| Return to Main Travel Guide |
 Alarm. Eight a.m.Snooze. Alarm. Eight-O-Nine a.m. Snooze... I finally roll out of bed on the fifth floor of Griffiths Hall [F2 on the campus map], one of four early 1960s era high-rise dormitories at Unit 2 on Berkeley's southside. Living in the "projects," as the units are affectionately called, was one of the great experiences of college life. Griffiths Hall just happens to be the farthest dorm from campus if you don't include Clark Kerr [off the map, see F1], which was mostly populated by jocks and National Merit scholars anyway, so who really cares, right? In the above photo, Griffiths is the back building, second from the left, which is Davidson, home to all the junior transfers whom we freshmen ridiculed mercilessly for living in the dorms as juniors. Davidson also fell victim to a number of our freshman pranks, including, but not limited to, an elaborate middle-of-the-night fire alarm pull scheme for which all us schemers were summarily ratted out and served time by doing community service at Sproul Hall, the administration building. And all because I discovered that my room key also opened the front door of Davidson Hall. (FYI - In 1991, when I first came to Berkeley, the parking lot you see in the photo sat beneath what was called Underhill Field, a synthetic soccer field and running track. It was essentially a two level parking garage where the upper level was a play field and the lower level a parking lot. As seismic retrofits were going on all over campus at the time, including the installation of ugly X-bracing outside Unit 1, a Unit 2 clone, my guess is that Underhill was torn down because its stability was called into question.) I don't have much time now, since it's closing in on my ten o'clock Shakespeare lecture, so I forego breakfast in the dining commons and head off for campus. (Mary, who went to Cal the same years I did, couldn't believe that I actually had to rush to a ten o'clock when all her science classes and discussion sessions started at eight, nine latest. I always made it a point to take into account my lecture and discussion times when choosing classes for the next semester.)  Today I head down Dwight Way and
pass the tiny Unit 2 parking lot - who got to park there, I never could
figure out. Then I come upon an ivy covered sidewalk and an eerie
exposed concrete and wood structure on my right. It's
Romanesque! It's Gothic! It's Japanese! Whatever it
is, it's Bernard
Maybeck's 1910 masterpiece, the First
Church of Christ, Scientist (2619 Dwight Wy, web), at the NE corner
of Dwight and
Bowditch [F3] (photo: Penn State University Photo Archive). I
don't know what it is about this building, but every time I walk by it
I feel all
freaky inside. Maybe it's because I'm not exactly sure how Christ
was a scientist; being an English major, I like to think Jesus was more
into humanities, philosophy, or theology. For more on Christian
Science, go here.
I shake off the cobwebs and keep going toward a more comforting Hamlet.Across Bowditch is a shady, shrubby section of People's Park [F3-4]. The park, which takes up the almost the entire block, plays a colorful role in Berkeley's existence. The quick history is that the university owns the land, at one point kicked out the people living there to build on something (offices, ballfield, parking, whatever), UC never did build anything, the people took over the area and turned it into a communal garden and park, and they and the university have been at it ever since. By the time I got to Berkeley, People's Park had a reputation as a place for riots, drug dealing, muggings, general lawlessness, and homeless people. To say the least, we all stayed away. What's the point? After all, it's supposed to be the people's park, right? Today I'm going to walk through the park, no matter what they say - and then tonight when I get back to the dorms, I'll tell everyone about it and they'll think I'm either too cool or too silly or something else. I make a semi-straight line diagonally through the park, careful to keep my distance from the sleeping homeless people scattered about, and pass by the "Free Box" where the homeless and any other needy soul can take their pick from an assortment of donated clothing from community. At the corner of Haste Street and Telegraph Avenue [F4] is the awesome CD/record shop, Amoeba Music (2455 Telegraph Av, 