Sather Gate and Bridge | |
Location | University of California campus in Berkeley |
---|---|
Coordinates | 37°52′12.7848″N122°15′34.131″W / 37.870218000°N 122.25948083°W |
Area | 0.2 acres (0.081 ha) |
Built | 1910 |
Architect | John Galen Howard |
Architectural style | Classical Revival-Beaux-Arts |
MPS | Berkeley, University of California MRA |
NRHP reference No. | 82004649 [1] |
BERKL No. | 157 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | March 25, 1982 |
Designated BERKL | February 25, 1991 [2] |
Sather Gate is a prominent landmark separating Sproul Plaza from the bridge over Strawberry Creek, leading to the center of the University of California, Berkeley campus. The gate was donated by Jane K. Sather, a benefactor of the university, in memory of her late husband Peder Sather, a trustee of the College of California, which later became the University of California. It is California Historical Landmark No. 946 [3] and No. 82004649 in the National Register of Historic Places.
Designed by John Galen Howard and built by Giovanni "John" Meneghetti in the Classical Revival Beaux-Arts style, Sather Gate was completed in 1910. Atop the gate are eight panels of bas-relief figures: four nude men representing the disciplines of law, letters, medicine, and mining, and four nude women representing the disciplines of agriculture, architecture, art, and electricity. They were sculpted by Professor Earl Cummings. From 1910 to 1977, the panels were removed due to differences with Jane Sather. By 1979 they were all reinstalled. [4]
Originally, the gate served as the formal southern entrance to the university campus. The university later expanded further south of Strawberry Creek, and the gate is now well separated from Berkeley's city streets by Sproul Plaza.
Between October 2008 and April 2009, Sather Gate underwent restoration that focused on its bronze and steel metal work, which had deteriorated over time. It remained open to pedestrian and vehicular traffic during the period of restoration. [5] Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc., coordinated the restoration, which received a 2010 Design Award from the California Preservation Foundation. [6]
Sather Gate is part of the historic Sproul Plaza, a major center for student activity and the scene of many protests during the Free Speech Movement. The gate is a notable subject of one of the most recognizable and iconic photographs of the Movement, a fall 1964 shot of students walking through it, carrying the Free Speech banner. [7]
Berkeley is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Anglo-Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emeryville to the south and the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington to the north. Its eastern border with Contra Costa County generally follows the ridge of the Berkeley Hills. The 2020 census recorded a population of 124,321.
Sather Tower is a bell tower with clocks on its four faces on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. It is more commonly known as The Campanile for its resemblance to the Campanile di San Marco in Venice. It is a recognizable symbol of the university.
Clark Kerr was an American economist and academic administrator. He was the first chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and twelfth president of the University of California.
Mario Savio was an American activist and a key member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He is most famous for his passionate speeches, especially the "Bodies Upon the Gears" address given at Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley on December 2, 1964.
Sproul Plaza is one center of student activity at the University of California, Berkeley. It is divided into two sections: Upper Sproul and Lower Sproul. They are vertically separated by twelve feet (3.7 m) and linked by a set of stairs.
Telegraph Avenue is a street that begins, at its southernmost point, in the midst of the historic downtown district of Oakland, California, and ends, at its northernmost point, at the southern edge of the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California. It is approximately 4.5 miles (7.2 km) in length.
The University House is a residence and venue for official events on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Designed by the architect Albert Pissis and completed in 1911, it was formerly named President's House while it served as the home of the president of the University of California, starting with Benjamin Ide Wheeler and ending with Robert Gordon Sproul. Since 1965, it has been the home of the Chancellor of the Berkeley campus.
Robert Gordon Sproul was the first system-wide president (1952–1958) of the University of California system, and a president (11th) of the University of California, Berkeley, serving from 1930 to 1952.
John Galen Howard was an American architect and educator who began his career in New York before moving to California. He was the principal architect at several firms in both states and employed Julia Morgan early in her architectural career.
Strawberry Creek is the principal watercourse running through the city of Berkeley, California. Two forks rise in the Berkeley Hills of the California Coast Ranges, and form a confluence at the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The creek then flows westward across the city to discharge into San Francisco Bay.
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 campus of the University of California, Berkeley, and its surrounding community are home to a number of notable buildings by early 20th-century campus architect John Galen Howard, his peer Bernard Maybeck, and their colleague Julia Morgan. Subsequent tenures as supervising architect held by George W. Kelham and Arthur Brown, Jr. saw the addition of several buildings in neoclassical and other revival styles, while the building boom after World War II introduced modernist buildings by architects such as Vernon DeMars, Joseph Esherick, John Carl Warnecke, Gardner Dailey, Anshen & Allen, and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. Recent decades have seen additions including the postmodernist Haas School of Business by Charles Willard Moore, Soda Hall by Edward Larrabee Barnes, and the East Asian Library by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.
Architectural Resources Group is a firm founded in 1980 by Bruce Judd and Steve Farneth in San Francisco, California. It began by providing professional services in the fields of architecture and urban planning with particular expertise in historic preservation. In 2000, David Wessel, a Principal of ARG, founded a separate conservation-contracting division, ARG Conservation Services which operates under the same roof as ARG. By 2005, the firm had expanded to a full-service architecture firm with 50+ employees. ARG also opened offices in Pasadena serving Southern California, and Portland, Oregon, serving the Pacific Northwest.
Peder Sather was a Norwegian-born American banker who is best known for his legacy to the University of California, Berkeley. His widow, Jane K. Sather, donated money in his memory for two of the school's most famous landmarks. Sather Gate and Sather Tower, which is more commonly known as The Campanile, are both California Historical Landmarks which are registered National Register of Historic Places.
Southside, also known by the older names South of Campus or South Campus, is a neighborhood in Berkeley, California. Southside is located directly south of and adjacent to the University of California, Berkeley campus. Because of the large student presence in the neighborhood, proximity to Sproul Plaza, and history of the area, Southside is the neighborhood most closely associated with the university.
Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (WJE) is an American corporation of architects, engineers, and materials scientists specializing in the investigation, analysis, testing, and design of repairs for historic and contemporary buildings and structures. Founded in 1956, WJE is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, and has over 600 professionals in twenty offices across the United States. WJE personnel are specialized in architectural, structural, and civil engineering; materials conservation, chemistry and petrography, and testing and instrumentation.
The history of the University of California, Berkeley, begins on October 13, 1849, with the adoption of the Constitution of California, which provided for the creation of a public university. On Charter Day, March 23, 1868, the signing of the Organic Act established the University of California, with the new institution inheriting the land and facilities of the private College of California and the federal funding eligibility of a public agricultural, mining, and mechanical arts college.
The 1960s Berkeley protests were a series of events at the University of California, Berkeley, and Berkeley, California. Many of these protests were a small part of the larger Free Speech Movement, which had national implications and constituted the onset of the counterculture of the 1960s. These protests were headed under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Jack Weinberg, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and others.
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. Other student leaders include Jack Weinberg, Tom Miller, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg and others.