A century ago, in early December 1922, Berkeley’s first and oldest Church building was scheduled for demolition. William Warren Ferrier, one of Berkeley’s most noted early historians, wrote an extensive article about the history of the building in the Dec. 1, 1922, Berkeley Daily Gazette.

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At the time the building stood on Center Street west of Oxford Street, and had been raised to include a new ground floor. At that location it originally functioned as an annex to the Kellogg School — one of Berkeley’s first public schools. It later served other purposes, including functioning as the initial home for Berkeley’s first synagogue.

“More recently, it has served as a storage room for second-hand books,” Ferrier wrote. In 1922 it had the street addresses of 2118-2130 Center St. The plan, Ferrier said, was to demolish it so a “new and modern business building” could be constructed on the lot.

The first Christian religious services in Berkeley were held in 1871 in a private boys school. A few years later, Congregationalists — including Samuel Willey, one of the College of California’s founders — organized a congregation of that denomination for Berkeley.

The first Congregationalist services were held on June 28, 1874, “in the southwest corner room on the first floor of the Berkeley hotel, on the corner of Bancroft Way and Choate Street (now Telegraph Avenue). There was a congregation of 20 persons,” and the service was led by the Revs. Dr. James H. Warren and E.S. Lacy.

Two months later the new congregation appointed a building committee. The congregation was officially organized with 23 members on Dec. 1, 1874. Oakland’s First Congregational Church arranged to acquire and donate a large lot at Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way, and the small new church building was erected there, about 100 feet north of Dwight.

The first services were held there in the new building, a modest one-story wooden structure with a hipped roof and a fanlight over the front door, in March 1875. Within a decade the congregation had grown enough that it built and moved to a new, larger, church at Durant Avenue and Dana Street.

“The property on Telegraph Avenue and Dwight Way was sold and the building which had served as a house of worship from 1875 to 1884 found its way ere long to Center Street,” Ferrier wrote.

In that era it was relatively easy to move wooden buildings, and presumably the building was lifted up, placed on rollers and pulled by horses to its new site several blocks to the northwest.

Ferrier noted in his article that the old church structure would be demolished in about a week and that he had “arranged to secure some fragments of the old building,” which he wanted to see incorporated into a new Congregationalist church structure — the third to be built — which would stand at the corner of Dana and Durant (that’s the red brick church that still stands there today).

Councilman hurt: City Councilman George Schmidt suffered burns on Dec. 1, 1922, while trying to put out a fire in his home at 1541 Henry St.

“Schmidt had been rubbing down the back hallway with coal oil, cleaning up after painters, and stepped into the kitchen for a smoke,” the Gazette reported. A minute later when he walked out into the hallway with a lighted cigar in his mouth flames burst out.”

They ignited his clothes, and he burned his hands putting out flames on the cloth, then ran to his barn and brought back a hose to fight the fire. The Fire Department also arrived. Damage was estimated at $300.

Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.