Alameda County CA Archives History - Books .....Chapter V Center Of Learning 1941
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com February 16, 2007, 7:47 pm

Book Title: Berkeley The First Seventy-Five Years

1903-1941
Center of Learning

THE GREEK THEATRE gave Berkeley a cultural transfusion. Before its opening the
townspeople had depended on homespun productions in Shattuck Hall or on intimate
recitals in crowded parlors for their serious entertainment. Now they had a
theater such as no other American city of the time possessed—one whose sylvan
setting and classic stage both attracted and challenged top-ranking stars of the
drama and opera.

  At the dedicatory exercises, September 24, 1903, an overflow audience
witnessed a student production of scenes from Aristophanes' drama, The Birds.
Although few of the spectators understood one word of Greek or had any knowledge
of the plot, they "sat spellbound unto the end" of the play. The performance was
overshadowed by the dedication ceremony, featuring the four men chiefly
responsible for the Greek Theatre—Benjamin Weed, discoverer of the site;
President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, its conceiver; William Randolph Hearst, donor;
and John Galen Howard, architect. The spectators left feeling what one called
"the awe of ownership. The Greek Theatre was finished! It was theirs!"

  This "awe of ownership" for so beautiful a structure was resolved into loyal
patronage of classical dramas and fine musical events during the4 next two
decades. A university committee, of which Professor William Dallam Armes was
chairman, took charge of the theater and arranged a busy succession of
activities, both student and professional. Sunday afternoon "Half-Hours of
Music" said to have contributed more than anything else to the fame of Berkeley
as a center of culture, were presented free during the summer months; symphony
concerts were given under the direction of Professor John Frederick Wolle; the
Berkeley Oratorio Society presented oratorios, conducted by Paul Steindorff;
students used the theater regularly for everything from Greek dramas to bonfire
rallies; and it was the setting for many special events.

  As a home for such programs the Greek Theatre became the center of local
cultural activities; but it acquired a wider fame from the appearances of
visiting stage celebrities. Its first professional show was Twelfth Night,
presented two days after the dedication by an English Shakespearean company, the
Ben Greet Players, and on May 17, 1906, its international reputation was
established when Sarah Bernhardt played there in Racine's tragedy, Phedre.

  Bernhardt's Berkeley performance was unscheduled. The earthquake and fire a
month before had destroyed all the playhouses in San Francisco and forced the
Bernhardt company to play in Oakland, where she appeared twice in Ye Liberty
Playhouse, and in Berkeley. The classic Greek Theatre was an exciting discovery
for her, in joyous conflict with her tears over the desolation of San Francisco.
"It has always been a dream of mine to play Phedre sometime in the open air" she
said,"but I never dreamed of doing it in Greece."

  Berkeley was still overrun with refugees, many of whom joined the audience of
five thousand that climbed to the Greek Theatre on that sunny spring afternoon
to see the "Divine Sarah." "Her Phedre." said a newspaper commentator, "though a
tragic figure in a tragedy-haunted community, supplied the first big breathing
spell that the fire-sufferers had enjoyed." The recent disaster was forgotten as
Bernhardt's voice "cooed and soothed and sobbed through the lines" and the
majority would have agreed with Mabel Craft Deering that this was "one of the
great events in the world's dramatic history." "Her tawny eyes flashed from
beneath the fringe of hair." Mrs. Deering wrote, "and as she left the
amphitheatre in an open carriage without a veil, she was cheered
enthusiastically by thousands of people who had lingered on the heights among
the trees, or along the campus to wave and shout her an enthusiastic farewell."

