have extensive captions, there are some very evocative items if you look through them carefully.  

For example, one picture was taken inside a white-painted kitchen, meal preparation in evidence, in a residence on Regent Street. The room is tranquil, but the view through the window above the sink is like a glimpse into a volcano. The visible wall of the building next door is completely covered in flames.  

Other elements of the exhibit include drawings by local school children, videotapes of the 1923 and 1991 firestorm disasters, and a smoke-stained Tunnel Road street sign from the edge of the 1991 fire. 

Police Department Centennial 

After the Fire Department exhibit closes, there’s a two week hiatus followed by the April 10 opening of an exhibit on the centennial of the Berkeley Police Department. Retired Berkeley Police Sergeant Michael Holland is expected to speak at the opening reception. 

Any Berkeley resident who assumes that everything innovative about Berkeley stems from the 1960s or later will be surprised to see some of the elements of this exhibit.  

Led by August Vollmer, who served first as elected Town Marshal, then as appointed police chief, Berkeley’s Police Department was a pioneering institution.  

Vollmer, whose services as a consultant on law enforcement came to be in demand nationwide, revolutionized police work. He emphasized professionalism, sought police officers with good educations, and worked with the university on the establishment of a school of criminology. 

He recruited the first woman and first African-American officers to the local police force, installed radios in police cars, experimented with lie detectors and was, even by today’s standards, a progressive force; for example, he became a prominent opponent of the death penalty. 

Chief Vollmer and his Berkeley Police Department were even the heroes of an early fictionalized crime thriller series on film, Officer 444. 

A half century after his department was established, the aged Vollmer, in declining health, shot himself; organized to the end, he first asked his housekeeper to call the police. 

Today, 50 years after his death, Vollmer is largely forgotten in Berkeley, quite unjustly so. The exhibit should bring renewed attention to him, as well as the Berkeley Police Department as a whole. 

Steven Finacom is a boardmember of the Berkeley Historical Society. 

The Berkeley Fire Department Centennial exhibit closes March 26. The Berkeley Police: Innovators for A Century exhibit opens April 10 with a reception from 3-5 p.m. 

The Berkeley History Center is located at 1931 Center Street, in the Veteran’s Memorial Building. 

The exhibits are open 1-4 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Admission is free, wheelchair accessible. Closed March 27 through April 10 for exhibit change.  

For more details, call 848-0181 or see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc. 

?