Alameda County CA Archives History - Books .....Chapter IV Years Of Growth 1941
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Book Title: Berkeley The First Seventy-Five Years

1878-1908
IV: Years of Growth

DURING ITS EARLY YEARS, Berkeley showed signs of developing a dual personality.
Although the town's commercial development was obscured by its fame as a city of
learning, business was as important as education in its early growth.

  In 1878, the year of its incorporation, Berkeley was still a somnolent little
town composed largely of wide open spaces, with 1,600 or 1,800 inhabitants
clustered in small groups over several square miles of farm land. An old-timer,
Otto Putzker, describes one part of Berkeley as resembling a big ranch. "From
our house on Telegraph Avenue we could see tall grain fields in all directions .
. . From Shattuck down to the water there were truck gardens and swamps. At
Ashby, around Shattuck, Adeline, and Grove, I had a rowboat and used to go duck
hunting. Then there were lots of cattle driving through this town. I've seen
cowboys, the real thing, driving steers by the thousands right over the hills."


  To Berkeley's cultural pioneers, its rustic air at this period may have suited
their conception of a western Athens modeled on some bucolic New England college
town. But if the satisfaction of Berkeley's material wants received less
attention at first than the fulfillment of its spiritual needs, such a one-sided
development was not long to continue. During the years after 1878 the town grew
commercially so steadily that by 1906 a writer could say that "there are soap
works, match factories, glass works, foundries, starch works, wholesale printing
establishments, manufactories of perfumes and medicines, and a thousand other
vocations ..."

  From the start, West Berkeley was the home of the town's industry, just as
"East," or "Upper" Berkeley was its cultural center. Favorable waterfront sites
had attracted several manufacturing concerns by 1878, so that for several years
the district matched, or surpassed, its college rival in stores, utilities,
transportation, and other factors which promote growth. It benefited especially
by the advent of the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific Railroads, which built
lines near the shore, connecting with overland routes and with deep-water
transportation. West Berkeley was an ideal spot for industry.

  Evidence of its commercial growth during the eighties is seen in the depiction
of current business in the holiday number of the Berkeley Daily Advocate,
December, 1892: "Stimulated by this great increase in the means of communication
Berkeley began the march of improvement which has been so marked . . .
continuous and uniform, although at no time taking upon itself anything like a
boom." Some of the commercial activities of the time are noted. "The manufacture
of choice cigars is a West Berkeley industry, conducted by R. Albrecht, who also
keeps on hand a selected assortment of cigarettes . . . R. W Baker, dealer in
choice Groceries and Provisions, Wood and Coal, Hay and Grain . . . John Vasey,
the West Berkeley blacksmith, is a pioneer in his line . . . The West Berkeley
Lumber Yard is closely identified with the history of Berkeley almost from its
beginning. It was a landing place first, whence grain and cattle were shipped .
. . the facilities for an extensive trade, whether by rail or by teams, are the
very best. The wharf, extending a third of a mile into the bay, offers ample
opportunity for the discharge of cargoes of lumber. . . A spur from the main
line of the Southern Pacific Company runs down the dock to its end, so that,
when necessary or desirable, cars can be loaded directly from vessels or from
lumber piles—the expense in this way being reduced to the lowest point. .. Mr.
Taylor .. . has also lines of lime, plaster, cement, hardware, brick and sewer
and chimney pipe .   .   . E. J. Stewart is the affable manager of the
Comstock-Watson Real Estate Company. His firm does a vast business in realty,
and offers such inducements that, though their margin is necessarily small, they
are more than compensated by the greatly increased number of sales."

  Architects and builders, real estate and insurance agents, merchants of
crockery and woodware ("Goods . . . delivered free in all parts of town")
advertised their wares or services in the Advocate. "Bayley, the photographer at
515 Seventh Street, gives satisfaction" noted the paper, which went on to laud
the lawyers, stove dealers, and physicians of the town, and said: "We know what
we are talking about when we say that the Berkeley Livery Stable is a good place
to go to when you want a horse and buggy, a saddle horse, or a spanking good
team and elegant outfit ..."