  The spectators and the critics were almost unanimous in praising Bernhardt's
performance, although one reporter disparagingly quoted a lowbrow remark that
the show "was Greek to most of 'em and French to the rest"—a weak and
inappropriate jest to those who had sat "spellbound unto the end" of the student
production of The Birds in Greek, three years before. However, there were many
who felt that despite the magnificence of Bernhardt's acting, the production had
done an injustice to the beautiful new theater. "I agree with the criticism of
those absurd [stage] settings^' Professor Armes was quoted as saying in the
Berkeley Daily Gazette on May 19, "but I must insist that Bernhardt's stage
manager be held responsible. He was the doctor and he did the work of ordering
the arrangement that you saw on the stage: I know that the palms looked foolish,
and the Oregon pine chairs and symphony concert dais were unforgivable, but
please charge it all to the Parisian who is paid a salary by Bernhardt to see to
all that."

  Bernhardt's performance had been announced as her "last appearance" in
northern California, for which reason "one hopes with some certainty that she
will come again" one critic wrote. She did come again, repeating Phedre on May
8, 1911, and receiving from the same Professor Armes, as chairman of the
theater's managing committee, a laurel wreath for having "set the standard of
dramatic perfection in California's well-known open air theater and [having]
inspired its directors to have nothing but the best." By then the theater had
become a fairly regular stopping place for notable stage stars, including
Constance Crawley in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Maude Adams in As You Like It
and L'Aiglon, Margaret Anglin in Antigone and Electra, and the Ben Greet Players
in more Shakespearean productions. Soon to follow were Nance O'Neill in Ingomar,
Sothern and Marlowe in Macbeth, and Margaret Anglin in other Greek dramas.

  These events, and the less publicized concerts and student dramas, were a
great stimulus to Berkeley's cultural life. Prior to the opening of the theater
the city's only musical organizations had been two small music clubs: the
Berkeley Piano Club, organized by five ladies in 1893 to encourage practice, and
the Etude Club. In 1910 was formed the Berkeley Musical Association, whose
concert program soon rivaled the Greek Theatre's schedule of activities. Under
the energetic direction of William E. Chamberlain the association brought to
Berkeley during the next quarter-century many world-famous concert stars,
including Josef Hofman, Harold Bauer, Efrem Zimbalist, Rudolf Ganz, Mischa
Elman, Josef Lhevinne, Julia Culp, Maude Powell, Edward Johnson, Alfred Cortot,
Georges Enesco, Tito Schipa, and Jose Iturbi. Within a few years the association
had a membership of two thousand; its growth inspired a proud Chamber of
Commerce boast that the university city had become "a genuine musical center."

  A change in management of the Greek Theatre in 1918, following the death of
Professor Armes, brought a widening of its activities. Samuel J. Hume, who had
starred in student and professional productions while an undergraduate
(1904-08), was made director. Hume was given charge not only of theater events,
but also of all concerts, plays, lectures, and art exhibitions on the university
campus. He organized the Greek Theatre Players, composed of professionals,
students, graduates, and townspeople. With this organization he presented in the
Greek Theatre each spring and autumn a series of major productions, principally
the important and rarely seen plays of Shakespeare. In the winter season, making
a virtue of necessity, he produced in Wheeler Hall an extensive repertory of
Shaw, Ibsen, O'Neill, and other well-known moderns. The tempo of events in the
Greek Theatre was speeded up, with such feature productions as Robert Mantell in
King Lear; the French Army Band and Sousa's Band; Mme. Ernestine Schumann-Heink
in the oratorio Elijah; Ruth St. Denis with her dancers in the ballet from
Massenet's opera, Bacchus, and with Ted Shawn in the Maxwell Armfield
production, Miriam, Sister of Moses; the grand operas Aida, Samson and Delilah,
and Marriage of Figaro.

  Further expansion of Berkeley's cultural activities at this time, for which
the stimulus of the Greek Theatre can be credited, brought to life several other
musical and dramatic organizations. Among the musical groups were the Berkeley
Violin Club; the Amphion Club, sponsored by music teachers; and, somewhat later,
the Berkeley Music Center. In 1920 the short-lived Berkeley Theater of Allied
Arts, founded by Maxwell Armfield, began recruiting prominent university and
townspeople as members. In 1922 the Berkeley Playhouse began a ten-year career
as one of the nation's leading experimental theaters, attaining distinction
especially for its revival of the old P. T. Barnum morality play, The Drunkard.
In 1924 a playwriting and production group was formed, called The Play-shop;
renamed the Berkeley Playmakers in 1927, it received country-wide recognition in
the little theater movement for its original work. Many members of these
organizations rose to prominence in the professional theater, screen, and radio.

