The Ark

Photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004

From 1906 until 1964, the University of California’s School of Architecture (now the College of Environmental Design) was housed in a modest brown-shingle building at the north gate of the campus. The building was called the Ark and nurtured many important Bay Area architects, including such luminaries as John Hudson Thomas, Henry Gutterson, and Walter Steilberg.

John Galen Howard designed the Ark as a temporary building, planning to replace it eventually with a monumental, granite-clad Arts building. The grand design never came to fruition, and the little Ark (now North Gate Hall, home of the Graduate School of Journalism) is with us still.

Read about it in Berkeley Landmarks.