Plans for a branch library in West Berkeley were finalized a century ago. On Jan. 30, 1923, the Berkeley City Council approved the branch’s design and cost, the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported.
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Long paid the city $3,200 for the 50-foot-wide San Pablo Avenue lot and sold the 100-foot-wide lot to the city for the same amount. Long would then build the library structure at an estimated cost of $14,000, being paid $6,800 up front by the city and $2,000 a year with a 6% interest rate.
“Architect W.K. Bartges of the Roy O. Long Company has drawn up plans for the library building calling for a one-story studio front and having a main reading room 35 feet by 609 feet, a work room and lavatories,” according to the Gazette.
Why would Long trade a 100-foot-wide lot for one that was 50 feet wide? My guess is that since University Avenue wasn’t yet a major commercial corridor, land on San Pablo Avenue in 1923 was more valuable for commercial purposes.
Apartment dispute: In other development news, realtor W.J. Mortimer attacked Berkeley’s city planner, Carol Aronovici, calling him an “imminent idealist” in a dispute over construction of an apartment building southeast of the city’s downtown.
Mortimer wanted the City Council to rezone a lot at Atherton and Allston Way so that Charles I. Roberts “might erect a $45,000 apartment house” containing 17 units. The Planning Commission had recommended against it based on Aronovici’s advice that the building would stand too close to the side property line and that if another large building were constructed next to it using the same zoning the apartments would be blocked from access to light and air and not comfortably habitable.
Mortimer mocked Aronovici’s objections, saying he was standing in the way of development and more property tax income for the city. Aronovici replied that the block could get too crowded with apartments and “first thing you know, we will be getting like New York.”
That prompted Councilmember Charles Heywood, a business owner, to say “Well, if we can look like New York by granting this petition I’m for it!”
Curiously, the University of California’s comptroller (and future president), Robert Gordon Sproul, sent a letter to the council opposing the up-zoning. Why? Maybe because the university still regarded this neighborhood as a place for expansion and if large private buildings were constructed there, they would be more expensive for the campus to buy and demolish in the future.
The council supported the up-zoning request and overturned the Planning Commission ruling. In less than a decade, it would all be moot. The university would indeed move to buy the property and its surrounding blocks, and Edwards Track Stadium stands there today.
Hearst Hall: Feb. 5, 1923, brought news that the university had selected a site to build a replacement for Hearst Hall, which had burned in June 1922. Hearst Hall was the fantastic wooden building that looked like an overturned ship, was designed by Bernard Maybeck and was used as a gymnasium for women on the campus.
The new Hearst Hall would be on Bancroft Way and paid for by William Randolph Hearst, whose mother, UC Regent Phoebe Apperson Hearst, had donated the original building.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.
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