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La Loma Park | |
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La Loma Park Historic District | |
Coordinates: 37°52′56″N122°15′31″W / 37.88222°N 122.25861°W | |
Address | Berkeley, California, U.S. |
La Loma Park is a neighborhood and tract of land located in the Berkeley Hills section of the city of Berkeley, California in the San Francisco Bay Area. The land had been the property of Captain Richard Parks Thomas, a veteran of the American Civil War and Berkeley businessman. [1] [2] Today, it is entirely a residential area The Spanish word loma means "rise/low hill". Although hilly throughout, its average elevation is about 614 feet (187 m).[ citation needed ]
The La Loma Park Historic District is designated by the city as a Berkeley Landmark since May 6, 2002. [3] The area contains the La Loma Steps, another Berkeley Landmark that also has a historical plaque. [4]
Captain Richard Park Thomas' home was located on the site of what is today Greenwood Terrace. Some of the large trees here were originally planted by Captain Thomas and managed to survive the devastating fire of 1923 which swept through this part of Berkeley. Thomas enclosed his vast property with a low, whitewashed fence on its north, west and south sides, leaving the east side — the upper hillside — open.[ citation needed ]
Captain Thomas was the owner of the Standard Soap Company in West Berkeley, president of the California National Bank of San Francisco, and owner of the Berkeley Ferryboat Line. [2] He had a reputation as a friend of the working man and an eccentric character, and was probably the first person who inspired the nickname for the district: "Nut Hill". An old map includes a notation that he kept an illegal still on his property. He devised a scheme for an aerial tramway running from the Berkeley flatlands to the hills. Every Fourth of July, he fired off an old civil war cannon from "Fort La Loma", a plaza he constructed up the hill from his home. The site is today occupied by "Hume Cloister," also known as "Hume Castle" on Buena Vista Way, named for Samuel James Hume and his wife, who had architect John Hudson Thomas design a reduced-scale replica of a cloister in Toulouse, France. [5]
In the 19th century, a stone quarry was opened at the head of Codornices Creek, abutting the north boundary of the La Loma Park tract. Some of the rock quarried here had a pinkish hue and was used to tint the concrete sidewalks and pathways throughout parts of North Berkeley, a practice that has been maintained by the City to this day, albeit using tint from other sources. The quarry was closed by the 1940s. In the late 1960s the quarry was made into a public park, "Glendale-La Loma Park".[ citation needed ]
A number of notable people have lived in the La Loma Park/Nut Hill area over the years, including many professors from the University of California, Berkeley, among them, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his nemesis-colleague, Edward Teller. Famed San Francisco Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck made his home here, as well as the homes of several others in the neighborhood, a fact memorialized by Maybeck Twin Drive off of Buena Vista above La Loma. Further up Buena Vista Way is an estate known as the Temple of Wings with its Corinthian-style columns, [6] an early 20th-century bohemian hangout.
A former public school, Hillside Elementary School is located in the La Loma district on the block bounded by Le Roy Avenue, Buena Vista Way and La Loma Avenue. It is registered as a local historic landmark. The present structure was built after the 1923 fire destroyed its predecessor, located on the southwest corner of Le Roy and Virginia Street. Hillside was closed as a public school both because of a declining school-age population and because it sits immediately adjacent to the Hayward Fault, which runs directly behind it on La Loma Avenue.[ citation needed ]
Upon being subdivided and developed, some residents of the district formed the La Loma Improvement Club. One of their efforts included subsidizing the northward extension of the Euclid Avenue streetcar line from Hilgard to the Berryman Reservoir, which today is adjacent to Codornices Park and the Berkeley Rose Garden. [7] The Euclid line was first constructed in 1903 as an extension of the Telegraph Avenue streetcar line, and originally terminated at Hilgard and Arch streets. [8] The extension to the Berryman Reservoir (Rose Street, now Rose Walk) was completed in August 1910. [9] A subsequent further extension was made in 1912, across Codornices Canyon, by means of a trestle for both streetcar and autos. The line was built to Regal Road and remained active until the end of all streetcar service in 1948.[ citation needed ]
The Key System was a privately owned company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany, and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960, when it was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit. The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines in the East Bay, and commuter rail and bus lines connecting the East Bay to San Francisco by a ferry pier on San Francisco Bay, later via the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. At its height during the 1940s, the Key System had over 66 miles (106 km) of track. The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. The Key System's territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.
Bernard Ralph Maybeck was an American architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He worked primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area, designing public buildings, including the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and also private houses, especially in Berkeley, where he lived and taught at the University of California. A number of his works are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Buena Vista Park is a park in the Haight-Ashbury and Buena Vista Heights neighborhoods of San Francisco, California. It is the oldest official park in San Francisco, established in 1867 as Hill Park, later renamed Buena Vista. It is bounded by Haight Street to the north, and by Buena Vista Avenue West and Buena Vista Avenue East. The park is on a steep hill that peaks at 575 feet (175 m), and covers 37 acres (150,000 m2). The lowest section is the north end along Haight.
