BAHA Fall Walking Tours

Claremont Creekside (Anthony Bruce)

In conjunction with our revised and expanded edition of the popular 41 Walking Tours of Berkeley, we’ll be leading a series of five walking tours in select Berkeley neighborhoods. All tours take place on a Saturday from 10 am to noon. Tour limit: 25 participants.

Members: $10 per tour / $40 for the series
General: $15 per tour / $50 for the series

Saturday, 19 September 2009
10:00 am–Noon
Dwight Way Station: The Downtown That Never Was
Leader: Steven Finacom

Nineteenth-century business boosters tried unsuccessfully to shift the center of Berkeley’s Downtown several blocks south to Dwight Way Station. They failed, and instead the area became today’s district of fascinating Victorian homes, small-scale commercial buildings, and nearly forgotten historic sites at the intersection of Downtown, the Southside, the Le Conte neighborhood, and the areas west of Shattuck Avenue. Walk is level and accessible, along sidewalks.

Saturday, 26 September 2009
10:00 am–Noon
West Berkeley
Leader: Stephanie Manning

Berkeley’s oldest district, once the independent town of Ocean View, abounds in historic relics and early Victorian architecture, retaining its charming village-like character. Walk is level and accessible, along sidewalks.

Saturday, 3 October 2009
10:00 am–Noon
North-Central Berkeley
Leader: Daniella Thompson

This little-explored area was farmland until the trains came to Berkeley in 1876. It was settled by laborers and tradesmen—some of them quite prosperous—as well as by prominent politicians, architects, and businessmen. In the 20th century, the district housed its share of well-known poets. In the architectural mix are Victorian, shingled Arts & Crafts, Art Deco, and modern buildings, but the dominant style is Colonial Revival, fashionable between 1895 and 1905. Walk is level and accessible, along sidewalks.

Saturday , 10 October 2009
10:00 am–Noon
Claremont Creekside   SOLD OUT
Leader: Anthony Bruce

When Claremont was conceived in the early 1900s, much of Berkeley had been subdivided in the traditional grid pattern without regard for the topography, and creeks had been buried. Why not create a “residential park,” wrote Duncan McDuffie in Claremont’s promotional brochure of 1905, “where the delightful contours of the land are kept intact, the streets curved and parked, and lots are all generous in size, and so laid out as to be planned for homesites, with oaks and a bit of creek, perhaps?” No doubt, the creek-traversed lots were an inspiration to creativity, as the varied configuration of the creek called for unique solutions in home design. Walk is level but not wheelchair accessible.

Saturday, 17 October 2009
10:00 am–Noon
Berkeley Villa Tract
Leader: Susan Cerny

This walk takes us along Codornices Creek through the center of the Berkeley Villa Tract, part of Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne’s 800-acre farm, which was subdivided in 1873. By 1877, Henry B. Berryman owned all of the Villa Tract, Byrne’s house, and the reservoir just west of Euclid Avenue. Walk is moderate, requiring some climbing. Not wheelchair accessible.

To order tickets, print, fill out, and mail the ticket order form.
You can also pay for tickets by credit card via PayPal. Please specify number of tickets and walk date[s] in the Description line.

Preservation at Work :: Fall Lecture Series

Municipal Rose Garden (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)

Our fall lecture series is a fundraiser to benefit the Kenney Cottage Restoration Fund.

Tickets: $15 per lecture; $40 for the series
All lectures will take place at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar Street, Berkeley, CA 94709.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009
7:30 pm
Gray Brechin :: A New Deal for the East Bay: Excavating the Buried Civilization of the Great Depression
New Deal public works agencies that put thousands of men and women to work transformed Berkeley and its sister cities within less than a decade, providing us with schools, parks and recreational facilities, and vital infrastructure from which we all continue to benefit. Gray Brechin will show what California's Living New Deal Project—partially supported by U.C. Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment—has discovered so far.

Dr. Gray Brechin is an historical geographer, a frequent radio and television guest, and a popular public speaker. He is currently a visiting scholar in the U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography and founder and project scholar of California’s Living New Deal Project.

Wednesday, 4 November 2009
7:30 pm
Jane Powell :: Smart Growth, Green Buildings & Other Oxymorons
The speaker takes aim at developers and local planning officials who’ve been propagating urban infill developments by spouting the smart-growth party line about how their developments are “smarter” than paving over farmland or will consist of buildings that are “greener” than the old bungalows or commercial buildings that are still standing in early-20th-century neighborhoods.

Labeled “the bad girl of bungalow writing,” Jane Powell is a restoration consultant, house restorer, lecturer, and author of six books, including Bungalow Kitchens, Bungalow Bathrooms, Bungalow Details: Exterior, Bungalow Details: Interior, Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts and Crafts Home, and Linoleum.

Wednesday, 18 November 2009
7:30 pm
Paul Groth :: Ordinary Storefronts of the Twentieth Century: Clues to the Local Histories of Shopping and Retailing
If we learn their historical vocabulary, store windows tell us much more than what is for sale inside a building. Using examples from the Bay Area and from elsewhere in the U.S., this lecture outlines changing forms used in the design and remodeling of everyday shop windows—and how these changes provide visual clues to the history of local retail investment, shopping culture, gender roles, and the vitality of neighborhood and downtown shopping districts.

Paul Groth is Professor of U.S. Built Environment History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has served on the faculties of the geography, architecture, and American studies departments since 1983. His most recent book, Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson (co-edited with Chris Wilson) was published in 2003 by the University of California Press.


To order tickets, print, fill out, and mail the ticket order form.
You can also pay for tickets by credit card via PayPal. Please specify number of tickets and lecture date[s] in the Description line.

First Church of Christ, Scientist Centennial Lecture

The sanctuary (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2007)

Inventing a Mastework: Bernard Maybeck and the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Berkeley, 1909–1911.

Speaker: Robert Judson Clark

This is the first event of a two-year observance of the centennial of the unusual building on the corner of Dwight Way and Bowditch Street. Maybeck was selected as architect in the fall of 1909. The first services in the new structure were held in August 1911. Clark will discuss the choice of architect, as well as the collaboration between the committee members, builders, and craftspeople who produced this audacious landmark of modern eclecticism.

Robert Judson Clark is a professor emeritus of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. He is the author of The Arts and Crafts Movement in America 1876–1916 and Design in America: the Cranbrook vision, 1925–1950.

Thursday, 8 October 2009
7:30 pm
First Church of Christ, Scientist
2619 Dwight Way, Berkeley, CA 94704

This event is being co-sponsored by the Friends of First Church.

Tickets: $15. To order tickets, visit our Events Calendar or use the ticket order form.

You can also pay for tickets by credit card via PayPal. Please specify number of tickets and lecture date[s] in the Description line.

Learn how to fix double-hung windows

Architect and BAHA board member Shawn Smith will lead a hands-on workshop in which you can learn how to repair your double-hung wooden windows. The workshop will be conducted on Saturday, 12 September 2009, 2 pm, at BAHA’s McCreary-Greer House, 2318 Durant Avenue. Cost: $15. Advance registration required. To register, send an e-mail to BAHA or call (510) 841-2242.