A century ago this week, Sept. 17, 1926, was the third anniversary of the Berkeley\u2019s 1923 fire that destroyed more than 600 structures on the city\u2019s northside.<\/p>\n
The anniversary was commemorated with a community luncheon attended by \u201cmore than 200 prominent citizens.\u201d Reports were made on progress \u201cfor coordinating city departments, the university and the Red Cross in time of disaster,\u201d the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported that day.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, the newspaper noted that more than $3.7 million had been spent on building new structures in the fire area. Over the previous three years, permits had been issued to build 437 residential structures and five new public buildings as well as repair 23 fire-damaged structures.<\/p>\n
\u201cGleaming walls, shining roofs and pleasant gardens mark the area where an inferno raged,\u201d the Gazette reported, \u201cand leveled 40 blocks of homes to smoldering ruins in the short space of a single afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also on the anniversary day, two new lawsuits were filed against Pacific Gas and Electric Co. for \u201ccarelessness and negligence \u2026 of that company in operating a power line in the Berkeley hills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Insurance companies filed both lawsuits, and the Gazette noted that there was now \u201ca total of 40 cases to be heard in Justice Court here, with 800 suits in all filed against the PG&E and involving six million dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillside School: On the eve of the 1923\u2019s fire anniversary, one of the five new public buildings in the fire zone had been dedicated on Sept. 16, 1926. This was Hillside School, a handsome $150,000 building at Buena Vista Way and La Loma Avenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an ill wind that blows nobody any good,\u201d C.E. Denman, the Berkeley school board\u2019s president, told the assembled crowd. \u201cThere are some evil winds blowing here and there through Berkeley, winds of rumor with regard to this school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denman offered \u201cthree facts\u201d in defense against the rumors: First, a third of the school\u2019s enrollment came from east (uphill) of the school, meaning it was centrally located; second, buying the land and building the new school on only cost about $250,000; and third, Berkeleyans had voted for a special tax in 1925 to build a new school.<\/p>\n
The Hillside School building still stands but was closed in 1983, was later sold by the school district and is a private residence today.<\/p>\n
New transit: On Sept. 19, 1926, a bus line operated by the Key System began operation on Spruce Street, starting at Los Angeles Avenue, where the streetcar line then ended. Key System officials said that if there weren\u2019t enough patrons and the buses didn\u2019t produce sufficient revenue, they would probably end the experiment. The city had been negotiating with the Key System for several months on the project.<\/p>\n
\u201cWork will start immediately on construction of a concrete trestle extending out into San Francisco Bay three-and-a-half miles from the foot of University Avenue,\u201d the president of the Golden Gate Ferry Co. announced Sept. 18, 1926.<\/p>\n
A contract had been awarded to the San Francisco Bridge Co. at a price of just more than $700,000. \u201cCasting of concrete jackets or the trestle piling will be begun at once, and the structure is to be completed in 250 working days,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n
A separate contract to build three ferry boats was planned. The ferries were expected to carry 80 automobiles each and run every 20 minutes from the pier to the Fisherman\u2019s Wharf area of San Francisco\u2019s northern shore.<\/p>\n
Injured: A draftsman working for the city of Berkeley, Edgar Hoffman, was \u201cseriously injured\u201d on Sept. 18, 1926, when he drove his car across the streetcar tracks at California and Harmon streets and was hit by a train.<\/p>\n
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column\u2019s copyright.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A century ago this week, Sept. 17, 1926, was the third anniversary of the Berkeley\u2019s 1923 fire that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[14174,14173,418,1071,143,145,144,149],"class_list":["post-465291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-100-years-ago","tag-berkeley-daily-gazette-archives","tag-history","tag-local-government","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-uc-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}