  Following Hume's departure in 1923, use of the Greek Theatre diminished
greatly. Although occasional operas and professional productions were given, it
became increasingly difficult to attract outstanding artists to the outdoor
stage in the new age of radio and talking pictures. The theater was used chiefly
for student activities and university affairs, such as the Horace Festival,
presented in 1935 by the English Club in collaboration with other Bay region
colleges, commemorating the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of the Roman
poet. The 1941 program of the Berkeley Festival Association, featuring such
stars as John Charles Thomas and Conductor Bruno Walter, brought back "big-time"
productions to its classic stage; but regardless of its future course, its
importance in Berkeley's cultural history had been firmly established during its
first two decades.

Satellites of the University

THE PHOEBE APPERSON HEARST award of a $10,000 prize to Henri Jean Emile Benard
in 1898 for a new plan for the campus caused international publicity about
Berkeley as a "city of learning." An article in Harper's Magazine on "A Western
City of Learning" described the plans for erecting buildings "worthy of . . .
the most beautiful site on earth for the purposes of a university"; San
Francisco and eastern newspapers took up the story; the London Spectator, in an
article entitled "A City of Learning" spoke with some amazement of the plans for
establishing so near to the "intensely modern and feverish city" of San
Francisco a seat of learning "which rivals in its conception the Benedictine
monasteries of the Middle Ages. What deeper contrast could be imagined?"

  While Benard's grandiose conception of the university had to be greatly
modified, Berkeley became increasingly a "city of learning" during the following
decades, as other scholastic foundations were established there. During the
first decade of the new century three of the largest divinity schools in the
West—the Pacific School of Religion, the Berkeley Baptist School for the
Ministry, and the Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry —and a Catholic
preparatory school, St. Joseph's Academy, later St. Mary's College High School,
were established in Berkeley. To these were added in later years the Church
Divinity School of the Pacific, the Cora Williams Institute, and the Berkeley
Teachers College. The California Institution for the Deaf and the Blind was
divided into two advanced institutions. Improvement of the public school system
brought Berkeley's investment in its city schools—buildings, equipment and
land—to an estimated twenty million dollars in 1940.

  The forerunner of the Pacific School of Religion was organized in San
Francisco two years before the College of California became a State university.
In 1858 the Reverend C. W Pond, as chairman of the Education Committee of the
American Association of Congregational Churches, had stated that the time was at
hand when California should train its own men for the ministry. However, it was
not until 1869 that the California Theological Seminary, later called the
Pacific Theological Seminary, was opened in rented rooms over a book store in
San Francisco. Two years later the school was moved to property previously
occupied by the Female College of the Pacific—on Seminary Hill in
Oakland—purchased with $80,000 in gold.

  Accomplishment of plans formed in 1873 by the Congregationalists of California
to "procure land in the vicinity of the State University, and to cause to be
erected thereon a Church of Christ and a College Home" was delayed nearly three
decades. In 1901 the school was moved to a building on Atherton Street in
Berkeley, previously occupied by the Harmon Seminary and afterward by the
Berkeley Gymnasium. Four years later the school was moved again, this time to
its present campus at Scenic and Le Conte Avenues on a hilltop overlooking San
Francisco Bay and the Marin hills. It became interdenominational in 1912: the
graduating class that year included two Methodists, one Episcopalian, and three
Congregationalists, one of whom had been a Baptist until a few months before. On
its fiftieth anniversary in 1916 the name of the seminary changed to Pacific
School of Religion.

