Berkeley Hills 1898

Writing about California poppies and the Berkeley Hills and Golden Gate yesterday reminded me that somewhere I had some pictures of the Cal campus taken by my grandmother. I spent a pleasant time rummaging around through old photos, and finally found a very damaged album (missing a front cover) with some very damaged snapshots inside. Most of the snapshots are very tiny and glued to the heavy cardboard pages, but I was pleased at how much I was able to improve them just by taking photographs of them and working on them a bit in iPhoto.

The main picture shows the hills without Eucalyptus trees or houses. No poppies either, but it's not too difficult to imagine the hills covered in orange blooms visible all the way to the bay every spring. In extras is a picture of my grandmother, and a shot of the campus with the hills behind. To those of you who live in European countries surrounded by ancient buildings, these shots are probably not too impressive, but they are a fascinating glimpse into the history of a town in which I spent most of my life, and the university from which I graduated some 30 years after my father and 70 years after my grandmother.

The campus is unrecognizable today as every open space has been infilled with buildings of random design, many of them bearing the imprint of big donors, who gave enough money to dictate the design and have the building named after them. Only nobel prize winners get a parking space on campus, and an off campus parking space is rare and expensive. The roads, which were mostly dirt when these pictures were taken and accommodated only horses and buggies, are now choked with cars. There are over 35,000 undergraduate and graduate students today, all crammed into a town with finite borders and very little space into which the campus can expand.

It is interesting that, despite being the "photographer" in the family I have very few pictures of the town or the campus. I may have to rectify that, just for the historical record.