The fight over the location of Berkeley’s Southern Pacific railroad freight yard seemed to reach a milestone a century ago, on April 26, 1924. The freight yard, where the railroad unloaded goods destined for local businesses, stood in the South Berkeley triangle between Shattuck Avenue and Adeline Street.
Berkeley’s newest restaurant in 1924, “an up-to-date eating establishment” opened on Shattuck Avenue. The Berkeley Daily Gazette ran this photograph of the restaurant’s interior. (Berkeley Historical Society & Museum)
When it moved there from Berkeley’s downtown, the adjacent residential neighborhoods were sparsely built. By the early 1920s, though, they were filled with homes, and residents were objecting to the industrial use across the street from them.
The Berkeley Daily Gazette reported that at an April 26, 1924, meeting among city officials, railroad officials and neighbors in Berkeley’s City Council chambers, a Southern Pacific lawyer said the railroad would be willing to close the yard and move operations to its West Berkeley facilities if local customers of the railroad freight service agreed.
Neighbors had argued that just three local businesses received 81% of the freight coming through the yard. They were opposed by real estate agent W.J. Mortimer, who said it shipping items from the West Berkeley yards would be more expensive and that “the time is coming when these little homes will be sought for business enterprises adjoining a manufacturing area. It will be a case of broken faith if this council takes steps to rule out this freight yard.”
Mortimer proved to be wrong. Most of those “little homes” still stand in the adjacent neighborhoods a century later, and those neighborhoods are often described as some of Berkeley’s most “walkable” residential districts. The rail yard is long-gone, replaced today by the Berkeley Bowl market and a Walgreen’s store, both of which are consumer retail, not manufacturing, activities.
New restaurant: Also on April 26, 1924, a new restaurant, “Maiden’s Dairy Lunch House” opened at 2175 Shattuck Ave., which is across the street from Berkeley’s downtown BART plaza today.
The restaurant — named not for young ladies but for the owner, Oakland’s R.A. Maiden — was advertised as serving “the most modern dairy lunch west of Chicago” and boasted a chef with a French name, who had been “lately with the Athenian Nile Club,” a private club in Oakland. It was “another up-to-date eating establishment” for downtown Berkeley.
“Our own pastry baked and served on the premises” the newspaper advertisements said, emphasizing homemade pie. The breakfast special was “ham and eggs and buttered toast” for 20 cents, while a piece of pie for lunch cost just 5 cents. The opening “supper special” was “baked Virginia Ham, Southern Style, With Sweet Potatoes” for 25 cents.
Photographs of the restaurant in the paper showed built-in booths, as well as freestanding four person tables. The food appeared to be served from a buffet counter, rather than by waiters or waitresses.
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Straw hats: On April 24, 1924, the weather was fair and warming, and the Gazette’s reporters noted the opening of “straw hat season.”
Menswear stores had window displays of straw hats, and “sales were said to have been larger than the opening of the 1923 straw hat season. There are more than 20 snappy styles to choose from, most of them modeled to fit any style of head.”
“A warm summer will make every day straw hat day around the bay,” the paper concluded.
Growth: “More than five thousand new families have come to the East Bay section to reside in the past year,” the Gazette reported April 25, 1924. “More than half a billion dollars is invested in the apartment house business in California.”
These statistics had been reported at the annual banquet of the Alameda County Apartment House Association.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.