About a hundred members of the Berkeley Manufacturers Association met in Orinda a century ago on June 28, 1924. They held their 17th annual picnic, went swimming, and discussed the importance of developing Berkeley’s waterfront, according to the Berkeley Daily Gazette, which sent a reporter to cover the event.
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A focus of discussion was making improvements for manufacturing on the Berkeley waterfront, and there were calls for refurbishing Berkeley’s municipal pier, which was used for shipping goods and raw materials, and perhaps replacing the wooden pilings with concrete.
Business owner Fred Koeber, who had just constructed a six-story office building downtown on University Avenue “declared that if you will build the waterfront the city will build itself.”
Berkeley Chamber of Commerce Secretary Charles Keeler spoke at the event, asking manufacturers for factories in town to be “architecturally attractive and to surround them with lawns and flowers.” He called for parks with ponds to be created throughout Berkeley, to provide a firefighting and recreational resource.
Berkeley City Manager John Edy also spoke to the gathering and “made a plea for closer cooperation between the manufacturers and the city government and suggested that some of the problems referred to him might be worked out by the Manufacturers Association.
“He told of the letter received that morning from a lady who complained of the smoke from the factories and proposed that this matter might be handled to advantage by a committee of their association.”
Lot clearing: Speaking of smoke, Berkeley must have had a lot of it in late June 1924, as that year’s June 27 Gazette reported that the Fire Department, helped by workers, was “busy in burning off vacant lots in Berkeley. In the last 10 days, 1,000 lots have been burned off, and work is being carried on at a fast rate.
“Excitement was caused in Berkeley yesterday afternoon, when smoke in the hills where the Fire Department was at work burning off lots east of Euclid Avenue made the impression that another conflagration similar to that of last September (referring to Berkeley’s catastrophic September 1923 fire) was threatening the city.”
The article noted that Berkeley had “nearly 7,000 lots” that needed vegetation clearance that summer, including in the hills and flatlands.
Home prices: A look at real estate ads in Berkeley at the end of June 1924, shows listings for a six-room house for $5,250 (“all newly painted”), a “Ten Room Sacrifice (sic) near Eunice Street” for $5,250 and a “Claremont Special Just Reduced” for $11,500.
The latter was a home with a “very large living room, large bedroom on first floor, each bedroom with large dressing room …” and “a most elaborate garden of flowers and shrubs.” Adjusting for inflation, $11,500 in 1924 would be about $211,215 today.
A century ago, you could buy a charming house like this one advertised in the Berkeley Daily Gazette in the city’s Claremont district for $11,500, about $211,215 today. (photo courtesy of the Berkeley Historical Society and Museum)
Caught speeding: The speed limit on Berkeley’s Grove Street — today known as Martin Luther King Jr. Way — was 20 miles an hour in 1924.
At 6:15 a.m. June 30 that year, a Berkeley police officer recorded a “student and delivery driver” going 40 mph southbound on Grove Street and chased him from Dwight Way to Alcatraz Avenue. He was given a citation and a notice to appear in court.
Natural disasters: UC’s Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, was threatened by a wildfire on June 30, 1924. Two days before that, a tornado struck two towns in northern Ohio, killing at least 90 people, according to initial reports.
I checked lists of the worst tornadoes in U.S. history. Ohio’s June 1924 tornado doesn’t figure today in the top 10 in terms of lives lost. The worst recorded to date was 99 years ago, when the “Tri-State Tornado” of March 18, 1924, killed 695 people in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.