The Western Addition is a district in San Francisco, California, United States.
The Berkeley Rose Garden is a city-owned park in the North Berkeley area of Berkeley, California. The rose garden is situated in a residential area of the Berkeley Hills between the Cragmont and the La Loma Park neighborhoods, occupying most of the block between Eunice Street and Bayview Place along the west side of Euclid Avenue, and west of Codornices Park.
Northside is a principally residential neighborhood in Berkeley, California, located north of the University of California, Berkeley campus, east of Oxford Street, and south of Cedar Street. There is a small shopping area located at Euclid and Hearst Avenues, at the northern entrance to the university. The Graduate Theological Union is located one block west of Euclid Avenue, in an area nicknamed Holy Hill. The north fork of Strawberry Creek runs southwestward across Northside, mostly culverted under buildings and pavement, to the campus.
Codornices Creek, 2.0 miles (3.2 km) long, is one of the principal creeks which runs out of the Berkeley Hills in the East Bay area of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. In its upper stretch, it passes entirely within the city limits of Berkeley, and marks the city limit with the adjacent city of Albany in its lower section. Before European settlement, Codornices probably had no direct, permanent connection to San Francisco Bay. Like many other small creeks, it filtered through what early maps show as grassland to a large, northward-running salt marsh and slough that also carried waters from Marin Creek and Schoolhouse Creek. A channel was cut through in the 19th century, and Codornices flows directly to San Francisco Bay by way of a narrow remnant slough adjacent to Golden Gate Fields racetrack.
The Cragmont area of Berkeley is a residential district located in the northeastern section of the city, occupying most of the hill area north of Codornices Creek. It lies at an elevation of 755 feet.
Schoolhouse Creek is a creek which flows through the city of Berkeley, California in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Hillside Elementary School is a 50,302 ft2 former public elementary school in the hills of Berkeley, California, at 1581 Le Roy Avenue, bordered by Le Roy Avenue, Buena Vista Way, and La Loma Avenue. It is registered as a local historic landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Andrew Cowper Lawson was a Scots-born Canadian geologist who became professor of geology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the editor and co-author of the 1908 report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake which became known as the "Lawson Report". He was also the first person to identify and name the San Andreas Fault in 1895, and after the 1906 quake, the first to delineate the entire length of the San Andreas Fault which previously had been noted only in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also named the Franciscan Complex after the Franciscan Order of the Catholic church whose missions used conscripted Native American labor to mine limestone in these areas.
The 1923 Berkeley, California, fire was a conflagration that consumed some 640 structures, including 584 houses in the densely built neighborhoods north of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley, California, on September 17, 1923.
Shattuck Avenue is a major city street running north–south through Berkeley and Oakland, California. At its southern end, the street branches from Telegraph Avenue in Oakland's Temescal district, then ends at Indian Rock Park in the Berkeley Hills to the north. Shattuck Avenue is the main street of Berkeley, forming the spine of that city's downtown, and the site of the Gourmet Ghetto in North Berkeley. The street was named for Francis Kittredge Shattuck, an early landowner and booster who later served as Mayor of Oakland. Shattuck was largely responsible for the original construction of the road as well as for a railroad built along its route.
Lilian "Lillie" Belle Bridgman (1866–1948) was an American architect, educator, writer, and scientist. After working first as a science teacher and writer, she changed her profession in mid-life and followed her dream of becoming an architect.
Richard Smith Requa was an American architect, largely known for his work in San Diego, California. Requa was the Master Architect for the California Pacific International Exposition held in Balboa Park in 1935–36. He improved and extended many of the already existing buildings from an earlier exposition, as well as creating new facilities including the Old Globe Theater.
John Hudson Thomas (1878—1945) was an American architect, who practiced in Northern California.
Temple of Wings is a historic Greco-Roman style private estate located at 2800 Buena Vista Way in the La Loma Park neighborhood of Berkeley, California. The main structure was designed by Bernard Maybeck and completed by A. Randolph Monro. It was originally designed as an open-air private home dedicated to modern and contemporary dance. It has been listed by the city as a Berkeley Landmark since January 6, 1992, and is listed in the California State Historic Resources Inventory. It is sometimes known as the Temple of Winds, the Boynton House, and the Charles C. Boynton House.
The Rose Walk, formerly known as Rose Street, is a historic pathway with landscaping designed by architect Bernard Maybeck in the La Loma Park neighborhood of Berkeley, California, U.S.. It is located in the 2500 block of Rose Walk, between Euclid Avenue and Le Roy Avenue. It is listed by the city as a Berkeley Landmark, since December 15, 1975. The Rose Walk has a historical marker erected in 1998 by Berkeley Historical Plaque Project.
The Andrew Cowper Lawson House is a historic private residence at 1515 La Loma Avenue in the La Loma Park neighborhood in Berkeley, California, U.S.. It has been listed as a Berkeley Landmark by the city since August 16, 1976.