A century ago, the Berkeley library officials were pushing for a facilities expansion.
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“With a total of nearly 600,000 volumes loaned during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1924, the Berkeley public library had the largest circulation in its history,” librarian Carleton Joeckel was quoted in a Berkeley Daily Gazette report.
There were 28,295 “registered borrowers” (presumably holders of library cards) at the end of June 1924 and 105,404 books in the library. Among its many programs, the library ran a children’s story hour in the main library on Saturdays with “average attendance of 62 children at each story hour.”
“The past year was further marked by two steps of importance … . These were the completion and opening of the West Berkeley branch, a commodious and beautiful structure, and the beginning of work upon the new Claremont branch soon to be opened.”
However, the librarian warned that “the needs of the main library at Shattuck Avenue and Kittredge (Street) have been neglected … the overcrowding has been serious for several years … . The library is becoming badly cramped in nearly all of its departments. The imperative need of the near future is space in which to grow.”
The future of what is now the main library downtown would be debated for several more years until the 1930s, when the building was demolished and replaced with the current art deco structure. The older library had been designed by noted architect John Galen Howard.
Zoning issues: A contentious Berkeley zoning dispute reached a significant milestone on Oct. 10, 1924. The Planning Commission voted to deny a neighborhood petition that would have blocked two businesses — the Marshall Steel Co. (which operated a “cleaning and dye works”) and the Manhattan Laundry — from building new structures on their properties at the southwest corner of Grove Street (today’s Martin Luther King Jr. Way).
The neighbors had been trying to get industrial and commercial uses out of their residential neighborhood, so this was a rebuff to them. At the same meeting, the city planning director of Los Angeles who was visiting Berkeley spoke to the Planning Commission and warned against too much zoning for retail use.
“In Los Angeles we have 242,000 parcels of land under zoning. Of this only 60% is residential … . That means that this 60% has got to maintain the 40% of business property … .”
He also “declared that increased motor traffic is making property values on main arteries of travel slump.”
World flight: Berkeley was scheduled to be visited in mid-October by a group of “world fliers,” aviators who had made the first circumnavigation of the world by airplane. On April 6, 1924, eight pilots and mechanics of the U.S. Army Air Service had taken off from Seattle. 175 days later — on Sept. 28 — the flyers returned, after making 74 stops in 22 countries.
One aviator, Lt. Lowell Smith, had a Berkeley connection. He had graduated from the aviation school that had operated on the Berkeley campus in 1918 near the end of World War I. After their return, they were feted all around the country.
President Calvin Coolidge wrote to them that “The world never forgets its pathfinders. Those who trod the wilderness and cross the seas filled with dangers are never forgotten by posterity.”
Never forgotten by posterity? Perhaps. Did you see news coverage of this centennial? I found a National Public Radio story last month that observed that “The people that we remember who do amazing things always seem to be singular individuals … . Because it was a group, four planes and eight flyers, it’s too much to remember all of them. So even their effort is lost.”
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.