A century ago, Berkeley was in the midst of a protracted dispute over whether new churches should be built in residential zones. Local zoning was new, and as subdivisions spread into the north Berkeley hills and the local population increased, religious institutions tried to follow, some of them creating their congregations from residents of the new districts.

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They were met, in a number of cases, by strong opposition from other new residents who didn’t want the potential disruption of any nonresidential uses — stores, factories, agricultural facilities and churches — near their homes.

A number of church-neighbor disputes had come to, or were headed for, the City Council and the Planning Commission. These included a proposal to build the Northbrae Methodist Episcopal Church at Napa and Hopkins as well as a plan for “a $100,000 Catholic Church” at Berryman, Henry and Milvia and expansion of All Souls Church at Spruce and Cedar onto adjacent land.

On April 16, 1923, the Berkeley Planning Commission met until midnight trying to hammer out a solution. The tentative plan was to amend the zoning ordinance to allow churches in any zoning district but to impose restrictions including building setbacks and height limits. The council was to be asked to consider the proposal in May.

Old age pensions: An April 14, 1923, article in the Berkeley Gazette reviewed the movement for public “old age pension” plans. Those quoted in the story noted that as the United States transitioned to an industrial economy from an agricultural society, many workers reached old age “without adequate savings to keep them from pauperism.”

The only alternatives for many were private charity or to go to the county-run “poor houses” where the elderly lived in shabby and demeaning conditions, although the states spent considerable money to operate those facilities.

“The greatest fear of the honest, industrious but unfortunate worker is that of poverty in his old age (and) fear and terror of ending life in an institution which brands the inmate with humiliation and shame and social ostracism.”

The alternative promoted in the article was the idea of modest pensions for the elderly over age 65 — up to $25 a month — so they could live on their own with dignity. Nevada and Montana already had such programs, and there were hopes that several other states would soon establish them. Remember this is a dozen years before Social Security.

Hit-and-run: A young woman, presumably a Cal student, drove too fast down Barrow Lane on April 17, 1923, and her car struck and threw a UC Printing Plant employee into the wall of the plant which stood near the corner of Barrow and Bancroft, just south of the current site of Sproul Hall. The driver drove away; the UC staffer ended up with a broken shoulder.

Tulare Lake: Given the prospect in this year’s spring of extensive snowmelt flooding the old Tulare Lake basin in the San Joaquin Valley and inundating agricultural lands, I was intrigued to come across a short article in the March 28, 1923, Gazette that reported “the heavy floods of last spring, which caused some damage and much apprehension among grain growers, were a blessing in disguise this year. The comparatively small upper stretches of the lake lands which the floods did not reach will suffer crop failures but the many acres that the waters submerged last season give promise of the largest crops ever produced in that section.”

This implies that 1921-22 flooding either raised the water table enough to better sustain surface crops, brought in a lot of sediment to fertilize the fields or both.

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