Tug-of-War: West vs. East

WEST BERKELEY considered itself the core of the town. It looked down rather
patronizingly on the university and residential parts of Berkeley. As late as
1908 the Berkeley Citizen noted that "the various business centers of town are
so scattered that each has a local interest which is of little interest to the
citizens living in other sections of the town. West Berkeley is one of the
livest sections of the town and ... is not only now the commercial seat of the
city, but in the future it is bound to be the business center ... It will be our
aim to promote harmony and good feeling between all sections of the city."

  This persistent rivalry between sections had contributed to the delay in
incorporation. Berkeley's growth around a number of business centers, as well as
its two major districts, "has given the town a delightfully disconnected
irregularity" noted an early periodical. "The streets laid out by one nucleus
have a way of running flatly into the fences of another . . . and the latter
being equally fixed in their opinions, as to the desirability of not having
streets at these particular points, the thoroughfares have been obliged either
to stop blindly, or turn a corner and go round." The town council tried often to
ameliorate differences. It succeeded in opening wide avenues east and west, but
was not so successful with north and south arteries.

  That the disharmony in early Berkeley was not only geographic, but social, was
illustrated in the controversy over the location of a post office. In 1877, when
the Merrill drug store on Choate (Telegraph) Avenue began dispensing mail along
with cathartics and horse liniment, Berkeley was not yet on the map. Incoming
letters had to be addressed either to Oakland or in such descriptive terms as
"Berkeley; Close to the College and near San Francisco." The location of a
regular post office during the eighties led to a near feud between university
and townspeople. Business interests wanted it located on Shattuck Avenue near
Center Street, that being the commercial center; but a petition gotten out
largely by professors put the post office on Choate Avenue nearer the university.

  In 1887 President Grover Cleveland appointed Napoleon Byrne, one of the town's
few Democrats, postmaster; he served through both of Cleveland's
administrations. The post office location on Choate Avenue being frowned on by
the business interests, Byrne moved the office to Center and Shattuck. The
university people now raised complaining voices. Officials of the university
refused to patronize the Berkeley post office, importing stamps from Oakland.
Byrne evened the scale by inducing merchants in San Francisco to buy their
stamps in Berkeley. Finally, however, he was obliged to write to Washington for
help, whereupon the Government persuaded the university to recognize and
purchase from the local office. This triumph of town over gown showed the
uptrend of business influence.

  The disharmony between Berkeley's districts was again demonstrated in the
bitter controversy over the location of the town hall. The citizens around
Shattuck Avenue and those around San Pablo staged a fight which swung back and
forth for many years, until victory again went to the business element on
Shattuck Avenue. First meetings of the board of trustees were held in a room on
Shattuck near University, provided by F. K. Shattuck. In 1879 the town hall for
six months was "Library Hall" on the corner of Delaware and Sixth Streets in
West Berkeley. Though this location was far from the center of town, it assuaged
West Berkeley boosters, who felt that other sections of the town had been overly
favored. The social center of the Workingmen's Club—whose ticket had been victor
in the first election—was next drafted to serve as city headquarters. A
storeroom in the Shattuck Building near University Avenue was later the scene of
meetings, and thereafter, in 1883, West Berkeley's Sisterna Hall became the
temporary site of the municipal gavel. So frequent were the moves that citizens
often did not know where the town hall was.

  When a permanent hall was finally planned, the political and sectional
controversy was intense. One office-seeker upheld the Shattuck Avenue district;
another stood squarely on a platform of town hall for West Berkeley or bust.
Some people urged a compromise. Said the Advocate in a January, 1881, editorial:
"If the erection of a town hall in the center between East and West Berkeley
could have no other effect than to unite the two extremities and make them one
in feeling and noble resolves for the good of all sections, the money would be
well spent. Considered in all its rival and distinct parts no town was ever
situated as Berkeley is today."

