RBMS 2015 Blog

Image Credit: Hearst Mining Building, UC Berkeley, The Berkeley Graduate.

UC Berkeley Secrets

The beauty of the interior of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, the first building on campus designed by John Galen Howard, with its balconies and three glass domes, is no secret, but many don’t know that the building houses two corridors of photos by Carlton Watkins, the early western photographer whose images of Yosemite helped influence Congress and President Lincoln in the preservation of Yosemite. The Hearst Mining Building photos in corridors to the right and left are of mining sites in the Grass Valley/Nevada City, California area. (Until fairly recently, the original photos were on display. The originals are now housed at The Bancroft Library with images also available for viewing online.)

The Lawson Adit is a horizontal mine tunnel, or adit, that was begun in 1916 to serve as an educational lab for mining students. The adit is located next to the Hearst Memorial Mining building. To trace its beginning, follow the driveway on the east to near the back of the building. On your right – behind the fire hydrant – is the locked entrance to the adit. It runs directly under Stern Hall and into the hills to the Hayward Fault. A March 2014 SFGate article provides current and historic images of the adit and describes how “earthquake researchers hope to install seismographs and high-frequency microphones [in the adit] that can detect the squeals of the nearby Hayward Fault.”

There are number of large Diego Rivera murals in San Francisco. UC Berkeley houses its own smaller scale piece in Stern Hall, an all-female residence hall built in 1942 with a grant from Rosalie Meyer Stern, widow of Sigmund Stern, class of 1879. The 1931 mural, entitled “Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees” includes images of Stern grandchildren, and originally hung at the Sigmund Stern home in Atherton. It was later moved to the bottom of the spiral staircase leading off from Stern Hall’s main lounge. (You may access Stern Hall from Highland Place, off of Hearst Avenue.)

Senior Hall (originally Senior Men’s Hall), located behind the Faculty Club, was designed by university supervising architect John Galen Howard and completed in 1906, just after the earthquake. Unlike the many of Howard’s campus buildings from that period, this is most certainly not a Beaux-Arts structure. Rather, Howard wanted to design an example of “characteristic Californian architecture.” This turned out to be not made of tule or adobe, but an oversize log cabin. Funds for building Senior Hall were mainly provided by the Order of the Golden Bear, a secret honor society of senior men founded in 1900 that still exists. The interior of Senior Hall is not open for viewing.

The Morrison Library (within the Doe Library building), opened in 1928 as a reading room providing a club-like atmosphere for students to take a break from the rigors of academic life, is known to be one of the architectural treasures of the campus, and is extremely crowded during the school year. For a similar soothing ambiance, though with somewhat fewer comfy chairs, visit the Howison Philosophy Library, located on the third floor of Moses Hall, built in 1931. The reading room features a large fireplace (like Morrison), a mezzanine with study tables separated by stacks (like Morrison), large paned windows (nicer than Morrison), and a few easy chairs in addition to its table seating. Its collection originated as the personal library of George Howison, the founding member of the Berkeley Philosophy Department, so you can stop by this non-circulating library to read the complete works of Bishop George Berkeley, UC Berkeley’s namesake, or books by early graduate Josiah Royce, a UC Berkeley and Harvard professor for whom UCLA’s Royce Hall is named.

It’s no secret that UC Berkeley is among the top 10 universities when it comes to Nobel Laureates. In fact, you can see dedicated parking spaces for the seven current Nobel Laureate faculty members standing in a proud row on University Drive near LeConte Hall.  More hidden, though, is Room 307 in nearby Gilman Hall. Room 307, in Gilman’s “attic” space, is where Glenn T. Seaborg and his co-workers identified plutonium as a new element on February 23, 1941. It was declared a National Historic Landmark on the 25th anniversary of the discovery, and Seaborg won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951.

Observatory Hill (to the west of McCone Hall) is only a ghost of its former self. As the marker indicates, it is the former site of the student observatory, which was completed in 1886. At one time, several small buildings stood in this area, including one which existed as a ruin until recently. Now, only the foliage-covered foundations of a few buildings remain.

Down from Observatory Hill, follow the paved walking path leading to the west from the intersection of Euclid and Hearst Avenues. This bucolic path includes, on your right, a redwood tree stump that invites you to take a second look. In a parody of the labels found on huge tree stumps throughout the state, this stump purports to designate when historic events occurred during the life of this rather modest-sized stump – events such as the Punic Wars and “1720-1777, Pink is Fashionable.”

Continue on this path across the wooden bridge and up the steps until you reach the front of University House, the official home of Berkeley’s Chancellor. This Beaux-Arts building, designed by the architect Albert Pissis, is the only residence in the campus’ central core. On the home’s front lawn you will find a playful topiary clock, a gift from the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

From mining and the Lawson Adit to agriculture, Californians’ have been obsessed with what they can find in and do with soil. Down the hill from University House, lies Hilgard Hall, a building with exterior artwork extolling the California’s agricultural bounty. In display cases on the main floor, you will find dirt – lots of dirt. These are soil samples, along with photos of where the soil was gathered, from many different types of soil zones. Also on display is field lab equipment carried on horseback from 1855-1870. To learn more about Hilgard Hall (and the area in general – back to the 1820 Spanish Land Grant for Rancho San Antonio and the founding of the College of California) see the detailed and lavishly-illustrated 234-page Hilgard Hall Historic Structure Report.

– Maria C. Brandt, Local Arrangements Committee Adjunct