A century ago this week, on April 1, 1924, the Berkeley City Council bowed to the inevitable and voted to place a citizen initiative on the May 6 election ballot that would repeal creation of the new municipal landfill at the Berkeley waterfront. The May election would already feature a presidential primary.
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But not so fast! The next day the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported that the citizen initiative might be held over until November because county supervisors didn’t want more than four propositions on the Berkeley ballot, which would require extra election staff. Berkeley’s city attorney argued in response that two separate elections were going on for that date and that Berkeley itself would have only three initiatives on the ballot.
Tulanian Rugs: Last week I had the pleasure of attending an enthusiastic gathering to dedicate a plaque at Tulanian Rugs on the corner of College Avenue and Webster Street. The building there was constructed 101 years ago and bought in 1927 by Hachadoor Tulanian, an Armenian genocide survivor who had arrived in Berkeley in 1922.
The Tulanian carpet sales and cleaning operation, one of Berkeley’s oldest businesses, continues to this day, under the operation of the family’s third and fourth generations.
1924 construction: On April 1, 1924, the Gazette reported that “all local building records for the first quarter of the year have been shattered.” The city’s building department issued permits for an estimated $2,315,620 in building work.
“The great gains between March of this year and in 1923 came in home building,” the story said.
In March 1924 alone, 119 one and one-and-a-half story dwellings got permits, 31 permits were issued for two-story houses and six permits for apartment buildings. There were 122 permits for “miscellaneous” construction, which probably meant auxiliary structures and remodels and building additions.
Police activity: “Police break up West End Gang,” the Gazette headlined April 1, 1924. Police arrested “six youths between the ages of 18 and 20” on a charge of disturbing the peace. They had been “hanging around San Pablo Avenue and annoying the neighborhood with rough talk and other noise.”
A Berkeley police officer chased suspected robbers from Carleton Street and Shattuck Avenue down to San Pablo Avenue and into Oakland early on the morning of April 10, 1924. A passenger in the car shot at him seven times as the vehicle “hit better than 50 miles an hour, not even slowing down at corners.” The robbers escaped.
New equipment: On April 1, 1924, the City Council voted to spend $3,675 on a tractor to help move garbage at the new waterfront landfill. The city manager emphasized that if the landfill were ended, the equipment could still be used in street work.
Bridge mention: On April 3, 1924, the paper carried a mention that “new plans for a $20,000,000 cantilever bridge across the Golden Gate have been completed.” A cantilever bridge would have been considerably different, aesthetically, from the suspension bridge we now have that was built a decade later.
Obsolescence: The Gazette wrote on April 8, 1924, that “few youngsters today ever saw a horsehair sofa. They wouldn’t know what to do with a fire taper, carpet stretcher, or coal oil lamp. They couldn’t braid rags into a rug or wind yarn without tangling.
“But they know the how and why of typewriters, photographs, telephones, automobiles; what happens when a push of the button gives light, or a Kodak’s flash fixes their image on paper? Their education is as modern as the advertisements they see.”
What would you put on a list of more recent household objects that today’s children wouldn’t know how to use, or have any use for?
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.