Campanile Way designated a City Landmark

Campanile Way, a historic roadway on the University of California campus, was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark on 5 April 2018.

One of Berkeley’s oldest and most important landscape features, the “Way” leads downhill from Sather Tower, pointing directly toward the Golden Gate and San Francisco Bay.

This view corridor was inspired by Frederick Law Olmsted in the early 1860s; he advised the private College of California on planning the new campus site and suggested that the magnificent and symbolic view towards the Golden Gate should be the organizing principle of campus design. In the 1870s, the first buildings on the campus were sited accordingly, flanking a “baseline for buildings” that matched the line of today’s roadway. In the 1880s, the first campus library, Bacon Hall (featuring its own bell, clock tower, and flagpole), stood at the top of the “Way.”

In the early 20th century, Campanile Way took on its familiar classical form, flanked by John Galen Howard’s handsome granite Beaux-Arts buildings, lined with rows of pollarded London planetrees, and crowned with Sather Tower at its top. Since then, generations of campus users and visitors have been daily inspired by the view of the bay and the Golden Gate from the top of the “Way.” Several U.C. campus planning documents currently in effect recognize the importance of this view corridor.

The landmark application is accessible online.