31 October 2008

Landmarks Preservation Ordinance: taking stock of 34 years


One of the two threatened Warren Cheney houses on the U.C. campus (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2006)

How did Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance come about? What did it do for Berkeley? The article Landmarks Preservation Ordinance: taking stock of 34 years examines the history of preservation in Berkeley and the city’s successes and failures in saving historic resources.

21 October 2008

Greening Your Historic Building


Heywood Apartments, 2119 Addison St. (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2008)

Thursday, 6 November 2008, 7:00 pm
North Berkeley Senior Center
1901 Hearst Avenue, Main Room


Come learn about the City of Berkeley’s efforts in green building and how green building methods can be applied to your historic building. Join the City of Berkeley and the Landmarks Preservation Commission for this discussion. Presentations by Billi Romain, City Sustainability Coordinator and Thomas Dufurrena, Principal at Page & Turnbull and expert in preservation and sustainable design. RSVP (510) 981-7488.

02 October 2008

A corrected history of the Heywood family


Charles W. Heywood House, 1808 Fifth Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2008)

Legendary Berkeley pioneer Zimri Brewer Heywood and his many sons, who included two Berkeley mayors and a California Assembly member, have accumulated a comet-like tail of stories and quasi-histories, repeated long enough to be taken for fact.

A new fortnightly series of articles on the Heywoods, published in the Berkeley Daily Planet and on the BAHA website, reconstructs the Heywood family’s history from original documents and newspaper reports, setting the record straight on what actually happened, and when.

Three articles have been published so far:

Zimri Brewer Heywood: Separating Fact From Myth

On the Trail of Zimri Brewer Heywood’s Residence

Will the Real William Heywood Stand Up?

More will follow.