510-549-1125, web). There's a mural on the Haste side wall of Amoeba depicting the storied history of People's Park. Across Telegraph is world famous Cody's Books (2454 Telegraph Av, 510-845-7852, web), where a author reading or signing is going on any given evening. I take a quick look down Telegraph (southward) and just spy the facades of my favorite used bookshop in town, Shakespeare & Co. (2499 Telegraph Av, 510-841-8916, Paris store's website) and Caffe Mediterraneum (2475 Telegraph Av, 510-549-1128), where legend places beat poet Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl" within. Many an afternoon have I passed on just this east side of this block of Telegraph Avenue. But I've still got that class to get to, so onward and upward!  Heading north on Telegraph
toward campus, I pass by the core of what
life in Berkeley and especially life on the southside of Berkeley is
all about. Street merchants have been setting up their sidewalk
tables to sell their wares, including the requisite tie-dyed shirts,
jewelry, incense, and tarot/palm readings. There are a number of
clothing shops up and down the street, good places to buy those
classic "CALIFORNIA" and "BERKELEY" t-shirts, there's pizza, a
bar/nightclub,
bagels, another new/used music shop, and coffee, of course. Four
key food stops along the way are: Cafe
Intermezzo (2442 Telegraph Av, 510-849-4592) for their variety
of salads, Coffee Source (2404
Telegraph Av, 510-644-3045) for coffee and what we consider better
salads that come with a huge hunk of bread (go for the honey wheat), Blondie's Pizza (2340 Telegraph Av,
510-548-1129) for cheap big slices on the go, and C'est Cafe (SW corner of Telegraph
and Bancroft, directly across the street from campus) for the best
coffee in town. A number of other key food
establishments are just off Telegraph on
Channing Way and the main southside college student dining street,
Durant Avenue, including: great Thai food at the Berkeley Thai House (2511 Channing
Wy, 510-841-8424), located in a cool, dark wood-stained house with a
nice outdoor deck in front; awesome assortment of sausages and all dogs
'hot' at Top Dog (2532 Durant
Av, 510-517-6695), pizza and big screen sports bar at LaVal's (2516 Durant Av,
510-845-5353), cheap and yummy frozen yogurt that you can fill up on
tasting free samples alone at Yogurt
Park (2433-A Durant Av,510-549-0570), and standard American fare
and burgers in a great restaurant/pub settings at Kip's (2439 Durant
Av, 510-848-4340).Instead of all these choices, however, I cross Bancroft (the southern boundary of campus) and get a cream cheese bagel from one of numerous food carts set up along the sidewalk at the front of campus; with what seems like a quarter-pound of cream cheese on a toasted bagel, it's practically a brunch in itself. Now I'm seriously starting to run late, but at least I'm actually on the UC Berkeley campus, so I pick up the pace under a row of London Plane trees (also located in the esplanade under the Campanile, pictured [C3]), past the mostly ugly Martin Luther King, Jr., Student Union (built in 1961) and stately Sproul Hall (1941) admin building, and weave through a crowd gathering in Sproul Plaza [D4] to pick up leaflets and listen to any number of speakers, protestors, or street preachers rallying, or riling up, the students. The plaza is the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement which began in 1964.  This photo is taken
from atop the MLK Jr. Student Union, Sproul Hall is the top and center,
left of that are rows of London Plane, Ludwig's Fountain, and the
student center where we could get personal tutoring and a bite to
eat. Down the stairs on the far left of the photo you'll arrive
at Lower Sproul Plaza. Lacking all the history and flash of big
brother "upper" Sproul Plaza, Lower Sproul hosts free noon concerts by
local bands as well as the occassional Cal marching band
practice. The much maligned Zellerbach
Hall (1964, photo),
which houses a 2,089-seat auditorium and the
intimate 547-seat playhouse. I move on between the rows
of
London Plane and walk through Sather
Gate
(pictured) and the "Fiat Lux" ("Let there be light") University of
California
motto that graces its top.
Telegraph Avenue once extended through the current plaza up to the gate
where there used to be a streetcar turnaround whose only evidence is
the circular design in the plaza just in front of the gate.
