BERKELEY

Founded in the wake of the gold rush by leaders of the newly established 31st state, the University of California's
flagship campus at Berkeley has become one of the preeminent universities in the world. Its early guiding lights,
charged with providing education (both "practical" and "classical") for the state's people, gradually established a
distinguished faculty (with 22 Nobel laureates to date), a stellar research library, and more than 350 academic
programs.

This California institution became a catalyst of economic growth and social innovation — the place where vitamin E
was discovered, a lost Scarlatti opera found, the flu virus identified, and the nation's first no-fault divorce law
drafted. Scholars at Berkeley have conducted groundbreaking research on urban street gangs and on basic human
nutritional requirements, identified why wartime supply ships were failing at sea, invented technologies to build
faster and cheaper computer chips, and imaged the infant universe.

To date, 22 UC Berkeley faculty have won Nobel awards.

In recognition of broad and deep excellence, respected sources have repeatedly ranked UC Berkeley at or near the
top in fields ranging from engineering and the "hard" sciences to the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Case in
point: A National Research Council analysis of U.S. universities concluded that UC Berkeley has the largest number
of highly ranked graduate programs in the country. It ranked doctoral programs within a range (such as between
1st and 5th) and found that 48 out of 52 Berkeley programs assessed ranked within the top 10 nationally.

In accordance with UC's "public" character, the university has long served talented individuals regardless of means.
As early as 1897, financial aid was available for "needy and deserving" students. More than a century later, UC
Berkeley combines outstanding teaching and research programs with broad access for students of all means —
educating more federal Pell Grant recipients from low-income families than all eight Ivy League universities
combined. Close to 30 percent of UC Berkeley freshmen are the first in their families to attend college.

To learn more about UC Berkeley's history and its contributions to human knowledge and social progress, read on.

 19th-century: Founding UC's flagship campus

The roots of the University of California go back to the mid 19th century, when hundreds of thousands of fortune
seekers came west in the gold rush, California became a state, and farsighted drafters of the 1849 State
Constitution dreamed of creating a university that "would contribute even more than California's gold to the glory
and happiness of advancing generations."

The "seat of learning" they envisioned was born nearly two decades later, through a merger of two fledgling
institutions — the private College of California, in Oakland, and a new state land-grant institution, the Agricultural,
Mining, and Mechanical Arts College.

The former, led by former clergyman Henry Durant and modeled after Yale and Harvard, featured core courses in
Latin, Greek, history, English, mathematics, and natural history, with the addition of modern languages. Though it
had little funding, it had land — both in Oakland and four miles north at a town site eventually named for George
Berkeley, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and bishop.

Meanwhile the state college, created by the state legislature under federal land-grant legislation, had funding but
as-yet no campus. Leaders of the two institutions decided to join the two schools to their mutual advantage,
blending their curricula to form a "complete university." On March 23, 1868, the state governor signed into law the
Organic Act, "to Create and Organize the University of California."

Defining the university's mission

A "tiny band of scholars" — 10 faculty members and nearly 40 students — made up the new University of California
when it opened in Oakland in 1869. Construction of South Hall and North Hall on the northern site was promptly
begun. In September 1873, the University and close to 200 students, led by UC President Henry Durant, moved to
the new campus in Berkeley on land adjoining Strawberry Creek.
Setting course
Literature? Agriculture? Science? Early leaders of California debated which subjects its new university should emphasize
— and whom primarily it should serve.

The early years saw intense debate over the emphasis of the new University. How central to its mission was the
teaching of literature? Agriculture? Science? And whom was it primarily to serve? During the state's Second
Constitutional Convention, in 1878, the future of the new public university hung in the balance: one proposal was to
disband it altogether and start a new institution devoted exclusively to practical matters, excluding all elements of a
"classical" education.
A new State Constitution was narrowly approved by voters in May 1879. It guaranteed the University of California a
level of independence shared by few other public institutions in the nation and gave its governing Board of Regents
"full powers of organization and government," subject to limited oversight by the state legislature. What this unique
governance structure meant precisely, in practice, would become a point of debate; periodic crises throughout UC's
history have tested the relative powers of the regents, state governor and legislators, campus chancellors, faculty
members, and students.