  John Henry Barrows, the first of a series of speakers heard under the auspices
of the school's Earl Lectureship Foundation, told Berkeleyans in 1902 that the
future great center of the world probably would be either in San Francisco or
Shanghai. Other foundation lecturers have been Viscount James Bryce, Walter
Rauschenbusch, S. Parkes Cadman, James Henry Breasted, Booker T Washington,
Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Van Dyke.

  Holbrook Memorial Library, a Gothic structure of gray cut stone donated to the
school by Charles Holbrook of San Francisco, contains 9,0,000 volumes, as well
as theological publications, manuscripts, and relics, a group of Babylonian
cuneiform tablets, a "Breeches" Bible printed in Geneva in 1650, a group of
fourth-century Biblical inscriptions on papyrus, and a rubbing of the
inscription on the Nestorian Monument in China. A bound collection of pioneer
letters, describing early educational and church work in California, is
preserved there. An archaeological exhibit contains relics dating from 3500 B.C.

  Archaeological expeditions in Palestine in recent years under the leadership
of Dr. Chester C. McCown and William F. Bade resulted in establishment of the
Palestine Institute at the Pacific School of Religion, where lamps from
Palestine—unused for three thousand years—were lit in October, 1939, at a
reception honoring the new president of the school, Dr. Arthur Cushman
McGiffert, Jr.

  Difficulty in finding ministers for Unitarian Churches on the Pacific Coast
caused the Pacific Unitarian Conference in 1889 to sponsor a movement for a
theological school in the West. Among the chief supporters of the movement,
which resulted in the founding of the Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry,
were Dr. Horace Davis, president of the University of California from 1887 to
1890, and his wife. The school was opened in Oakland in 1904 and was moved two
years later to Berkeley. Its library includes an unrivaled collection of
Unitariana, consisting of more than twenty-three thousand books and seven
thousand pamphlets.

  In 1940 the Unitarian school sold its property at Allston Way and Dana Streets
to the university and purchased new land on LeConte Avenue. It began holding its
classes in rooms of the Pacific School of Religion until new buildings could be
erected.

  Western divinity schools were also organized by Baptists and Episcopalians in
the decade before 1900. The Berkeley Baptist School for the Ministry was founded
in 1891 in Oakland and was moved in 1905 to its present location in a
slate-roofed red brick building at Hillegass Avenue and Dwight Way. Devoted to
the training of men and women for the ministry and missionary service, the
school has alumni in nine foreign countries and twenty-two States.

  The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, founded by Bishop William Ford
Nichols of the Episcopal Diocese of California, was opened in San Mateo in 1893,
transferred to San Francisco in 1911, and moved to Berkeley in 1930. Buildings
on its campus, a block north of the university on Ridge Road, include All Saints
Chapel, erected in 1937-1938 as a memorial to the Reverend George F. Weld, and a
library building, completed in 1940 and named in honor of the Reverend James
Otis Lincoln, which houses the Powell Memorial Biblical and Semitic Library and
other special collections, as well as fifteen thousand volumes of standard works.

  Three preparatory schools have occupied a picturesque building just over the
Berkeley city line in present Albany, once called the Peralta Hotel, although it
was never used as a hostelry. It was first used in the nineties by Mrs.
Sprague's School for Girls, later by Professor Dunn's School for boys, and
finally, in 1903, by St. Joseph's Academy, then a grammar school for resident
students, which had been established in Oakland in 1878. (A new brick building,
now the school's main structure, was erected nearby in 1927, and the academy
became St. Mary's High School, affiliated with St. Mary's College of Moraga.)

  The Peralta Hotel had been completed in 1891 by Maurice Strelinger, a
Polish-Jewish actor known on the stage and in private life as Maurice B. Curtis.
"A number of enthusiasts banded together, headed by M. B. Curtis," the San
Francisco Call reported on December 12, 1891, "and put up what was intended as a
very imposing and capacious caravansary on the beautiful elevation known as
Peralta Park. It was a boom move, but turned out a boomlet. The intention was to
establish there a popular summer resort, and on the strength of the prospect to
sell off surrounding premises cut up into small lots at fancy prices. Several
brass bands and free lunches celebrated the events. But somehow the people
didn't enthuse, and the enterprise was not a howling success. The hotel was
nevertheless constructed at a cost of $125,000, and it is truly a fine, splendid
edifice."

