City of Berkeley history

Having previously worked for their elder brother John, Samuel and Joseph established their own office in 1879, the year in which they designed the first school house in East Berkeley, Kellogg Grammar School.

That building, erected in 1884, was designed by San Francisco architects Samuel and Joseph Cather Newsom, who the same year also created America’s most notorious Victorian house—the Carson Mansion in Eureka.

The Town Hall’s location being equally inconvenient to all, it came as no surprise when the San Francisco Call noted on 18 July 1897, “It is proposed to have the entire building moved to the east end, intact, rather than build a new one, as has been under consideration for some time.

On 14 November 1904, he introduced a resolution to allocate $100,000 for a new Town Hall in the next bond issue.

The city’s population surged after many people fled San Francisco following the devastating 1906 earthquake.

The winning design, without tower (San Francisco Call, 4 July 1907)

In August 1909, a month before the new City Hall was completed, the Oakland Enquirer announced that the interior was poorly designed, with space too generously allocated to the hallways while the offices were cramped.

By 1925, City Hall was joined by an annex in the rear, and houses replaced the creek on the adjacent blocks.

J. Robert Oppenheimer took a position as a physicist U.C. Berkeley in 1929, then built its physics department into one of the best.

Devoting himself to the civil rights movement, Savio joined the small army of college-age volunteers who traveled to Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964 and witnessed the violence of white supremacy at close quarters.

Berkeley City Hall was one of the first eight buildings to be designated City of Berkeley Landmarks, all named on 15 December 1975.

Reverse directories from 1981 to present are also are a great resource and are located in the Berkeley History Room.

He then embarked on a career in higher education, teaching at San Francisco State, Modesto Junior College, and finally, beginning in 1990, Sonoma State University.

In 1998 the University of California, Berkeley, honoured Savio and the FSM by creating a library endowment in his name and establishing an archive of the movement in the university’s Bancroft Library.

Long known as Old City Hall, it was officially renamed the Maudelle Shirek Building on 22 March 2007.