  Following this advice, a fairly central spot for the town hall, on the corner
of University Avenue and Sacramento Street, was bought for $1,700 in April,
1881; and here in 1884 the new municipal edifice was built at a cost of $2,300.
This became the home of city government until just before the turn of the
century, when a new move was made to Grove Street near Center. When this
building burned down in 1904, Berkeley's headquarters was moved again, this time
to Shattuck Avenue, corner of Allston Way. Finally, the peripatetic city
administration found a permanent home in August, 1909, in the $150,000 edifice
at Grove and Allston Streets, which still serves.

  A chief reason for Berkeley's lack of unity during these years was poor
transportation. "East and West Berkeley for years were almost like two towns,
and the strife, and even bitterness, between the two are a well known part of
the town's history." noted the Advocate in the early nineties. The paper
attributed this antagonism largely to the lack of easy public transportation
facilities between the town's isolated centers, which worked "to prevent the
social intercourse so powerful in uniting people into a homogenious whole . . .
But the rapid growth of late years, bringing more closely together these
sections, and the easy communication by means of street cars, have been
instrumental in lulling the ill-feeling and reconciling the conflicting interests."

  The transportation system of the early seventies had been very simple: it
consisted of a single track, which went from the present Sather Gate down
Telegraph Avenue and into Oakland's Broadway, and a rolling stock of two small
cars, "in which seven people could sit on one side if they were not too stout."
After four years a steam dummy car, and later a small locomotive, superseded the
ever-tired horses on the Berkeley part of the road. In 1892 came the electric
street cars, overcoming Berkeley's parochiality. While the tracks helped unify
the town's divergent business factions, they also formed a social dividing line.
In 1886 Francis Sheldon noted the ostracism of those who lived on the "other
side" of the railroad tracks on Shat-tuck Avenue: "This railroad forms a social
line, too, that as a rule is a strict barrier to familiar intercourse between
the sides. It runs about a mile below the first steep hill-rise, and the people
living above it are supposed to be chary of association with those who live
below. Whether it is this feeling or the nature of the slope that determined the
matter, I do not know, but the fact remains that the most beautiful and the
richest part of Berkeley is above the track."

All the Latest Conveniences

DESPITE these sectional and social differences, there was a gradual up-swing in
civic consciousness. In 1880 citizens of the university colony formed an
"association for the promotion of neighborhood improvements." Whose objects were
"to promote the improvement and ornamentation of the streets, stations, and
public places of this locality, by planting and cultivating trees, establishing
and maintaining walks, grading and draining roadways . . . encouraging system,
order, and tidiness, and generally to do whatever may tend to the improvement of
the town of Berkeley as a place of residence." The association helped win from a
contemporary writer the compliment that "houses and grounds are in excellent
taste . . . The air of refinement and good keeping about nearly every place in
the village, whether it is the home of wealth or of moderate means, evinces a
local pride that animates the entire population." The association vigorously
undertook to make Berkeley a town of trees and shrubs. Fences were built, bushes
were clipped, houses were painted, prizes were offered for the handsomest
hedges. The association became an example for similar groups in other cities.

  Another evidence of the development of civic consciousness—somewhat
adulterated in this case by an instinct for self-preservation—was the formation
of volunteer fire departments. The first one was organized in July, 1882, in
West Berkeley, whose wooden factories and houses were ready fuel for
conflagrations. In the previous month three buildings had burned to the ground
while the young men of the town stood around helpless, lacking even the simplest
fire-fighting equipment.

  An entertainment was given, proceeds going to the purchase of a second-hand
engine and new hose-cart. The former, which had been called "Hancock'' was
renamed "Beacon No. 1" and the hose-cart became "Tiger No. 1." "Hancock" had had
an interesting history, serving first in Boston, from where it was shipped to
San Francisco, and from there after seven years' service to San Jose, then to
Alameda, and finally to Berkeley. Its original price was $1,500, but age and use
brought it to Berkeley for only $150. This noble veteran of fire wars was
installed in an engine house, built at the cost of $250, on the corner of Sixth
Street and University Avenue.