Launching a statewide UC system

South Hall, built in 1873, the first UC building

The early decades of the 20th century saw the launch of a "southern branch" of the University of California, at Los
Angeles, in 1914 — thus initiating a statewide system (today with 10 campuses across California) with Berkeley as
its flagship institution. The UC system was later restructured, in 1952, to create chancellor positions for the
campuses at Los Angeles and Berkeley. At Berkeley industrial-relations specialist Clark Kerr was appointed, later to
became UC President and chief architect of the California Master Plan for Higher Education. Designating UC as the
research arm of the state educational system, that plan has guided public higher education in California since 1960
and has served as a model for states throughout the nation.

Architecture: A 'city of learning' overlooking SF Bay

Wooden Harmon Gym, built in 1879, served as gymnasium,

social hall, and large indoor meeting space.
UC's founding fathers located their new institution on a 160-acre "choice savannah" on the east shore of San
Francisco Bay — a place of rolling hills with large coastal live oak, sycamore, and bay trees; a lively creek that
provided a year-round water supply; and views toward San Francisco and the Golden Gate.

Already the College of California, a precursor to UC, had commissioned a comprehensive study by the landscape
architect Frederick Law Olmsted, renowned for his design of New York's Central Park. His plan, issued in 1865,
envisioned a picturesque, informal, park-like campus. It would eventually be modified substantially to develop the
entire site, rather than just 30-plus acres, and to incorporate a botanical garden for educational and scientific
purposes. Over time, some of the nation's most renowned landscape architects - among them Lawrence Halprin,
Thomas Church, and Hideo Sasaki - have left their mark on the Berkeley campus, whose park-like beauty serves as
a backdrop to a bustling, urban academic scene.

The first buildings constructed on the new campus were South and North Halls, following the Second Empire
architectural style and completed in 1873 and 1875 respectively. As enrollment grew over the next few decades,
other major academic buildings were constructed gradually in the area between the north and south forks of
Strawberry Creek. Picturesque roads led to other campus zones.

Master plan for a 'city of learning'

Phoebe Apperson Hearst
At the turn of the 20th century, philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst, widow of mining magnate and U.S. Senator
George Hearst, financed an international architectural competition for a master plan for the campus  — a "grand
vision worthy of the great University whose material home they are to provide for." The design contest — for a "City
of Learning, in which there is to be no sordid or inharmonious feature" — brought the new campus at Berkeley not
only a building plan but worldwide notoriety.

"On the face of it," wrote the London Spectator,  "this is a grand scheme, reminding one of those famous
competitions in Italy in which Brunelleschi and Michelangelo took part. The conception does honor to the nascent
citizenship of the Pacific states...." At Oxford University, a Latin orator spoke of "a report that in California … amidst
the most pleasant hills on an elevated site, commanding a wide sea view, is to be placed a home of Universal
Science and a seat of the muses."
Emile Bénard of Paris won the competition with an elaborate plan in the formal Beaux Arts neoclassical style, but it
was 4th-place winner John Galen Howard who was appointed to modify and implement the campus plan (he
established a department of architecture as well). Through a series of small but significant changes that made the
plan, eventually, more his than Bénard's, Howard succeeded in marrying the grace, dignity, and austerity of
classical lines with the requirements of the California environment and the site.

Atrium of Hearst Memorial Mining Building, completed in 1907. (Ron Delaney photo)

Nearly 20 buildings, including some of the campus's most elegant and stately structures were built under Howard's
direction. Among them are the Hearst Memorial Mining Building (1907), the Hearst Greek Theatre (1903), California
Hall (1905), Doe Library (1912), Wheeler Hall (1917), and Sather Tower or "Campanile" (1914).

Meanwhile campus landscape design was led by architect and engineer John Gregg, who would come to guide "the
planting of the Berkeley campus, and the protection of its native growth, tree by tree and shrub by shrub," as an
admirer put it.

