Today we'll take a look at some of the buildings around the Berkeley campus. Many are beautiful, while others are ordinary or worse.
Here is the entrance to the campus at the southwest corner:
Close to this entrance is a plaque marking a spot where a Spanish expedition in 1772 stopped to take a view of the Golden Gate (long before there was a bridge there):
You can no longer see the Golden Gate from this site, since the buildings in Berkeley block the view.
The most well-known architectural feature on campus is the bell tower, called the Campanile since it looks like the famous bell tower in Venice.
Behind the university library:
At night:
Up close:
Next to the Campanile are two benches. One has the inscription "Beneficiary to Benefactor" from the Class of 1955:
Is this a joke? Are they waiting for someone to donate money to put a real name on the bench? I can't imagine the university would name a building Benefactor Hall until someone comes around with money to pay for it.
The other bench, next to the entrance to the tower, was contributed by the Class of 1920:
The inscription reads: "This bench was erected by the Class of 1920 to commemorate the heroism of the sons of this university who died in the Great War." The Campanile was completed during World War I.
Officially, the name of the Campanile is Sather Tower, but I have never heard anyone call it that. In addition to providing the funds for building the Campanile, the Sather family also paid for the construction of a gate near the southern entrance to the campus which is called (surprise) Sather Gate.
The above photo is a view from Sather Gate to Sproul Plaza, and the photo below is a view on Sproul Plaza looking towards Sather Gate:
Sproul Plaza has been the canonical location for large student protests since the 1960s, organized by different generations of what a friend of mine called "granola people".
The circular region in the middle of Sproul Plaza in the above photo is interesting, so let's take a closer look at it:
The words say: "This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction". There is no soil there now. In fact what is in the center now is a hole of garbage:
The contents (which you can see up close by clicking on the photo) seem to be leaves, a Chinese page, and the stub says "ticket void if stub is removed". Well, that stub is certainly not going to be removed from this cesspool anytime soon, at least not by direct human contact.
A few weeks after taking the above photo I returned and found a new pile of dried-up garbage (including some glass) in the hole:
The building I teach my class in is called the Valley Life Sciences Building. Its name is not due to being located in a valley, but because the Valley family provided money for its renovation in the 1990s. All the biology departments are located in this building, along with a paleontology museum and some classrooms. Here are some photos of it from the east
and the north
and the south:
It is huge! The abbreviation for the building is VLSB, and when I first arrived at Berkeley someone explained a second meaning for the abbreviation: Very Large Science Building. It is the largest building on the campus.
On the west side of VLSB is a small forest of redwood trees:
The most common trees on campus are, unfortunately, not redwood trees but trees which are continually cut (pollarded is the technical term) in order to provide some ugliness to counteract the attractive buildings.
Here are some campus maintenance staff on ladders cutting the growth off these trees before the spring semester started:
The faculty club is located in a quiet part of campus:
Inside the club are two rows of windows with glass emblems of the universities which Berkeley considers itself comparable too:
I can't figure out what all of these schools are. In the top photo, from left to right, are the shields for ??, Brown, ??, Cornell, and Oxford. In the bottom photo, from left to right, are the shields for Stanford (do the Berkeley undergrads know a Stanford emblem is on campus?!?), Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Anyone reading this who can tell me the missing schools should leave a comment to this post.
The math department's building, Evans Hall, is considered by many to be an eyesore:
But Evans is not the most unattractive building on campus. The award for that goes to Wurster Hall:
Ugliness couldn't get wurster than Wurster. The university should plant some redwood trees all around this building to hide it completely from view. The most ironic thing about this building is that it houses the architecture school. Why would architects want to work in such a fugly structure?
The main administrative building on campus is California Hall:
As a legacy of the 1960s student protests, there are no door knobs on the outside of any doors to California Hall except at the main entrance. That way students can't lock administrators inside. California Hall is one of the few buildings on campus besides the libraries where the public can't just walk inside. There is a guard stationed at the main entrance.
Next to California Hall is the Free Speech Movement Cafe:
In this cafe they sell only organic, holistic, sustainable food. Don't try asking for a hot dog. In keeping with the granola attitude of the cafe, their utensils are all biodegradable. I think they are made out of plants:
Outside the cafe are displays of many international newspapers which are updated each day:
Many humanities departments (e.g., English, history, languages) are housed in Dwinelle Hall, which is the second largest building on campus after VLSB:
Dwinelle is built on sloping ground and has 7 floors, but you wouldn't guess it from this view, would you? The floors are lettered A, B, ..., G instead of numbered, which had me confused at first since I am used to lettered floors only in basements. If you are on floor B and need to get to C, is that up or down? You'll have to walk into Dwinelle to find out.
One of the courtyards in Dwinelle Hall is named Ishi court:
Ishi is the last known Native American in the USA to spend most of his life without contact with the outside culture. He lived in northern California, and after being discovered he spent the last few years of his life being studied by anthropologists from UC Berkeley. He died in 1916. I first read about Ishi in The People's Almanac when I was a kid. In Ishi Court I expected to find a plaque or sculpture explaining who Ishi was, but I found nothing.
Here is the entrance to the campus at the southwest corner:
Close to this entrance is a plaque marking a spot where a Spanish expedition in 1772 stopped to take a view of the Golden Gate (long before there was a bridge there):
You can no longer see the Golden Gate from this site, since the buildings in Berkeley block the view.