  East Berkeley organized its own volunteer company soon after, following fires
which in July, 1882, destroyed the Olive Branch Hotel on Choate (Telegraph)
Avenue near Bancroft Way and in November burned down Union Hall and several
other buildings on Shattuck Avenue. The Beacon Fire Company responded to the
latter blaze, but the mile-and-a-half upgrade was a long haul, and it arrived
too late for anything but applause. The East Berkeley company took the name
Columbia. It served faithfully for many years, but was disbanded in 1894 because
its unpaid firemen had their own businesses to attend to and could not always be
depended upon to come when needed. Students later formed the University Fire
Company to protect the business sections near them.

  Vociferous promoters of civic consciousness were the newspapers. Although they
sometimes stooped to inciting sectional rivalry, they generally served as loyal
champions of the town. They did not spare the caustic in discussing muddy
streets, bond issues, or one another, but they were quick to defend the
community against attacks from Oakland and San Francisco editors.

  First of Berkeley's papers was the Gazette, a weekly which published a few
issues in West Berkeley in 1876, then quietly disappeared. The following year
the sturdiest of Berkeley's early papers, the Advocate, was started, also in
West Berkeley, where it stayed four years, then moving to a new location in the
growing business district on Shattuck Avenue. This paper took its title
seriously; it advocated, promoted, boosted, and eulogized the town with
enthusiasm, doing what it could to unify the community's far-flung sections.

  With the years many competitors of the Advocate rose and fell. In 1892, now a
daily, it published the obituary notice of its latest rival, the Berkeley Daily
Herald, and listed all the local papers which had "passed away into that bourne
from which no newspaper returneth: The Berkeley Gazette; The Berkeley Register;
The Berkeley Standard; The Berkeley Beacon; The Berkeley Reveille; The Berkeley
Herald (weekly); The Berkeley Daily Herald." The editor concluded that "there
was not sufficient patronage in Berkeley to support two good papers."

  The Advocate easily filled Berkeley's journalistic void, devoting much space
to sarcastic comments about such civic sore spots as the streets. "We would
suggest that teamsters with heavily loaded wagons provide themselves with buoys
before venturing on Shattuck Avenue," the editor wrote in December, 1892. "They
might be useful in marking the spot where their outfit disappeared." Again, in a
more facetious vein: "Our muddy thorough-fares presented quite a study in
hosiery the other day, just after that terrific down pour which nearly swamped
the business section. The girls who were compelled to navigate the submerged
crossing had to choose between draggled skirts and displaying their hosiery—and
they invariably saved their skirts. While it lasted, our reporter, instead of
going out and locating the storm center, as directed, just stood like one in a
trance, with his nose pressed against the window-pane, and his eyes glued on the
unholy show outside. Expressman Boyd was also seen to stop and gaze at the
spectacle a moment, and then turn away, his bronzed features bathed in blushes."

  Moved by such outspoken comments as these, the town council gradually took
action on civic improvements. "Public improvements are not all that they should
be . . . But the new birth is coming" reported the San Francisco Call at about
this time. "The Trustees have decided that the future sidewalk is cement, and in
none of the more thickly settled districts will wood be encouraged. From time to
time, as seems practicable, street grading and paving will be promoted. The
project is now on foot, indeed, to grade and macadamize the two main
thoroughfares through the city-San Pablo on the west and Shattuck Avenue on the
east. The cost of the work on each avenue will be not less than $ 100,000 ..."

  The growing town also benefited from new industrial inventions of the late
nineteenth century. In 1887 four high towers and six masts were erected, each
supporting a high-powered arc or carbon light. One such tower stood at what is
now the corner of Durant and Fulton. It was a matter of opinion whether the arc
lights lit up the town well. Some thought they served only to show how dark it
was. The Jenney dynamos which gave life to these arc lights were too weak to
push the electricity far enough. In 1892 they were superseded by "two Edison
dynamos, each capable of supplying 150 incandescent lights" according to an
advertisement in the Advocate, which continued: "Another fine steam engine has
been ordered and will shortly be here, capable of driving all the dynamos
necessary to the increased use of electricity for light, heat, and power." The
rates for lighting were by the hour. To burn a sixteen-candlepower lamp evenings
until eight o'clock cost one dollar a month; for two dollars one could burn the
lamp until midnight.

