Oh! What a slaughter of prices!

Berkeley Daily Gazette, 30 October 1930
(image courtesy of Steve Finacom)

The headline above is a direct quotation from a 1930 newspaper ad for the Call Me Joe men’s apparel store at 2008–12 Shattuck Avenue.

Founded in 1923, Call Me Joe was a downtown Berkeley fixture for four decades and one of its most thriving businesses during the great Depression. Much of the store’s success can be attributed to the dynamic personality of its founder and owner, Joseph W. Harris (1897–1978), who never shrank from a promotion.

The illustrated article Call Me Joe store ads pays tribute to Joe Harris’s unique brand of advertising, which monthly reached a new level of fever pitch.

How BAHA was born

Richard Ehrenberger, Jack Hillmer, Lesley Emmington & Leslie Freudenheim
at the Hillside Club reception celebrating the publication of Building with Nature,
8 November 1974 (photo: Craig Buchanan)

The Berkeley Architectural heritage Association was incorporated on 9 December 1974 (with close to 90 members), but the history of architectural preservation begins much earlier.

The story is told in the illustrated article BAHA History by Anthony Bruce.

Thirty years after the photo above was taken, Leslie Freudenheim is putting the final touches on her revised and expanded book, now titled Building With Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home, which will be published by Gibbs Smith in April 2005.

Hidden lodges of Berkeley and beyond

Senior Hall, U.C. Campus (John Galen Howard, (1905–6)
(photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)

A century ago, wonderful and unique buildings—clubhouses, lodges, and meeting and dining halls—were being constructed by Berkeley’s civic and campus groups, who called on Berkeley’s best architects, including Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan, John Galen Howard, John White, Henry Gutterson, and Albert Schweinfurth, to design these structures. The architects enthusiastically responded with an array of medieval castles, baronial halls, rustic log cabins, and similar architectural fantasies in both Berkeley and in places Berkeleyans loved to visit, such as the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Monterey Peninsula. Many of these buildings survive, most miraculously still in their original use and ownership, with character intact.

During the first half of 2005, BAHA will host a lecture and event series exploring, explaining, and celebrating these structures. At least five illustrated evening talks are planned, each given by architectural and historical experts, and each held in one of the featured buildings. Following the lecture, attendees would have the opportunity to tour the structure.

Lectures will be held from February through June, on the second Thursday of each month at 7:30 pm. Admission: $10 per lecture; $40 for a series of five. Full-time students with ID pay $6 per lecture; $25 per series.

10 February
Location: Senior Hall
Topic: Maybeck’s Glen Alpine Springs, Lake Tahoe
Speaker: Jim Thompson

10 March
Location: Senior Hall
Topic: Senior Men’s Hall & Senior Women’s Hall
Speaker: Harvey Helfand

14 April
Location: Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar Street
Topic: Panoramic Hill’s Sierra Club Legacy—
Parsons Lodge & Hutchinson Lodge
Speakers: Janice Thomas, Fredrica Drotos & Michael Kelly

12 May
Location: Senior Hall
Topic: Le Conte Memorial Lodge, Yosemite
Speaker: Bonnie Gisel, Curator, Le Conte Memorial Lodge

9 June
Location: Great Hall, The Faculty Club
Topic: The Faculty Club
Speaker: Kenneth Cardwell

Optional dinners can be reserved at the Faculty Club. Details are available in our Events Calendar. You may order advance tickets online. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Ashby Station historic resources

Little Chapel of the Flowers, 3049 Adeline Street, Ashby Station
(photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)

On 10 January 2005, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 6-1-2 to approve the proposed Ed Roberts Campus building at 3075 Adeline Street, on the site of the Ashby BART east parking lot. The motion passed by the LPC states that the building (80,000 square feet) would have no effect on surrounding cultural and historic resources. The architects submitted only a model, with no plans and no representation of the building within the surrounding historic context.

During the public hearing, BAHA presented pictorial documentation of historic buildings in the vicinity of the Ed Roberts Campus, supplementing our comprehensive Ashby Station survey of 2003. These photographs and more are available on the BAHA website in a growing number of pages documenting individual commercial and residential structures, clusters of similar buildings, and streetscapes in historic Ashby Station district.

The photographic survey now comprises thirteen parts, including building-by-building photo maps of all the blocks in the Ed Roberts Campus Area of Potential Effect (EPA). In addition, a color-coded street map shows the architectural styles of all the buildings by period.

You may also be interested in reading the article Ashby Station: A classic American streetcar suburb.