Downtown Berkeley, California
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Downtown Berkeley is the
central business district A central business district (CBD) is the Commerce, commercial and business center of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides wit ...
of the city of
Berkeley, California 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, Cali ...
, United States, around the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, and extending north to Hearst Avenue, south to Dwight Way, west to Martin Luther King Jr. Way, and east to Oxford Street. Downtown is the mass transit hub of Berkeley, with several
AC Transit AC Transit is the main Public transport bus service, bus transit operator in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, California. AC Transit is the third largest bus operator in California, serving the western portions of Alameda and C ...
and
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...
bus lines converging on the city's busiest
BART Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California. BART serves List of Bay Area Rapid Transit stations, 50 stations along six routes and of track, including eBART, a spur line running t ...
station, as well as the location of Berkeley's
civic center A civic center or civic centre is a prominent land area within a community that is constructed to be its focal point or center. It usually contains of one or more dominant public buildings, which may also include a government building. Recently, ...
,
high school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...
, and
Berkeley City College Berkeley City College (BCC, formerly Vista Community College) is a public community college in Berkeley, California. It is part of the California Community Colleges System and the Peralta Community College District. Berkeley City College is ...
.


History

The area was formerly a settlement site of the Huichin/Chochen band of the
Ohlone The Ohlone ( ), formerly known as Costanoans (from Spanish meaning 'coast dweller'), are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Northern California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the l ...
indigenous people. The site was probably associated with the proximity of
Strawberry Creek 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. T ...
which ran along what is today's Allston Way. During the days when the land was part of the vast Rancho San Antonio, a ford existed across Strawberry Creek beneath a clump of oak trees at approximately the intersection of Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way. The road or trail which crossed here connected the ranch houses of two of the Peralta brothers, Domingo and Vicente. Following the
Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War (Spanish language, Spanish: ''guerra de Estados Unidos-México, guerra mexicano-estadounidense''), also known in the United States as the Mexican War, and in Mexico as the United States intervention in Mexico, ...
, four Americans laid claim to four equal strips of land in what is now downtown Berkeley, bounded on the north by what is today the alignment of Addison Street, and on the south, by Dwight Way. Among these claimants was Francis K. Shattuck. Shattuck's portion lay west of what is now Shattuck Avenue. He built a house here at the site of what is today the Hotel Shattuck Plaza. The county road going to Oakland along his property was informally called "Shattuck's road", but the planners of the College of California dubbed the street "Guyot" on their plat map. That name never caught on and the street name was upgraded to "Shattuck Avenue". In the 1890s, Strawberry Creek was
culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe (fluid conveyance), pipe, reinforced concrete or other materia ...
ed through the downtown section, the oak trees were removed, and Shattuck and University Avenues were improved. Nonetheless, the area developed slowly until about the time of the
1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 AM Pacific Time Zone, Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated Moment magnitude scale, moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli inte ...
, after which it developed rapidly. The Central Pacific constructed its Berkeley Branch Railroad line connecting the area to the
Oakland Pier The Oakland Long Wharf was an 11,000-foot railroad wharf and ferry pier along the east shore of San Francisco Bay located at the foot of Seventh Street in West Oakland. The Oakland Long Wharf was built, beginning 1868, by the Central Pacific R ...
and the transcontinental rail line in 1876, two years before the people living near the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...
and in Ocean View incorporated Berkeley. The end of the line at University Avenue was initially called the "Terminus" until the line was extended north, after which time it was called Berkeley Station. In the early years, downtown Berkeley was synonymous with "Berkeley Station", referring to the area around the railroad depot. The railroad served both passengers and freight at Berkeley Station. A telegraph office and
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office were situated across the street from the depot. The Key System opened up its electric train service to San Francisco from Downtown Berkeley in 1903. The Southern Pacific responded by electrifying and extending its lines in Berkeley in 1911 (
East Bay Electric Lines The East Bay Electric Lines were a unit of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, Southern Pacific Railroad that operated electric interurban-type trains in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Ar ...
) and moved its downtown freight operations just south of downtown to Ward Street and Shattuck. In 1941, however, SP ended its electric commuter train service. From then until April 1958, downtown Berkeley's commuter train service was solely in the hands of the Key System. Buses replaced the trains from 1958 to the present. In 1973, BART opened its own Berkeley station at Center Street and Shattuck, once again providing electric train service to San Francisco and elsewhere in the Bay Area. For several years after the Key System's F train stopped running on Shattuck, its tracks (originally, the old SP tracks) remained in the pavement of Shattuck Avenue. Parking islands were created along the centerline of Shattuck overlapping the northbound tracks. In the early 1960s, a series of fountains were constructed which replaced some of these parking islands, extending from Center to Haste. The fountains quickly became the favorite targets of vandals who regularly put bubble bath in them. They were soon removed, just before Shattuck Avenue was torn up for the BART subway construction. In early 2007 the Marine Recruiting Center for the northern
Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Association of Bay Area Governments ...
relocated from Alameda to downtown Berkeley in order to be closer to the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
. This move was met with protests from Code Pink, prompted the city council to pass a 6-3 resolution calling the Marines "uninvited and unwelcome intruders", and led to
United States Senator The United States Senate consists of 100 members, two from each of the 50 U.S. state, states. This list includes all senators serving in the 119th United States Congress. Party affiliation Independent Senators Angus King of Maine and Berni ...
Jim DeMint James Warren DeMint (born September 2, 1951) is an American businessman, author, and retired politician who served as a United States Senate, United States Senator from South Carolina and as president of The Heritage Foundation. A leading figure ...
attempting to pass legislation that would strip Berkeley of its $2,392,000 in federal funding.