Beyond the gate I cross over Strawberry
Creek, past the conglomeration of sandwich boards chained and
padlocked to the concrete bridge balustrade advertising various student
group meetings, and emerge into Dwinelle
Plaza. I veer left into the plaza and check my
watch. Great, I'm only five minutes late!My Shakespeare lecture is being held in the smaller of Dwinelle Hall's two main lecture halls [C-D4, photo of north office side entrance]. Dwinelle, completed in 1952 as the largest classroom building in the world, is the campus building most notorious for losing entire classes of freshmen to its seemingly incomprehensible and labyrinthine floor plan. What other building in the world can you enter on ground level only to be met with a set of stairs leading up to the basement? Or how about tumbling down two floors just to get from room 242 to room 3106? How is it that you can come in the main entrance, which is presumably the first floor, just to find that without your knowledge, or even trying, you've ascended another floor or two just by walking down the next hallway? Herein lies Dwinelle Hall's entry into campus folklore. As the story goes, two brothers were hired to build Dwinelle Hall, a building which would house a couple main lecture halls, classrooms, and office space. It sounds simple enough, but the brothers could not agree on the design of the building, got into a huge argument, and decided they'd be better off splitting the project in two, with one brother tackling the classrooms and lecture halls and the other taking on the office space. Complete chaos resulted when came time to join the brothers' separate creations since their floors did not match up. Dwinelle Hall apologists, in an attempt to quench any folklorish fires try to expain down the situation by claiming the university's requirement of both office and classroom space caused the problem since what they really were asking for was two separate building types on a space that was too small for two separate buildings; hardly a good enough reason for Dwinelle's schizophrenia. The 1950s and 60s may have given us great music and protest movements, but great buildings it did not (see if you can follow this trend as we continue on). Dwinelle had additional floors added not long after I graduated in 1995. Now that my Shakespeare lecture's done, I'm starting to feel a little hungry and caffeine-deprived. So it's time for a cafe stop. First, I've got to go pickup my paycheck from the Center for German and European Studies (CGES) where I worked parttime for most of my time at Cal. Heading back through Dwinelle Plaza, I pass the beautiful Beaux Arts style Wheeler Hall (1917), home to the country's finest English department, on the left. Wheeler Auditorium seats over 600 and plays host to free student movie screenings along with Dwinelle's main auditorium, but Wheeler's seats are better padded, the floor is carpeted, the sound is better, and the heating/air conditioning system is more reliable; but if the movie's free, so what? Just as the hill starts really hurting, Moses Hall (1931) comes up on my right. I head for 207 Moses Hall and snatch up my paltry paycheck.  As I exit Moses Hall, there is
what seems to be a very out of place and very tall palm tree rising at
the side of a wonderful old brick
building, South Hall [C4, web].
Built
in 1873, and currently housing the library sciences department (not
sure what name they've given the profession as of late, but "librarian"
seems to be on the outswing), it is the oldest building on
campus. The front entrance
(see photo; Regents of the University of California) faces east toward
the Campanile (Sather Tower); this, however, was originally the back of
the building. The entrance was moved to the east side when
Wheeler Hall was built directly to the west. Urban legend has
"Mary Poppins" being filmed on South Hall's rooftop, among its many
brick chimneys; reality places filming firmly within the confines of a
Hollywood
soundstage.Continuing onward up the hill, the Campanile (1914, photo near top of this page, web) soars 307 feet into the air to my left. The tower's 61 bell carillon rings out mini-concerts three times a day (7:50 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m.) and extended Sunday afternoon concerts at 2 p.m. The view from the top is spectacular. Stephens Hall and its cool castle-meets-smokestacks are straight ahead. I take a nice split stairwell to the right, between Moses and Stephens, down behind Stephens and follow one of the first two small paths to the left through a shady grove of trees. Soon I come upon a statue of Cal's beloved football coach, "Pappy" Waldorf, then decide to go off-roading a bit and walk up the grassy Faculty Glade through the UC Berkeley music department. You'll walk between the nicely complementary Morrison Hall and Hertz Hall (both 1958), where I took my sight-singing and music appreciation classes, respectively. Morrison, on the right, houses the music library, professors' offices, classrooms, a recital hall, and the all important practice rooms, each equipped with a piano of widely varying quality (ask for a good one if you need one). Hertz is a concert hall which hosts free lunchtime faculty and graduate student concerts.  Through the covered walkway of the
music department, I come into a
comparatively wider open area [D2] with Kroeber Hall (1959, home to art and
anthropology) directly in front of me and to the left is the
gigantic 1960s monstrosity known as Wurster
Hall (1964, pictured at left), ironic, as it houses the
departments of
architecture and environmental design. Wurster's more serious
claim to fame is that it was the world's largest pre-fabricated
building at the time and the studio tower gives artists and architects
ideal lighting practically year-round. I walk straight through
and
see the Boalt Hall School
of Law (1951, web)
on the left and a wacky (read: ugly) fountain as I approach Bancroft
Way and yet another gathering of food carts.
