Joint effort in Berkeley to ease crowded streets
	The Wellness Letter
	Berkeley...as the century turns
	Berkeley campaign promotes access to health coverage
	Cal's new West Gate
	Helping former foster youth bridge the gap to adulthood
	Pardon our dust - Campus construction highlights
	New women's basketball coach juggles job and motherhood
	Spring semester events

Berkeley . . .as the century turns

by Abigail Smith

The University's women's basketball team was looking forward to new facilities-an outdoor court protected by a 12-foot board fence; a student-run moving company was advertising for business in the local press; and town residents were worried about the influx of "business" into their cozy, intellectual community. The place: Berkeley, California. The time: the dawning of a new century-1900, of course.

In other news, The Occident, a Cal publication, was entirely in the hands of female students-for one day only. Prentice Gray, Cal football player and president of the Associated Students, was rescued
from drowning by Miss Genevieve Dowsett of Honolulu, a "frail young woman." The "Man of Mystery," an early Berkeley eccentric who received messages from Mars, was reportedly wed.

These stories and many more are detailed in Richard Schwartz's book, Berkeley 1900 (RSB Books, 2000). Using newspaper articles, archived photographs and editorial quotes, Schwartz provides a portal for the "people of 1900 to speak directly to the people of t

Looking northeast towards the Berkeley Hills from McGee Avenue, George Kidd (Captain Kidd) in goat cart, Jim Donovan leading cow.

oday." Schwartz began his mission five years ago upon coming across a stack of turn-of-the-century newspapers the Berkeley Historical Society was tossing out. Unable to bear the idea, he took them home and discovered a seemingly unending source of tragedy, comedy, romance, daring rescues and shampoo advertisements ("Electric Shampoo-it kills dandruff and makes the Hair beautiful to look at!"). The resulting compilation provides a unique view of the daily lives of our fellow Berkeleyans.

Among the anecdotes of Berkeley's children, animals, gypsy camps and the crisis over milk production, Berkeley 1900 reveals a town intrinsically built around its university. The opening of the campus in 1873 coincided with the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in Berkeley. With these two events, the population began to swell, and by 1900 Berkeley had 15,000 inhabitants, compared to the 12 lonely souls in 1853, when Domingo Peralta, son of a retired Spanish soldier and cattle rancher, sold the land that was to become the University of California and eventually the City of Berkeley.

The turn of the century was an exciting period of change for the inhabitants of Berkeley who reveled in their association with the "Ivory Towers" but were beginningto feel the clamor and pull of "speculators, and smoky manufacturers, and big enterprises, and sky-scrapers, and political grafts."

In December Robert Duponey, a Berkeley reporter, wrote: "It is an excellent thing that here and there, on the tumultuous ocean of this industrial world, an island springs up, islands of peace and knowledge, where a few quiet, wise men are segregated and free from hurry, free from self-interest, piously honor the arts and sciences under the soft murmuring trees, at the foot of the thoughtfulhills. The painters, musicians and sculptors of California ought to swarm here, as to their natural headquarters."

Berkeley 1900 is available in bookstores throughout the Bay Area as well as in local retail shops.