A century ago, the Berkeley Daily Gazette featured a drawing and description Oct. 10, 1925, of a new house on Hillcrest Road in Berkeley designed by E. L. Snyder, the in-house architect for Mason McDuffie and H.W. Heard. The house illustrated trends in residential design toward “Period Revival” architecture.
“The general exterior treatment has been carried out along the lines of the cottage type of English architecture, distinctive of the southern counties of England, particularly Sussex,” the Gazette reported. “The … treatment will be in a semi-textural stucco finish with half-timber work and rough hewn posts as decorative notes. There will also be a generous use of brick veneer trimming.”
Halloween: ”Plans for a gigantic Halloween celebration in South Berkeley were discussed yesterday at the luncheon for business men and women,” the Gazette reported Oct. 7, 1925. “Tentative arrangements for a celebration which will include a parade, street dance and costume contest were introduced … a professional orchestra will provide the music for the affair.
“Three years ago a similar celebration was held in South Berkeley and it was enjoyed by several thousand people. Something bigger is planned for the coming holiday.”
Parking fines: The city’s crackdown on motorists violating Berkeley’s new ordinance limiting parking hours in certain commercial districts continued in October 1925. On Oct. 8 of that year, no less than 119 people who had received parking tickets in the past week showed up at the traffic court, and the court bailiff had to stand in the hallway to deliver instructions to the crowd.
Most of them opted not to contest the $2 fine, but some did, and two men got their tickets dismissed. Berkeley had one police officer issuing citations.
Golf course idea: On Oct. 9, 1925, the vice president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce said Berkeley should have a municipal golf course “within easy distance of the city.” While Berkeley itself didn’t end up with a golf course within city limits, this idea would be realized in a way when Tilden Park was created in the 1930s and a golf course was developed there.
Suburban growth: “Cities thinning out,” the Gazette editorialized in an Oct. 8, 1925, headline, noting a decline in the number of new students in public schools in heavily urban areas across the country.
The paper quoted a report that “Chicago and other large cities are being deserted by families with children” because “people with children want to get out into the open spaces. They are leaving the cities to persons who are satisfied with living in small apartments and single rooms.
“In nearly every case the ‘greater city’ is gaining as healthily as usual. The growth is merely transferred from the central city, or metropolis, to its suburbs, and those suburbs are spreading farther and farther from the center with the improvement of transportation.”
Business hours: An Oct. 9, 1925, Gazette advertisement called on people to help “STAMP OUT this Night and Sunday shopping craze.” Sponsored by the “American ideas and Health League,” the ad complained about people wanting grocery stores open in the evening and on Sundays.
“81% of all Eastbay (sic) grocery stores are now open at Night, on Sundays and Holidays,” the ad cautioned, as if that were a plague that needed to be reversed.
I can’t find anything in a quick online search about the nature of that organization. My guess is that it might have been a group that focused on promoting traditional roles for men and women, which would presume that men should be off at work during the weekday and women should be tending the home and doing grocery shopping at the same period.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.