Events Listings

Arms—in Berkeley?  

Although the establishment of a Marine recruiting station downtown has brought attention—and controversy—to Berkeley in recent months, most locals are probably not aware that central Berkeley has a number of buildings and sites once used for military purposes, some dating back to the early 20th century.  

The sites and history of Berkeley’s military associations and veterans are the starting focus of the spring season of Berkeley Historical Society walking tours, which begin this Saturday. 

Later tours visit historic neighborhoods, take in some of Berkeley’s transportation history, and provide an insider’s peek at new libraries on the UC Berkeley campus. 

The Saturday tours, which run from about 10 a.m. to noon, extend through June and cost $10 each for those who aren’t BHS members. As of this writing, there were still spaces available on all of the tours. 

This Saturday, April 19, the first walk is co-led by the author, along with BHS President John Aronovici, and titled “Berkeley and the Wars: A look Back at Local Military Sites.”  

Concentrating on the downtown and the western side of the UC campus, we’ll see Berkeley’s old National Guard Armory, several war memorials, the former military training headquarters on the UC campus, and even the location of a local artillery park. 

The tour finishes with a viewing of local memorabilia of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), recently curated by the BHS. Back in 1933 and 1939 Berkeley hosted major GAR gatherings. 

The following Saturday, April 26, BHS Board member Dale Smith leads a walk through the Elmwood neighborhood which, just a little more than a century ago, was still a productive agricultural district.  

The walk, entitled “I Ain’t Gonna Work on Kelsey’s Farm No More,” recalls John Kelsey, who grew not only fruit crops but many of the sapling street trees for Berkeley—including the elms of the future “Elmwood”—on his ranch northeast of College and Ashby.  

It traces the pattern of residential development, where scattered homes of early settlers of the district still stand among handsome rows of “streetcar suburb” houses from the beginning of the 20th century.  

Attention will be called to homes designed by Leola Hall, one of Berkeley’s early women architects, as well as the history of the Kelsey Street Press, a poetry publisher founded by a group of local women. 

The tour also includes the Elmwood commercial district—packed today with fine restaurants, gelato fanciers, and a neighborhood-run movie theater—which has made its own history through struggles to preserve neighborhood businesses, such as Ozzie’s Soda Fountain, and to regulate commercial rents. 

If you’re also planning to go on the May 4 Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association house tour of the adjacent Benvenue/Hillegass neighborhood, this Elmwood walk is a good prelude and introduction to the environs. 

Saturday, May 10, another venerable Berkeley residential district—Northbrae—is explored, with a focus on the trolley system that served the neighborhood. The walk, led by Phil Gale, will recall how the streets came to be named, the grandeur that ambitious developers proposed for the neighborhood—including, at one time, plans for the State Capitol—and what actually came to be built. (The tour is not wheelchair accessible.) 

Gale, a Berkeley treasure (as well as BHS treasurer) whose local roots go back to the 19th century, is an expert on the early transportation systems of the East Bay. 

Then it’s off into the wilds—sort of—on Saturday, May 17, when Ron Sipherd leads visitors up Panoramic Hill, just southeast of the UC campus. Sipherd will focus on the “contrasting qualities of proximity to the university and steep, difficult terrain” that make Panoramic Hill a unique piece of Berkeley’s physical and cultural landscape.  

A remarkable array of homes—from early brown shingles, to the only Frank Lloyd Wright design built in Berkeley—are integrated with winding streets, staircases, and the natural landscape of Strawberry Canyon to the north and Hamilton Gulch to the south. 

See Sipherd’s website at www.well.com/~ronks/pix/panowalk/index.html for a preview of some of the sights on this walk. (This tour involves steep grades and stairs and is not handicapped accessible.) 

Eleven-year veteran tour leader and long-time Berkeley resident Paul Grunland is a familiar leader of BHS tours of the northeast Berkeley hill neighborhoods which he probably knows better than anyone else, but this season he comes down to the flatlands to guide a walk of the McGee Tract neighborhood west of Downtown. 

This pleasant but often overlooked district of older Berkeley homes and wide, leafy, streets includes Berkeley’s first Roman Catholic parish church, St. Joseph the Worker, and was once the site of the working farm of James McGee, who was also elected one of Berkeley’s first town trustees in the 1870s.  

Grunland will draw on the recent research of the McGee-Spaulding-Hardy Historic Interest Group, a dedicated set of volunteers who meet weekly to research and discuss their neighborhood history.  

Their own introduction to the neighborhood is posted at www.donaspring.com/HistoryDistrict4.htm 

Subscribers to at least three of the Spring walks are also eligible for a free bonus tour on June 14. This season, the bonus tour will visit the two newest libraries on the UC campus. 

The Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, near Wurster Hall, is sheathed in green slate “shingles” and houses nearly a quarter of a million books, records, manuscripts, and other rare materials. The C.V. Starr East Asian Library—just opened last month—overlooks Memorial Glade and Doe Library. Library staff will guide the tours. 

For last-minute reservations, call the Berkeley Historical Society at 848-0181 on the Thursday or Friday afternoon (1-4 p.m.) before the tour to see if space is available and to get your name on the list. 

For reservations further in advance, mail a check payable to Berkeley Historical Society to P.O. Box 1190, Berkeley, California, 94701. 

When making a reservation, please provide your telephone number and e-mail address (if you have one) so you can be contacted with information about where to meet for a tour, and last-minute updates. 

Membership—which costs $20 individual, $25 family—entitles the ticket purchaser to an $8 price for individual tours, or a “season ticket special” of all six tours for $30. Only members are eligible for the June 14 Bonus Tour.