  Curtis, who played the title role in a popular stage production, Sam'l O'
Posen, in the late eighties, became despondent when experienced hotel men of New
York expressed the opinion that it would take a fortune to run the new Peralta
Hotel. Shortly before the hotel was to be opened in 1891 he went with several
friends to see a play in San Francisco. He had been drinking heavily. When a
policeman, George Grant, attempted to arrest him, he resisted. In the scuffle
that ensued the officer was shot. Curtis was arrested for murder. Three times he
was tried and each time the jury disagreed. He was finally released on bail and
went East. Because of the enormous expense of the legal talent he had engaged,
he lost his interest in the Peralta Hotel Company and died destitute in the Los
Angeles County Hospital in 1925. The home built by Curtis at Sacramento and
Hopkins Streets later became a play school. Posen Avenue in that neighborhood
was named for the character he portrayed in the play, Sam'l O' Posen, and Albina
Street was named for his wife. Acton Street was once called Fleurenge, his
wife's stage name.

  Wrhen the California Institution for the Deaf and the Blind became two schools
in 1921, new buildings were erected for the School for the Blind, and the
original buildings were assigned to the School for the Deaf. The only
residential school of its kind in the State, the California School for the Deaf
is part of the State public-school system. Its specially trained staff of
teachers, instructors, and officers and its large central library of charts,
flash cards, picture descriptions, and all other materials equip it to receive
all types of deaf children. All graduates from the school who can successfully
pass entrance examinations are admitted to the government-supported National
College for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., commonly known as Gallaudet College,
the only college for the deaf in the world. The principal of the school, Elwood
A. Stevenson, is also Chief of the Bureau for the Deaf, in charge of all State
work in the field of special education of children and adults with defective
hearing.

  All but one of the six major buildings now occupied by the California School
for the Blind were constructed under a plan inaugurated in 1923, shortly after
the school assumed separate identity. In addition to classrooms for regular
academic work, the school has insulated music practice rooms, a typing and
dictaphone room, library and printing rooms, a kindergarten, and an auditorium
containing a modern pipe organ. The course of instruction extends from
kindergarten through the twelfth grade, offering, in addition to the academic
work, courses in vocal and instrumental music, home economics, general handwork
(basketry, weaving, clay, and wood work), and physical education and recreation.
The school's superintendent, Dr. Richard S. French, reported in 1941 that "our
scholarship ranks highest in the world . . . Our school library is rated among
the finest, with service extended to blind students throughout the State." Dr.
French, superintendent of the school since 1922, is the author of a book, From
Homer to Helen Keller, used at Harvard, Columbia, and other eastern universities
as a standard reference work.

  A comparative newcomer among Berkeley's schools is the Williams College of
Liberal Arts. Formerly called the Cora Williams Institute, it was founded in
1918 by Cora Williams, author of Creative Involution and Adding a New Dimension
to Education. Training included the first two years of college work until 1935,
when a four-year college course was instituted.

  More than seventeen hundred teachers have been trained by the Dodd School,
founded in 1901 and incorporated in 1927 as Western Normal. It is the only
private school in California whose charter enables it specifically to prepare
students for elementary school teaching.

  In the field of commercial education distinguishing features of Berkeley's
business schools are high scholastic requirements and new types of equipment for
scientific business training. The two largest are the Armstrong College of
Business Administration, established in 1918 with six students, which has a
library of specialized business type containing nine thousand volumes, and the
California College of Business, founded in 1934, a nonprofit organization
administered by a board of trustees.

  Along with the university these schools attracted a large transient student
population to Berkeley. The city also acquired a plentiful share of private
schools of a more local character and built up a first-class public school
system, justifying its designation as a city of learning.