Early 20th-century buildings

New classical-style structures were added through the first half of the 20th century to accommodate a growing
student body and research program. The completion of the first student-residence facility, Bowles Hall, in 1929,
changed campus life by breaking the domination of the fraternities and sororities — which, along with private room-
and-board houses, had housed students up until that time.
Strawberry Creek
The late 1920s and early '30s saw the addition of several buildings designed by George Kelham in eclectic
architectural styles including Collegiate Gothic, Moderne, Mission, and Deco. They included an immense new natural
sciences facility, Valley Life Sciences, as well as Edwards Stadium and separate men's and women's gymnasiums
that moved the campus border one block south to Bancroft Way, beyond the campus's historic core. In the early
1940s, following a lull in construction necessitated by the Great Depression, the campus added one of its last Beaux
Arts buildings, today's Sproul Hall, while a women's dormitory, Stern Hall, became the first campus building in
Modern style.

Post-WWII enrollment surge

The end of World War II brought profound changes to the campus, as thousands of returning troops enrolled at
Berkeley with help of the GI Bill. To accommodate this influx, dozens of temporary wooden buildings were moved to
campus, several to the central glade north of Doe Library. Old commercial buildings and housing along
Telegraph north of Bancroft were demolished and a new four-building
student-union complex — complete with dining commons and theater — was
built. The University also undertook a complex (and ultimately controversial) expansion, buying some 40 acres of
built-up off-campus property, demolishing houses, and building several high-rise residence halls, playing fields, and
parking structures.
To accommodate a huge surge in enrollment after World War II, temporary buildings were placed on the campus's central
glade, older buildings were demolished, and a student union complex was erected.

Guiding this era of development was UC Berkeley's first comprehensive long-range development plan, in 1956,
which envisioned the campus as a kind of city in its own right. The plan addressed new construction — needed to
accommodate instruction and housing for anticipated growth to 25,000 students — as well as landscaping, parking,
preservation, and the University's relationship with the surrounding community.

Following from the plan, large classroom, office, and lab buildings were added to accommodate students of the Baby
Boom generation; they include Tolman, Wurster, Barrows, Evans, and Barker halls. Completion of Hertz Hall for
music (1958), Zellerbach Hall auditorium and playhouse (1968), and the Berkeley Art Museum (1970), solidified a
renewed campus emphasis on cultural programs and facilities.

During the 1980s and '90s, a prolonged housing shortage in the Berkeley area led to construction of new University-
run residence halls and apartments for thousands of students, as well as renovated student-family housing and
faculty condominiums. Completion in 1989 of the Foothill housing complex, north of campus, and in 2007 of the
Underhill Area projects, south of campus, provided a dozen new student-housing facilities. The new residential
options now make it possible to guarantee housing to incoming freshmen for their first two years.

Seismic strengthening and physical renewal

The new Stanley Hall opened in 2007, adjacent to the recently retrofitted Hearst Memorial Mining
Building.
The Loma Prieta temblor of 1989 and the Northridge earthquake in 1994 prompted a close appraisal of campus
buildings, which led to an extensive physical renewal. In 1997, then-Chancellor Robert Berdahl announced the
launch of an ambitious program to improve seismic safety. By the time he stepped down seven years later, more
than $400 million in retrofits and renovations had been launched or completed on campus structures.

Crossroads dining complex, UC Berkeley's first green-certified building, housing the nation’s first
organic-certified college kitchen.
Work to make campus buildings safer has offered an opportunity, as well, to modernize labs and to house major
new research programs — among them the campus's emerging interdisciplinary initiative in the health sciences,
whose cornerstone facility, the new Stanley Hall, opened in 2007.

Visitors to the UC Berkeley campus today encounter a number of other new state-of the-art facilities as they
traverse the central campus — the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library, the green-certified Crossroads student-dining
commons, and the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, to name just three. Future projects at various stages of maturity
include a comprehensive renewal of Lower Sproul Plaza's student-services hub and a new home, in downtown
Berkeley's growing arts district, for the Berkeley Art Museum.

Keen interest in environmental sustainability and in reducing the campus's carbon footprint, a goal articulated
passionately by Berkeley students and formally adopted by the campus administration in 2007, now informs many
aspects of campus planning and natural-resource stewardship.