Nate is an East Bay community papers editor for the East Bay Times and Bay Area News Group.
A century ago in the summer of 1924, Berkeley had completed a fire watchtower on Grizzly Peak, and it was announced on Aug. 1 that year that the tower had a telephone courtesy of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph. Early warning of approaching wildfires was a key component of disaster plans made after Berkeley’s September 1923 wildfire. The Grizzly Peak watchtower was one of a few physical improvements made.
The July 29, 1924, Berkeley Daily Gazette featured this drawing of the proposed new telephone company building on Bancroft Way. The structure still stands today. “Marking a new milestone in the forward progress of Berkeley, officials of the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, with officials of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce participating, started ground breaking this morning for the splendid new building which will serve as the Berkeley telephone office and exchange headquarters,” the Gazette reported. “The building will be so constructed that it can be ultimately raised to eight stories.
The exchange handled an average of 87,000 calls a day. Two large, two-story, houses were removed from the site on Bancroft between Shattuck Avenue and Fulton Street. The building still stands today, looking almost exactly the same as in the Gazette’s 1924 illustration, but it doesn’t have the landscaping of shrubs and flower gardens that the article said would be installed along the Bancroft frontage.
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