The most well-known architectural feature on campus is the bell tower, called the Campanile since it looks like the famous bell tower in Venice.
Behind the university library:
At night:
Up close:
Next to the Campanile are two benches. One has the inscription "Beneficiary to Benefactor" from the Class of 1955:
Is this a joke? Are they waiting for someone to donate money to put a real name on the bench? I can't imagine the university would name a building Benefactor Hall until someone comes around with money to pay for it.
The other bench, next to the entrance to the tower, was contributed by the Class of 1920:
The inscription reads: "This bench was erected by the Class of 1920 to commemorate the heroism of the sons of this university who died in the Great War." The Campanile was completed during World War I.
Officially, the name of the Campanile is Sather Tower, but I have never heard anyone call it that. In addition to providing the funds for building the Campanile, the Sather family also paid for the construction of a gate near the southern entrance to the campus which is called (surprise) Sather Gate.
The above photo is a view from Sather Gate to Sproul Plaza, and the photo below is a view on Sproul Plaza looking towards Sather Gate:
Sproul Plaza has been the canonical location for large student protests since the 1960s, organized by different generations of what a friend of mine called "granola people".
The circular region in the middle of Sproul Plaza in the above photo is interesting, so let's take a closer look at it:
The words say: "This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction". There is no soil there now. In fact what is in the center now is a hole of garbage:
The contents (which you can see up close by clicking on the photo) seem to be leaves, a Chinese page, and the stub says "ticket void if stub is removed". Well, that stub is certainly not going to be removed from this cesspool anytime soon, at least not by direct human contact.
A few weeks after taking the above photo I returned and found a new pile of dried-up garbage (including some glass) in the hole:
The building I teach my class in is called the Valley Life Sciences Building. Its name is not due to being located in a valley, but because the Valley family provided money for its renovation in the 1990s. All the biology departments are located in this building, along with a paleontology museum and some classrooms. Here are some photos of it from the east
and the north
and the south:
It is huge! The abbreviation for the building is VLSB, and when I first arrived at Berkeley someone explained a second meaning for the abbreviation: Very Large Science Building. It is the largest building on the campus.
On the west side of VLSB is a small forest of redwood trees:
The most common trees on campus are, unfortunately, not redwood trees but trees which are continually cut (pollarded is the technical term) in order to provide some ugliness to counteract the attractive buildings.
Here are some campus maintenance staff on ladders cutting the growth off these trees before the spring semester started:
The faculty club is located in a quiet part of campus:
Inside the club are two rows of windows with glass emblems of the universities which Berkeley considers itself comparable too:
I can't figure out what all of these schools are. In the top photo, from left to right, are the shields for ??, Brown, ??, Cornell, and Oxford. In the bottom photo, from left to right, are the shields for Stanford (do the Berkeley undergrads know a Stanford emblem is on campus?!?), Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Anyone reading this who can tell me the missing schools should leave a comment to this post.
The math department's building, Evans Hall, is considered by many to be an eyesore:
But Evans is not the most unattractive building on campus. The award for that goes to Wurster Hall:
Ugliness couldn't get wurster than Wurster. The university should plant some redwood trees all around this building to hide it completely from view. The most ironic thing about this building is that it houses the architecture school. Why would architects want to work in such a fugly structure?
The main administrative building on campus is California Hall:
As a legacy of the 1960s student protests, there are no door knobs on the outside of any doors to California Hall except at the main entrance. That way students can't lock administrators inside. California Hall is one of the few buildings on campus besides the libraries where the public can't just walk inside. There is a guard stationed at the main entrance.
Next to California Hall is the Free Speech Movement Cafe:
In this cafe they sell only organic, holistic, sustainable food. Don't try asking for a hot dog. In keeping with the granola attitude of the cafe, their utensils are all biodegradable. I think they are made out of plants:
Outside the cafe are displays of many international newspapers which are updated each day:
Many humanities departments (e.g., English, history, languages) are housed in Dwinelle Hall, which is the second largest building on campus after VLSB:
Dwinelle is built on sloping ground and has 7 floors, but you wouldn't guess it from this view, would you? The floors are lettered A, B, ..., G instead of numbered, which had me confused at first since I am used to lettered floors only in basements. If you are on floor B and need to get to C, is that up or down? You'll have to walk into Dwinelle to find out.
One of the courtyards in Dwinelle Hall is named Ishi court:
Ishi is the last known Native American in the USA to spend most of his life without contact with the outside culture. He lived in northern California, and after being discovered he spent the last few years of his life being studied by anthropologists from UC Berkeley. He died in 1916. I first read about Ishi in The People's Almanac when I was a kid. In Ishi Court I expected to find a plaque or sculpture explaining who Ishi was, but I found nothing.
The bench next to the Campanile with the inscription "Beneficiary To Benefactor" is not awaiting a donor. Rather, those who gifted the bench reconized that they were infact the once receiving. Think about it. I feel the same.
ReplyDeleteI recently came across this bench again, and needed an image to confirm my recollection of the wording on the inscription. Thanks for posting it.
Go Bears,
Michael, '01
I'm glad to have helped out.
ReplyDeleteI think the arms you attribute to Columbia in the first picture is actually the arms of Oxford. The second picture that you label Columbia (again?) is the Columbia coat of arms.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.oua.ox.ac.uk/enquiries/arms.html