Berkeley, a Look Back: Major streets still congested 100 years later - East Bay Times

A century ago the Berkeley City Council was talking about street improvements. On June 24, 1921, the council considered a series of measures to rename, pave, and otherwise improve Berkeley’s streets. The renamings were concentrated in the Thousand Oaks area, which had recently been added to the city.

Berkeley’s City Engineer Charles Huggins “declared that (Grove Street) was in deplorable condition and beyond repair,” the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported. “He advised widening the street so it would be possible to park automobiles between the curbing and car tracks and still have room for traffic to pass. Unless this is done, he added, Grove Street will be as congested as College Avenue.”

Grove Street today is Martin Luther King Jr. Way and, as most know, it’s a narrow and congested thoroughfare north of Hearst Avenue as it runs into North Berkeley. Huggins was right, as Berkeley city planner Carol Aronovici was right in the same era to suggest College Avenue be widened.

The problem then, with both streets, was that neither was wide enough to accommodate streetcars, parked automobiles, and the growing motor vehicle traffic of the time. Neither street was widened, and today, even with the streetcars gone and replaced with buses, there is still congestion on both streets.

New voters: Berkeley celebrated “New Voters’ Day” on June 30, 1921. The state was having its own observance on July 4, but Berkeley officials decided on an earlier ceremony because the 30th was “the last day of the Americanization school (where) a large number of alien-born men and women, residents of Berkeley, who have been naturalized since January 1st, 1921, will be formally welcomed into American citizenship.”

Mayor Bartlett also noted that American-born citizens who had reached voting age were also encouraged to come celebrate at the now-defunct Burbank junior high school, where “a patriotic program” would be held.

An adjacent article in the June 23, 1921, Gazette noted that the U.S. Census Bureau had released figures for foreign-born residents of California. San Francisco had 140,200 foreign-born residents, the majority from Ireland, England, Germany and Italy. Oakland had 45,162, with Italians making up the largest group, followed by Portuguese and Germans. California had nearly 700,000 foreign-born residents in 1920, with Italians forming the largest group, followed by Mexicans. There were also just more than 70,000 California residents of Japanese ancestry.

Motorcycle crash: A teenage boy and girl riding on a motorcycle nearly died June 22, 1921, when they skidded in sand and were thrown on the tracks in front of a Southern Pacific interurban train at California and Prince streets. Richard Stockton, 15, pushed the girl off the tracks after they fell, then “a wheel of the forward truck of the train crushed his right leg as with great presence of mind he attempted to lie prone between the tracks in an effort to escape injury,” the Gazette reported.

He was taken to Oakland’s Fabiola Hospital (now part of Kaiser) where, ironically, his mother was a doctor. As he was taken into surgery his mother had to leave the hospital to attend a dying patient of her own. The paper reported “it was said at the hospital it might be possible to save the boy’s leg.”

Downtown fire: On June 25, 1921, two City Council members — Heywood and Bartlett — were passing a “patent popcorn wagon” at Kittredge and Shattuck when it exploded in flames, temporarily trapping 19-year-old Curtis Stoddard inside. He finally escaped, with his clothes on fire. Heywood — who was technically in charge of the Fire Department — found an extinguisher nearby and doused the burning vehicle, just as the official Fire Department arrived.

Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.

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