Nate is an East Bay community papers editor for the East Bay Times and Bay Area News Group.
The Berkeley Daily Gazette ran this 1926 illustration of a new commercial building under construction on Shattuck Avenue between University Avenue and Addison Street that would house a new branch of the Roos Brothers clothing store.
The building still stands today. A zoning and planning dispute in West Berkeley ignited a century ago in 1926, when residents and homeowners along Seventh Street vehemently objected to widening it up to 46 feet from University Avenue to Emeryville and paving it with concrete at a cost of up to $150,000, according to Berkeley Daily Gazette news reports at the time.Berkeley, a Look Back: Officials consider building height limits in 1926The project, promoted by the city government, was said to be the brainchild of West Berkeley manufacturers who wanted a less congested, more durable route to carry goods and materials in increasingly heavy trucks into and out of Berkeley. The manufacturers had selected Seventh Street as their preferred route, despite the fact that the street was lined with homes between University Avenue and Dwight Way. City Manager John Edy rubbed salt into the residents’ raw feelings by telling them that the city could pay 15% of the cost and the County may pay another 15% but that property owners along the route and nearby would have to pay the remaining 70%. At a City Council meeting, “a petition, signed by the manufacturing concerns in the district, strongly favoring the proposed project, was read and greeted by the property owners with hoots and shouts of indignation.” “We are in favor of progress,” the manufacturer’s petition read, “and while we sympathize with the property owners, we are primarily interested in opening a street to Emeryville.” One resident responded that “the project was to benefit the manufacturers of West Berkeley and not the property owners, on whom the bulk of the hardship would rest.” The Berkeley Commercial Association urged that Sixth Street become the new truck route instead. The council adjourned the discussion without taking a position. This dispute was a flashpoint in a long conflict between middle- and working-class West Berkeley residents and the district’s well-to-do factory owners and operators who, by the 1920s, mainly lived in far eastern Berkeley’s idyllic new residential neighborhoods. The dispute would continue for years. It seems to have ultimately been resolved with the Sixth Street route’s choice, north of Dwight Way, which is one of the reasons that traffic now flows diagonally from Sixth to Seventh streets at Dwight and why Seventh north of Dwight is still largely residential.A century ago the Gazette ran an illustration of a new commercial building under construction on Shattuck Avenue between University and Addison Street. The ornate two-story-plus basement structure would house a new branch of the Roos Brothers clothing store. It was described as “a model in modern retail stores,” with a glazed terra cotta facade. Golden bear reliefs were featured on the facade, symbolizing the Roos Brothers connection to the University of California, where the owners had graduated. The building would include “public telephones, rest rooms, beauty and hair cutting parlors” and a “model golf fairway.” This building, now a city of Berkeley landmark, still stands today, containing a variety of stores and businesses. It’s remarkable, isn’t it, that you can walk down Shattuck Avenue and see many useful buildings from a century ago?We think of chain stores as something out of relatively recent history, but a century ago this week in 1926 a big national chain, Owl Drugs, opened their second storefront in Berkeley at the corner of University Avenue and Shattuck. Owl Drugs began as a single drugstore in San Francisco in the early 1890s, and by the mid-1920s had nearly 90 stores in 24 cities and seven states, from Illinois to Oregon, as well as manufacturing and importing branches in New York.Second victim in Oakland mass shooting is identifiedCBP officers find woman in SUV’s gas tank at California-Mexico border crossingCorey Parker, known for ‘Will and Grace,’ ‘Friday the 13th,’ dies at age 60Suspected driver arrested in fatal Pleasant Hill hit-and-run
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