Berkeley, a Look Back: Cutting down palm trees triggers ‘a wail of protest’
The Berkeley Daily Gazette reported a century ago on a successful effort to save some trees from a downtown Berkeley construction site. Work was underway to prepare the ground for commercial buildings at the southeast corner of Shattuck and University avenues, and in the process four palm trees that had stood there for 42 years were threatened.
Two of them were cut down, and “a wail of protest arose.” The remaining two were then saved to be moved to “the Ignacio Valley walnut ranch, owned by the Warren Cheney Realty company. They will be moved with trucks and trailers,” the paper noted on Jan. 16, 1925. Do they still survive today at age 142? One wonders.
Smith memorial: A hundred years ago, “a sorrowing throng” gathered on Jan. 15, 1926, outside UC Berkeley’s California Memorial Stadium for a memorial to Coach Andy Smith, who is still probably the most successful football coach in Cal history. Frank Probert, UC Berkeley’s Dean, intoned that “the last whistle has called him to his final rest.”
The Gazette reported that “while the thousands stood silent with bared heads, an Army plane piloted by Lieutenant J. R. Glascock, a personal friend of the deceased, flew over the arch, and the ashes of Andrew Latham Smith were strewn over the field where he had directed so many battles, where he had won so many victories and where by example and precept he made men.”
The stadium itself was closed to spectators as the plane made its pass and dipped low when the ashes presumably descended. As far as I know, this is the first and only official aerial burial in Berkeley history. It also seems to stand out as a unique local event in other respects. Although the deaths of prominent figures in UC history have periodically occasioned major memorial gatherings, I don’t know of any other of this type or scale.
Seven years before Smith died, the campus had seen large, heartfelt, memorial gatherings in Faculty Glade for UC Regent Phoebe Apperson Hearst and, shortly thereafter, for History Department Chair Henry Morse Stephens. Neither of them was buried on the campus, though.
Streetcar issues: It wasn’t a good week in 1926 for local streetcar systems. On Jan. 17 of that year, an electric wire powering trolleys broke on Bancroft Way at Ellsworth Street. It “ threatened several people with execution” when it “snapped, sending sparks in very direction.” A Key System train also injured Berkeley Fire Chief Sydney Rose when it ran into his car.
The Southern Pacific and Key systems were asking for higher fare rates on their interurban trolleys. At one hearing on the fare increases, the state Railway Commission’s chief engineer suggested “that the S.P. trains be heated, pointing out that the steel coaches were like ice boxes during the recent cold spell and none too warm at any time during the year.”
Bowles passes: Oakland banker Philip Bowles died on Jan. 20, 1926. He had been a UC Regent and was a prominent figure in local business and civic life. The Oakland Tribune in its Jan. 21, 1926, obituary called him a “financier, patron of public institutions and sportsman.” He and his wife, Mary, lived in a large Oakland estate on Broadway Terrace (which was later divided into smaller home sites).
The death of Bowles would have a lasting impact on Berkeley. A few years later his widow offered to pay for a residence hall on the Berkeley campus. The resulting building, Bowles Hall, originally only for male students, still stands. It was the first university-operated student residence at the Berkeley campus, an institution that had previously resisted having its own dormitories.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.