Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association

APARTMENT BUILDINGS OF THE ’50s AND ’60s. This is the beginning of a new series featuring the large, sterile apartment buildings that developers constructed in the 1950s and 1960s in many of Berkeley’s neighborhoods that were not protected by low-density zoning. These buildings, with their massiveness and their bare-bones, no-frills appearance, were a shocking intrusion to Berkeley’s classic brown-shingle neighborhoods. The fact that their construction meant the destruction o...Continue reading

Sather Gate by the Berkeley painter Elmer George Earl Schmidt (18921958).

This West Berkeley house may appear somewhat neglected, but look at its remarkable Eastlake ornamental details, all original. The house was one of four built in 1886 by the Berkeley pioneer Edward F. Niehaus (more about him in a comment below), and all the decorative elements must have come from the Niehaus Brothers’ West Berkeley Planing Mill. Of the four houses, only two remain, and this house is the only one that is practically unaltered, with the exception of the window s...ashes. The owners are commencing some work on the house, and we have urged them to preserve all the rare features and to avoid at all cost the thought of installing vinyl windows in this gem. Photos 2021 Daniella Thompson

INTERNATIONAL DRAMA ON PRINCE STREET. During the first World War, Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, later to become first president of the newly created Czechoslovakia, was in exile in the United States, while his wife Charlotte and daughter Alice, at home, had been arrested and imprisoned shortly before the armistice, with Alice receiving a death sentence for attempting to mail a postcard to her father. Months later, the Garrigue family on Prince Street was still anxiously awaiting ne...Continue reading

The UC campus in 1913. How many buildings can you identify?

When Berkeley streets were built around oak trees. Can you identify the street? Photo courtesy of the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley

THE SHOUP-TINKHAM HOUSE ON HILLEGASS. This typical Colonial Revival housewith its distinctive diamond-pane windowson Hillegass Avenue between Parker and Derby was built in 1901, and is one of the early ones on the block. It was either built for Paul Shoup, or he purchased it new from its builder. This appears to be yet another case where a family moved to Berkeley so that one or more children could attend the University. Mr. Shoup’s sister Faith (Class of 1904) was the fami...Continue reading

Can you identify the location and any of the buildings in the background?

This should be a fascinating talk.

A SHATTUCK HEIR ON BENVENUE. This is the house at 2631 Benvenue Avenue built by Lewis A. Hicks, Charles Lindgren’s partner in their concrete contracting firm. The contract to build was signed December 23, 1901, and, in an era when it usually took just three months to build a house, only the foundation and frame of this large $7,000 house was completed three months later. The Hicks family lived up the street at 2607 Benvenue while the house was under construction. The firm of ...Continue reading

Professor Cory’s House, 2438 Warring Street This lovely house, one of the most charming residences designed by Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr., was built in 1913 for Professor Clarence Linus Cory (18721937), known as the father of Electrical Engineering at the University of California. After Prof. Cory’s death, his home was enlarged and turned into a residence hall for women students called Elizabeth Barrett Hall. Later yet, it served as a chapter house for the Zeta Beta Tau fratern...ity. It now serves as a Group Living Accommodation for students. Born in Lafayette, Indiana, Clarence L. Cory received a B.M.E. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University at the tender age of 16. In 1891, he received an M.M.E. from Cornell University. The same year, Cory became Professor of Electrical Engineering at Highland Park College in Des Moines. In 1892, he moved to Berkeley as the first Professor of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of California. During his early years at UC, Cory established electrical laboratories that supplied light and power to the entire Berkeley campus. During a sabbatical leave in 1900, he became a co-founder of engineering firm Cory, Meredith & Allen in San Francisco. In 1908, Cory was appointed Dean of the College of Mechanics at UC. He was awarded a doctoral degree in Engineering from Purdue in 1914. During World War I, Cory obtained a leave of absence from Berkeley to accept a dollar-a-year job of Assistant Director of Nitrate and Powder Plants in West Virginia, where he was responsible for power production. He became Professor Emeritus in 1931. Cory Hall on the UC Berkeley campus was completed in 1950 and named after Clarence Cory. Photo 2019 Daniella Thompson

A GIFT FROM PHOEBE APPERSON HEARST. Two large houses in the 2600 block of Benvenue Avenue were particularly grand and imposing. They stood slightly elevated above street level, surrounded by manicured lawns, and took on the appearance of the dignified patriarchs of Benvenue. The past tense is used because these once magnificent shingled residences are now barely noticeable behind dense shrubbery. These houses were originally home to business partners in an early concrete cont...Continue reading

Do you recognize this intersection? Can you name the building on the right? Photo said to be by Oscar V. Lange (18531913), although that may be misleading.

A HALLOWEEN HAUNTED HOUSE. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, neighborhood lore among the kids was this house was brrrr! haunted! The sand-colored stucco walls were water- and rust-stained, and the grounds were overgrown. Palm trees stood as sentinels, seemingly guarding the slumbering old house. But of course it wasn’t; it was still very much lived in by the next generations of the family that had built the house In about 1907, Edward Marquis, a builder, his wife Georgia, and t...heir children arrived in Berkeley’s Elmwood district. Mr. Marquis built three houses in the new subdivision (2936 Linden, 2979 Piedmont, 2710 Ashby), living in each briefly before selling it. In 1910 the Marquises built the house at Russell and Kelsey streets as their permanent family home. It was built from a plan in architect Henry Wilson’s Bungalow Book, published in Los Angles. The house remained in the Marquis family until the 1970s. When the house was new, it housed Mr. and Mrs. Marquis and their 16-year-old son Charles, as well as cousins, Charlotte and Charles Schermerhorn and their college-age daughter Edna. Georgia Marquis died in 1926, and her husband remarried six years later. Edward Marquis and his wife eventually moved to Twain Harte where he died in 1944. During his years in Berkeley, he was active in real estate and was the founder of Community Federal Savings and Loan. The Berkeley house remained with his son Percival and his family. Percival’s son, Stanley Marquis, visited the BAHA office in the 1970s and ’80s, sharing old photos and stories about the house. In recent years, the Marquis House has been the elaborate haunted centerpiece of the Russell Street Halloween extravaganza. This year, the house, and the street, will be quiet. Photo: Anthony Bruce, August 2020

Here is a detail of a brick commercial building. The use of glazed colored tile in the horizontal mortar joints between the rows of pressed brick is intriguing. Can you tell us which building this is? Photo: Anthony Bruce, 2020

Northbrae tunnel under construction and opening ceremony

Mystery hillside

How many of BAHA's fans are participating in the National Trust for Historic Preservation "Past Forward" Conference right now? The focus this year is racial jus...tice and equity, including a reckoning on how the field of historic preservation has predominately excluded non white sites, properties, and structures. Day two, I highly recommend joining in. You can find it through the National Trust's website. Curious what this community thinks we should be preserving in Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond, El Cerrito, etc, that we have missed? What non white sites and stories are we not currently honoring or celebrating (yet) in our community?