  The Bell Telephone Company began service in Berkeley in the nineties, but
encountered competition from the Home Telephone Company. The double system
caused much confusion in Berkeley's business affairs, since each downtown office
had to have two phones, with different sets of numbers. After several years of
this situation Bell bought out the rival company. The city, however, benefited
from the Home Telephone franchise, using the $40,000 paid by the company to
acquire San Pablo Park in 1909.

  With electric lights, telephones, electric trains, and paved streets, Berkeley
was showing all the progressiveness of a modern city as the new century
approached. However, in some respects it continued to disappoint its more
forward-looking citizens, as the following letter to the editor of the Advocate
reveals: "Among the many things recommended in your paper for the good and
convenience of our people, there is one that you have never touched upon, but
which needs to be brought to the attention of house owners. No house should be
built without having one or more hitching posts in the street in front. People
will set out shade trees along the street, and then expect the butcher, the
baker, the grocer and all others to let their horses stand in the street without
hitching; and while many horses will stand, they do not and will not refrain
from biting the bark from the trees and otherwise spoiling or killing them.
Often some one is very sick; the physician is sent for in a great hurry. It may
be that a delay of a few minutes means life or death; yet when the doctor, in
response to the hasty call, rides with all speed, and ready to do his best, he
finds fine trees, an excellent sidewalk, but nothing to hitch his horse to." In
the nineties the maturing town already had parking problems.

Boom in Berkeley

CHEAP AND QUICK transportation—ten-cent fare and a three-dollar monthly
commutation ticket to San Francisco—was an important factor in attracting
investors and homeseekers to Berkeley, during the first years of the new century.

  In 1903 the Key Route began operating hourly in connection with the ferries;
so popular was the line that soon even half-hourly trains were not enough, and a
twenty-minute schedule was introduced after one month. Commuters kept the trains
and ferries so busy that San Francisco's firms, wishing to keep population in
their own city, ordered their employees not to reside in the East Bay. But the
Berkeley Chamber of Commerce reported that "the records indicate that there will
be no diminution in the total number of passengers . . . this year." Evidently
most of the commuters were employers.

  Its increase in popularity as a residential city brought Berkeley an upsurge
of prosperity. Real estate boomed. The demand for home-building grew rapidly.
New Berkeley firms had to erect barracks to give employees temporary shelter.
Hotels and apartment houses were at a premium. "Back against the hills, the
Claremont people are building what promises to be the largest and finest tourist
hostelry in Northern California" reported a visitor. This was the Claremont Hotel.

  But the biggest impetus to Berkeley's prosperity proved to be San Francisco's
great earthquake and fire in 1906. "It is not Christian to seek advantage in
another's misfortune" wrote Warren Cheney in an article, "Commercial Berkeley;'
in Sunset Magazine for December, 1906, "but there is nothing to be ashamed of in
profiting by such misfortune if it comes unsought. There is no doubt but the
greatest impulse that has come in Berkeley's history toward its commercial
development has had its beginning in the destruction of the business section of
San Francisco by earthquake and fire on April 18th."

  Berkeley was suddenly besieged by thousands of refugees. Every train brought
loads of homeless and frequently half-dressed and hungry victims of the
earthquake. "I remember" says Charles Huggins, a retired city official, who
witnessed the exodus from San Francisco to Berkeley, "that the refugees didn't
seem to be in their right minds—they seemed stunned, particularly in what they
saved. One carried nothing else that I could see but a length of stovepipe.
Practically everybody seemed to be carrying a bird. They felt the shock and took
only, I suppose, what first came to their minds."