Commercial issues

Berkeley's downtown section has been the principal commercial center of Berkeley since the railroad station was built. However, it has had to compete with the secondary commercial sections which emerged starting as early as the 19th century. Three of these in the past were West Berkeley (Ocean View), North Berkeley (Berryman's) and the
Telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...
area immediately south of the University of California campus. Others which came a bit later were the Elmwood area along College near Ashby, San Pablo Avenue, South Berkeley (formerly the Lorin District) and Thousand Oaks along
Solano Avenue Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany, California is a two-mile (3.2 km) long east-west street. Solano Avenue is one of the larger shopping districts in the Berkeley area. Businesses along Solano Avenue cover a wide range, including grocer ...
. Starting in the 1970s it also had to compete with the emergence of major shopping centers and malls outside of Berkeley, especially El Cerrito Plaza, Hilltop Mall, and Emeryville. These resulted in the loss of several formerly prominent downtown businesses, including two large department stores; Hink's, whose building was converted to a movie theater and several smaller stores, and J. C. Penney. Contributing factors which continue to date are high commercial rents, a shortage of street parking and convenient garages, and higher consumer prices than those offered elsewhere. The latter has been a problem since the earliest days as there has always been a tendency to view the University population as a captive consumer base. The city has created an official
arts district An arts district or cultural district is a demarcated urban area, usually on the periphery of a city centre, intended to create a 'critical mass' of places of cultural consumption - such as art galleries, theatres, art cinemas, music venues, and p ...
along Addison Street and passed laws restricting business hours in other neighborhoods in an attempt to increase night time activity downtown. To address the parking situation, the city is planning to install a system of digital signs to direct drivers to available parking spaces downtow

Today, Berkeley's downtown is highly eclectic, with numerous small businesses. Currently, the Berkeley City Council passed a new downtown area plan in an attempt to make the Downtown more sustainable and concentrate future development in the downtown area in conjunction with the announced plan of the University to build a hotel, conference center, and museum along Center Street. In 2009 local petition gatherers gained enough signatures to obstruct implementation of the plan, angering many residents of Berkeley, including the coalition of the Sierra Club, the Greenbelt Alliance, Berkeley Food and Housing Project, Berkeley Food & Housing Project and TransForm. The opponents argue that the new development calls for buildings that are too tall and have housing that is too expensive. Supporters of the downtown plan counter that the plan requires 20% affordable housing units and a denser downtown reduces carbon emissions. In recent years, Shattuck Avenue has seen the opening of a number of new high-profile restaurants.


Government

Downtown Berkeley is a part of Berkeley's District 4 and is represented by Kate Harrison. It is considered a left-leaning neighborhood in civic politics.


References


External links


Downtown Berkeley in 1888
Photo by Oscar V. Lange.
Designated Landmarks in Downtown Berkeley
(Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association)
Downtown Berkeley Association

Downtown Area Plan
{{Coord, 37.87, N, 122.268, W, display=title Neighborhoods in Berkeley, California Busking venues Berkeley History of Berkeley, California