Building the Great University

IN THE FIRST four decades of the twentieth century the University of California
advanced far beyond the most visionary expectations of its founders. Its student
enrollment grew several times over; the number and value of its endowments and
gifts steadily increased; new buildings were erected, new educational
departments added, and libraries and special facilities enlarged and expanded;
brilliant contributions were made to science. Thus the university progressed to
leadership among American institutions of learning.

  A large share of the credit for this growth rests with the New England scholar
who was inaugurated president in 1899—Benjamin Ide Wheeler. In his first report
to the governor in 1900, Wheeler listed the fifteen items he considered to be
the "most pressing needs of the University": (1) five hundred thousand dollars
in library funds; (2) a new library building; (3) a social hall for students,
alumni, and teachers; (4) an art building; (5) a School of Forestry; (6) a
Department of Irrigation; (7) a School of Naval Architecture and Engineering;
(8) a Department of Music; (9) a School of Archaeology; (10) a School of
Architecture; (11) a laboratory for a Department of Dairy Husbandry; (12) a
Department of Physical Chemistry; (13) an instructor in public speaking; (14)
instructors in Spanish, Russian, and general linguistics; (15) lectureships and
professorships for the School of Commerce.

  Wheeler, seventh administrative head of the university in its first thirty
years, had been warned that his tenure would be short. He stayed for twenty
years. When he retired as president emeritus in 1919 all fifteen of his "most
pressing needs" had been met, by either State funds or private donations, and so
much more had been accomplished in physical and academic development that the
university was only remotely the same institution he had entered. "He came to
the University a distinguished scholar; he proved himself a great
administrator," wrote Dr. Monroe E. Deutsch, present provost and vice-president.
"He could understand the scholarly needs of the University, but also the hopes
and aspirations of the students. He could speak before the people of the State
and make the University understood."

  When Wheeler's administration began, construction of the first buildings under
John Galen Howard's modification of the Benard Plan was just getting under way.
Public and private funds combined to carry out a program which replaced many of
the old wooden buildings and gave the university eleven permanent structures by
the time of Wheeler's retirement. Ground was broken for the President's House in
1900, although construction was not completed until 1911, and California Hall,
dedicated in 1905, was the first Benard-Plan structure to be occupied. In 1907
the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, donated by Phoebe Apperson Hearst as a
memorial to her husband, Senator George Hearst, was completed. Succeeding
private bequests provided all or part of the funds for many more buildings: from
Jane K. Sather came funds for construction of Sather Gate (1909) and Sather
Tower, popularly called the Campanile (1914); from Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt, for
Boalt Hall in 1911; from Charles Franklin Doe, for the Doe Memorial Library in
1917. Wheeler Hall, erected in 1916 and named in honor of the president, and
Hilgard Hall, constructed and named the next year for Professor Eugene W
Hilgard, completed the major construction program of the Wheeler administration.
Thereafter building activity for major academic structures lagged for a decade,
until pressure of the constantly growing student body resulted in erection of
the enormous Life Sciences Building and Giannini Hall (the latter the gift of
Amadeo Peter Giannini), both of which were opened in 1930.

  While this building program is physical evidence of the expansion of the
university during the past forty years, more spectacular evidence has been the
increase in structures devoted to student activities. Stephens Union,
headquarters for student life on the campus outside of classroom hours, was
built in 1921 by popular subscription as a memorial to Henry Morse Stephens,
popular and distinguished historian. In it are the offices of the Associated
Students and of the California Alumni Association, largest alumni group in the
world, whose magazine, the California Monthly, has been cited nine times in
national contests as a distinguished alumni publication. The association
sponsors the "University Explorer" named the foremost educational radio program
in the United States; provides funds for freshman scholarships; and in 1941
added to its activities campaigns to raise funds for women's dormitories on the
several university campuses.