  The campus and buildings of the university—the gym, the baseball fields,
Hearst Hall—were used to house the refugees. Bakeries turned out thousands of
loaves of bread, not only for Berkeley but for shipment to the stricken city.
Clothes, bandages, medicines were gathered in the university town. Excerpts from
the Berkeley Daily Gazette during the days following the disaster give a vivid
picture of the university city's relief work:

  "This afternoon [April 19] Berkeley is rapidly filling with refugees from the
razed city. Hundreds of Chinese and Japanese arrived shortly after noon and line
Addison Street for a block. Every available space is being utilized for the care
of these and hundreds of others, irrespective of color. The baseball field on
the Campus is to be utilized by the refugees. Hundreds of tents are being
erected to shelter them tonight."

  The Gazette reported that on Wednesday evening, April 18, the first detachment
of U. C. cadets had gone on duty.

  "The total number of refugees fed up to the noon hour today [April 21] at the
various public places is between 7,200 and 8,000."

  "As far as possible Chinese refugees have been confined to the Dwight Way
district . . . fully three hundred and fifty Chinese men, women and children in
the Chinese houses of that locality . . . Ge Thang's establishment on Dwight Way
and Shattuck Avenue, the notorious gambling den, that has been several times
raided by the police, has been converted into a nursery. More than forty babies,
from two weeks old to six years are safely housed and cared for in its walls ..."

  "Saturday afternoon [April 21] the University of California cadets returned to
this city, the army forces having been increased by several regiments of
regulars from outlying points. Then, too, the cadets were without blankets and
it was thought probable that they might be needed in Berkeley."

  "In an interview with Victor H. Henderson, secretary of the University of
California regents, yesterday [April 23], he made the following statement:

  " 'A conservative estimate of the refugees that have been cared for within our
city, based approximately upon the numbers fed, reaches beyond the 15,000 mark.
This includes the 2,000 Chinese and Japanese refugees but does not take in the
numerous people who went directly to the home of friends and did not come within
our ken,' "

  And affording a note of humor after the worst strain was over was the
following advertisement on May 19: "We have had a good many bricks mixed up with
our laundry, but are running smooth again. Prices as usual. Troy Laundry, Phone
Berkeley 73."

  When the panic was over, Berkeley had registered a permanent gain both in
population and in business. "It will give everyone who was familiar with
commercial San Francisco a queer and creepy feeling down his spine to drive
along the streets of commercial Berkeley and contemplate the business signs."
said Cheney's Sunset article. "He will find Tillman & Bendel, the California
Furniture Company, Tatum & Bowel, the California Power Works, the Yosemite
Engraving Company, the Van Emon Elevator Works, the Sperry Flour Company, and a
host of others which before the fire were milestones in the San Francisco
commercial roads."

  Berkeley's population almost doubled during the year after the San Francisco
fire. In consequence the Chamber of Commerce, which had been organized in 1905,
found so much reason to extol the city that it put forward strong claims in 1907
for transfer of the State Capital to Berkeley. The university city had something
to offer the State government in the form of a commanding site overlooking the
Golden Gate. Also, "the present state capitol building at Sacramento is in a
deplorable condition of dilapidation and ruin," declared a Chamber of Commerce
resolution. The legislature approved the move and tons of circulars were
distributed throughout the state, but in 1908 the change was defeated by the
voters, who had disapproved many earlier attempts at abandoning the Sacramento
site.

  This rebuff did not retard Berkeley. In fact, some cynics doubted that the
Chamber of Commerce had seriously expected to succeed. The expansive talk about
becoming State Capital was aimed, in the opinion of some, at attracting
attention to the blossoming city. A real estate tract was opening at that time,
for which advertising was needed. What better advertisement than the sowing of
the idea, however remote, that Berkeley should become State Capital? By the
close of the first decade of the new century the city had reached the 40,000
population class, becoming the fifth city in California and sixty-third in the
United States.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

BERKELEY
THE FIRST SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS

COMPILED BY WORKERS OF THE WRITERS' PROGRAM OF THE WORK PROJECTS ADMINISTRATION
IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA 

CO-SPONSORS: 
CITY OF BERKELEY  
BERKELEY FESTIVAL ASSOCIATION 

PUBLISHED BY THE GILLICK PRESS -BERKELEY- CALIFORNIA MCMXLI



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