A century ago, on Feb. 29, 1924, the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported that leap year was celebrated on the UC Berkeley campus with traditional student Labor Day activities.
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The tradition, which began in 1896, involved male UC students gathering en masse on Feb. 29 every four years to do some physical improvement to the campus grounds. Accompanying Labor Day in 1924 were the Big “C” Sirkus (sic) a student entertainment event that was returning after a hiatus of four years. In 1924, it involved entertainment in Harmon Gymnasium and the new Stephens Union.
A third event of the day was the Prytanean Fete dance. Prytanean was a women’s honor society, and the organization still exists at Berkeley. There was also a parade with floats through the campus.
The Gazette estimated March 1 that 12,000 people had participated in all these events the day before. Harmon Gymnasium had been turned into “a Holland city in miniature” with ships sailing up and down canals.
Parade units included a float from the Tri Delta sorority, “a huge basket of flowers, with girls in the heart of the basket” and a male student who roller skated in a costume designed to “resemble a huge pink sausage.” The Sigma Chi fraternity had its pledges form legs of a huge dancing centipede with a “feather duster tail.”
Other Sirkus events included a magician (who was also the coach of the varsity baseball team) and various booths, pageants and comic entertainment.
Chamber hall: On March 1, 1924, the president of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce was talking about acquiring a permanent facility for the Chamber.
The Chamber had grown to 660 members, aimed for 1,000, and President E.F. Louideck opined it was time for the organization to have its own “building which will form its own community center and adequately provide for the ever-growing work of the organization.”
Physics meeting: Also on March 1, 1924, the Gazette reported that leading physicists “from all colleges and universities on the Pacific Coast” were attending the meeting of the American Physical Society in Le Conte Hall, then the new physics building on UC Berkeley’s campus.
The university’s investment in new physics facilities and, later, new faculty would bear copious rewards in the 1930s, when luminaries such as Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer joined Cal’s physics faculty.
This Berkeley Daily Gazette ad in March 1924 trumpeted the opening of a new residential tract called “University Hill,” where sewer, water and electric power lines had been installed, and two homes, one of which appears above, had already been built. (Steven Finacom for Bay Area News Group)
Research losses: UC alumnus Dr. Curtis P. Clausen, a “well known entomologist,” was visiting his brother in Berkeley in early March 1924, when he got the devastating news that his research papers in Japan had been destroyed in a fire.
Ironically, the papers had been saved by his staff from Japan’s Great Kanto Earthquake and following fire in September 1923. Clausen stored the salvaged papers in a supposedly fireproof hotel vault in Kobe, Japan, but the hotel subsequently burned and the vault did not prove fireproof.
His collection of insect specimens did survive, however, and was already in the United States on its way to laboratories on the East Coast. Curiously, his specimens were described as “the largest collection of insect destroyers ever gathered.” Does “insect destroyers” mean insects that ate other insects? I’m not sure.
New tract: On March 1, 1924, advertisements in the Gazette trumpeted the opening of a new residential tract called “University Hill” on the upper slopes of what is today known as Panoramic Hill. Sewer, water and electric power lines had been installed, and two homes had already been built.
Student spirit cheers were incorporated into the wording of the ads, which said that “every homesite purchased in University Hill carries with it a heritage that cannot be purchased elsewhere — the heritage of a distinctly university environment, with its softly wafting Campanile chimes.”
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.