  Neighboring Eshleman Hall houses the offices of other campus publications,
including the Daily Californian, an outgrowth of the early-day student
newspaper, the Berkeleyan; the annual Blue and Gold; The California Folio
(successor to The Grizzly, originally The Occident), campus literary
publication; the Pelican, a humorous monthly magazine; and the California
Engineer, published by the students of the College of Engineering. Built in 1930
at a cost of $240,000, Eshleman Hall is dedicated to John Morton Eshleman, an
alumnus who served the State as a member of the Legislature, chairman of the
railroad commission, and lieutenant governor.

  The million-dollar California Memorial Stadium, with a seating capacity of
82,000, was completed in time for the "Big Game" with Stanford in 1923. The
stadium, dedicated to Californians who died in the World War, was built by
popular subscription.

  The Hearst Gymnasium for Women was erected in 1927, as a gift from publisher
William Randolph Hearst in honor of his mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, donor of
the original women's gymnasium, destroyed by fire in 1922. The Gymnasium for Men
(completed in 1933) replaced the venerable Harmon Gymnasium. The George C.
Edwards Field adjoining the men's gymnasium, named in honor of a member of the
first graduating class, was dedicated in 1932. It comprises a track, turfed
fields, and stadium, and is used primarily for baseball and track events.

  International House, a gift of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was opened in August,
1930, as a residential and social center for foreign and American students
without discrimination against race, color, sex, and religion. Its library was
provided through a donation of $10,000 from the Carnegie Foundation.

  Few of the early student traditions survived the turn of the century. The Big
"C" on Charter Hill, target of paint-splashing brigades from California's
football rivals, marks a time when class spirit began to give way to university
spirit. Until 1904 it was a tradition of the freshman class to rush up the hill
behind the campus on the evening before Charter Day and burn its numerals into
the greensward; tradition also required that the sophomore class try to prevent
this organized impertinence. Strong opposition to this struggle—which resulted
in many injuries and served to perpetuate bitterness between the two
classes—grew steadily among upper classmen, the faculty, and the university
administration. In 1904 there was no "rush" and it was decided to divert the
energies of the lower classmen into construction of a huge concrete "C"

  In the early morning hours of Charter Day, March 18, 1905, a long line of
freshmen and sophomores began the work of passing bags of sand and cement up the
hillside, while others prepared the ground for construction of the monumental
letter. That afternoon, as Professor Henry Van Dyke of Princeton University
began to address the thousands gathered in the Greek Theatre to commemorate the
university's thirty-seventh anniversary, a spine-tingling "Oski-wow-wow" floated
down the hill and filled the theater with echoes. The last wheel-barrow of
cement had been dumped; the students had completed their work; the Big "C" was
finished.

  Each year during football season, the Big "C" is guarded against marauding
students from other colleges. Four gallons of yellow enamel are required to
restore it to its proper color after a painting raid. In 1938 a thorough
cleaning revealed that the "C" had been painted at least seventy-nine
times—twenty times with Stanford red.

  When Benjamin Ide Wheeler first came to Berkeley he said: "The only thing that
is of interest to me in a university is men and women." Although he was
extraordinarily successful in attracting political and financial support to the
university, the real measure of the sound academic foundation on which he built
the modern university was the achievements of the men and the departments he put
to work in the new buildings. Wheeler's successors continued his high standards.
In a survey by the American Council on Education during 1938, the Berkeley
campus of the University of California tied with Harvard for first place in a
weighted rating of distinguished and adequate departments among American
universities.

  The Guggenheim Foundation reported in 1937 that the University of California
had been awarded more Guggenheim fellowships than any other university, with
Harvard, Chicago, and Minnesota tied for second place. In 1941 the several
branches of the university had twenty-seven members in the National Academy of
Sciences (established by President Abraham Lincoln as a means of singling out
the Nation's most noted scholars for advisory service to the Federal
Government), whose membership is limited to 314, or an average of six for each
State.