(I'm not sure why I'm so obsessed with pointing out all these ugly
things, but truly, Berkeley is a beautiful campus that I just can't get
enough of!) I cross the street to Caffe
Strada (2300 College Av, 510-843-5282) on the corner of Bancroft
Way and College Avenue. With its plentiful outdoor patio seating
beneath a
canopy of trees, it's probably the most area's most picturesque setting
for a coffee and pastry before, between, after, or even during classes
which graduate student
instructors sometimes hold here. After my very breakfast-like
lunch (not a particularly unusual practice here), I head down Bancroft
back toward the front of campus to check on the goings on in Sproul
Plaza. Along the way, I pass the UC
Berkeley Art Museum and
Pacific
Film Archive (1971; 2626 Bancroft Wy, 510-642-0808, web) immediately on the
left, Hearst Gym (1927) and
the towering Barrows Hall
(typical 1964 ugly, but a great views from the top, photo at right by
Liz McBee) on the right, and in the distance behind me, International House, (1930, web) which houses a good number
of UC Berkeley's international students as well as a nice cafe.
Now I'm back to Sproul Hall, Sproul Plaza and Sather Gate.
Today's protest is somewhat uninteresting, as the crowd is not entirely
motivated, the megaphone is on the fritz, and the street preacher is
actually getter a better jolt out of everyone. So I press on for
my Chemistry 1A lecture. (side
note: Though I majored in English, I did enter Berkeley via the
College of Engineering and had to take classes such as Chem 1A and Math
1A to start. I would later choose to leave engineering by signing
a form stating I would never try to regain entry into the department;
that was a no-brainer, but still a little stressful.)So now begins my trek into the hallowed science section of campus, for which UC Berkeley is a most incredible place. I head back through Sather Gate and up that hill past Wheeler, Moses, Stephens, and the Campanile. The tall squarish building on the left is Birge Hall (1964) and farther to the left is Le Conte Hall (newer section), home to the department of physics and named for Berkeley physics professors. Oddly enough, one of my best English classes was held in 50 Birge Hall in the heart of this physics stronghold; this is the class that would open up for me such American greats as D. H. Lawrence, Theodore Dreiser, and William Faulkner. Just past Birge is "old" Le Conte Hall (1924), where I hang a hard left between the very old yet stately and kind of spooky feeling edifices of Le Conte and Giauque Hall (1954, home of the Low Temperature Lab where for a while they held the record for achieving the temperature closest to absolute zero). For those in the know, we're now coming into the presence of the Berkeley's famed chemistry department (think Berkelium, Californium, Seaborgian, and Plutonium among others on the periodic table of elements). A quick reading of the buildings' namesakes is a bit of a chemistry hall of fame, among them Giauque and Lewis (think Lewis Dot Structures). The newest of the bunch is Tan Hall (1997), which is built alongside Giauque. As I turn the corner around Tan Hall to the right, I am greeted by the huge laboratory tower, Latimer Hall (1962) and the understated, low, round brick building, Pimentel Hall (1964). Pimentel is this section's claim to fame and the location of my Chem 1A lecture. Formerly known as the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall, or PSL for short, this is a building where the majority of it is underground. Pimentel's main entrance is actually at the top and back of the stadium seating lecture hall. The hall's stage is a rotating disc split into three parts: while one part is being used by the current lecturer, the two other segments backstage can be used for either setup or teardown, depending on current needs. It's not uncommon to get to class to see the stage in mid-rotation with students and professor being whisked away as your own professor and his/her entire class notes and experiments are being rotated into the hall ready to begin right on time. The door at the right of the rotating stage leads to the Latimer Hall basement.  Following class, I come to the
realization that I'm done with classes for the day. Not bad
considering I woke up not much before 10 a.m. and there's still plenty
of daylight to be spent. I spin myself around and head back down
the
hill with a skip in my step and the weekend before me. What
better moment than this to enjoy an extended stroll through this
beautiful campus?On the right is the gorgeous 1907 John Galen Howard creation, the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, home to Berkeley's materials sciences and mineral engineering departments (pictured). Continuing downslope, also on the right, is everyone's favorite for ugliest building on campus, the much berated stoic chunk of concrete, Evans Hall (1971, photo and coloring contest), unfortunate home to the math department. Though there's still debate out there as to whether Wurster or Barrows deserve the ugliest title in its stead. I sometimes take a break sitting beneath the trees in the Campanile Esplanade, listening to the carillon, or take a ride to the top of the tower to breathe in the views. Nowadays there's an even better option, a nap on Memorial Glade [C4] right in front of the awesome 1910 Doe Memorial Library. more to come... |