A century ago, Halloween in 1925 had been “from a police standpoint … the quietest in years,” the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported Nov. 2, 1925. “Mischief’ included soaping store windows (including “almost every downtown store”), turning off electricity to homes from the outdoor panels and “doorbells being rung” with the perpetrator then running away. The whole Berkeley police force had been on duty during the nighttime hours.
“Police kept youngsters moving mostly towards their own homes,” according to the Gazette.
In North Oakland, “annoyed by boys playing harmless Hallowe’en pranks on Chabot Road” by “rolling tin cans on the porch of a house … an irate citizen fired into a crowd of boys.” He was apparently using a 22-caliber rifle, “grazed” a 13-year-old in the chest and shot a 14-year-old in the left leg. Both were treated at Alta Bates hospital.
New apartments: The Whitecotton building on Shattuck Avenue between Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue was going to get three upper floors at a cost of $200,000. They would contain apartments served by two elevators and a central heating plant.
“A feature of the design is the fact that all are outside rooms, with an abundance of light,” the Gazette reported Nov. 5, 1925.
Downtown Berkeley in 1925 was a “district in which a number of splendid building improvements are underway or just completed, including the Tupper and Reed building, the Hezlett store structure, the telephone building, the Atkins theater, the Drake Catering Company building, the 12-story Chamber of Commerce building and others. The Odd Fellows temple on Bancroft Way is also soon to be started, while still other structures are in contemplation.”
New sewer: On Nov. 3, 1925, Berkeley City Manager John Edy asked the City Council to support a request that UC Berkeley pay half the cost for a new sewer on Bancroft Way, leading west to Telegraph Avenue from the Hearst Gymnasium for Women, which was then under construction.
“The new sewer will be used almost entirely for taking off drain(age) from showers and the swimming tank in the new gymnasium,” the Gazette quoted Edy as saying.
The council agreed, and the city manager went forth to ask the university for half of the estimated $2,500 cost. I couldn’t find any word in the paper about whether the university granted the request.
Game tickets: A huge mailing operation was underway Nov. 6, 1925, as the Berkeley Post Office processed 8,500 letters containing tickets for the upcoming Nov. 26, 1925, Big Game against Stanford. All would be sent by registered mail, bringing in fees of $850 to the Post Office. It was the largest single local mailing that year. Another 3,500 or so ticket letters were to go out in the following days.
Hill fires: Wildfire season in 1925 was not quite over. A “stubborn grass and brush fire which burned over four acres” threatened several homes in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 4, 1925, “at the same time there was a similar blaze in the Claremont district which endangered homes. Fanned by brisk wind, both fires gained considerable headway … . Housewives saved their own homes by using garden hoses until the arrival of firemen.”
World cyclists: Two young men from Bombay, India (today’s Mumbai), arrived in Berkeley and were “spending a few days in viewing the sights of the bay region before attempting the next steps of their journey,” the Gazette reported Nov. 7, 1925.
They were no ordinary travelers. They were riding bicycles around the world, having begun more than two years earlier in Bombay on Oct. 15, 1923. Headed westward, they were hoping to make it back to India by June 1926, after crossing Asia, Europe and North America by land and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by ship.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.