Advances in Religion

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, largely responsible for the planning, naming, and
publicizing of Berkeley, helped shape the character of the town in many ways:
one which was unexpected to the founders—but which pleased the church-goers who
dominated the town's early populace —was a State law of 1873 (recast in 1876 and
again in 1909) establishing a prohibition belt around the university campus as a
means of shielding college students from the temptations of alcohol. Each
prohibition fixed a different width to the "dry" zone. The first prohibited
traffic in "malt, spirituous or other alcoholic liquors" within a two-mile
limit; the second failed to mention malt liquors, and reduced the limit to one
mile; the third also failed to mention malt liquors, and fixed the boundary at
one and one-half miles. The later acts, being less rigid than the first, were a
cause of much concern to the town's temperance groups, since they left West
Berkeley outside the dry zone. Many attempts to close the saloons which
flourished there culminated in a short-lived prohibition ordinance of 1899-1900.
In 1906 the Berkeley Reporter remarked editorially: "The State law prohibits the
sale of liquor within a mile of the University, and the general attitude of the
citizens has always been to discourage the sale of liquor in every part of the
town." But although outnumbered in the city's elections, the West Berkeleyans
stuck steadfastly to their claim for self-determination of the liquor question,
and continued to operate their taverns.

  Despite the waywardness of the western district, the dry zone, which blanketed
the larger part of Berkeley's land and population, gave the city an early
reputation as a very moral town. It attracted additional residents with an
aversion to alcohol, so that Berkeley became a citadel for the anti-saloon
movement and maintained a high ratio of churches. "Magnificent churches of all
Christian denominations are very largely attended and their pastors keep in
touch with the work of the University and with University life," stated the
Berkeley Reporter in January, 1906. "The interchange of influence has been most
helpful and the churches find many of their most ardent supporters among the
University Faculty and among the students."

  The religious development of Berkeley kept pace with the town's educational
achievements; the village chapels, halls, and schoolrooms where small groups had
gathered for the first religious services were supplanted by handsome new
buildings. The First Congregational Church, which had held Berkeley's initial
services for twenty-three charter members in a tiny chapel in 1875, built a
inmposing edifice of old New England style in 1924 at a cost of more than
$250,000.The Trinity Methodist Church, pure Gothic, was built in 1928 at a cost
of $ 130,000, and six years later a $40000 social and religious educational hall
was added. The Epworth University Methodist Church erected its present building
in 1923 at an expenditure of $200,000, and the University Christian Church
completed its structure, English Gothic in design, at a cost of $120,000 in 1931.

  In 1941 there were more than seventy churches of various faiths in Berkeley,
and university student centers were maintained by the Presbyterian, Baptist,
Episcopal, Methodist, Congregational, and Lutheran denominations.

  Many famous personages have visited the churches of the city of learning. "Dr.
Stanley Armstrong Hunter owns a hymnal which bears the signatures of nearly a
thousand persons who have, at his request, written their names after their
favorite hymns" reported Hal Johnson in the Berkeley Gazette in March, 1941.
"Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed under 'Lead, Kindly Light,' as did both
President Robert Gordon Sproul and Mrs. Sproul; also Roger W. Babson, John
Howell, Jeanette Rankin, and several others. One might believe that former
President Herbert Hoover, because of his great humanitarian work during the last
World War, might have selected 'Rescue the Perishing,' but he didn't. Both he
and Mrs. Hoover wrote their names over Kipling's recessional, 'God of Our
Fathers.' "

  Edward Rowland Sill, who served as professor of English at the university from
1874 to 1902, was the author of the hymn, "Send Down Thy Truth, O God"; it was
taken from his book of poetry, The Hermitage, published in 1876. This hymn is
found in the Congregational and Methodist hymn books, which also contain a hymn
written in 1913 by the Reverend Charles Stedman Newhall, who died in Berkeley in
1935 at the age of ninety-three. Dr. Frederick L. Hosmer, former pastor of the
Unitarian Church, who died in Berkeley in 1929, at the age of eighty-nine, was
also a well-known hymn writer.



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



File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/alameda/history/1941/berkeley/chapterv254gms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/cafiles/

File size: 37.9 Kb