CITY OF BERKELEY Ordinance #4694 N.S. LANDMARK APPLICATION. Koerber Building

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1 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 1 of 19 CITY OF BERKELEY Ordinance #4694 N.S. LANDMARK APPLICATION Koerber Building 1. Street Address: University Avenue County: Alameda City: Berkeley ZIP: Assessor s Parcel Number: (historic: Berkeley Land and Town Improvement Association Tract A, Block 1, Lot 8) Dimensions: feet x 51 feet 3. Is property on any survey? Berkeley Urban Conservation Survey State Register: Yes (2S2) National Register: No 4. Application for Landmark Includes: Building(s): Yes Other Feature(s): N/A Other: Entire property 5. Historic Name: Koerber Building Other names: State Farm Building; Morgan Building 6. Date of Construction: Factual: Yes, building permit #15023; Berkeley Gazette, Sept. 16, Architect: Berkeley Building Company Contractor: Berkeley Building Company (Thomas, Wheldon & Nutt) 8. Style: Steel-frame brick & terra cotta, Commercial (aka Chicago School) style

2 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 2 of Original Owner: Fred C. Koerber, Lillie L. Koerber, M.D. & Henry C. Bischoff Original Use: Office building with ground-floor retail 10. Present Owner: Craig Larsen 2054 University Ave., Berkeley, CA Present Occupant: Commercial tenants 11. Present Use: Office building with ground-floor retail Current Zoning: C-2 Adjacent Property Zoning: C Present Condition of Property: Exterior: Good Interior: Good Grounds: N/A 13. Is the property endangered? No 14. Executive Summary: The Koerber Building was the first high-rise building on University Avenue, and when completed in 1924, it was the tallest in town. It was the first example in Berkeley of the architectural style known as Commercial or Chicago School style, introduced c by one of America s most influential architects, Louis H. Sullivan. The only other downtown building in this style is the 12-story Chamber of Commerce (Wells Fargo) Building at 2140 Shattuck Avenue, which was designed two years later. The Koerber Building is distinguished by the extensive use of glazed terra cotta on the street façade and exhibits a high degree of architectural integrity. The Koerber Building was constructed for Fred C. Koerber, a prominent Berkeley merchant, capitalist, and politician, whose first Berkeley building, dating from 1907, still stands on the northwest corner of College and Ashby Avenues. The Koerber Building has played a significant role in Berkeley s history, having been the original home of Pacifica Radio-KPFA FM, the nation s first listener-sponsored radio. The Center for Independent Living and Ramparts magazine were located here, as were numerous other organizations closely associated with Berkeley s unique culture. 15. Description: The Koerber Building is a six-story, steel-frame office building clad in brick and terra cotta. It is the earliest high-rise building on University Avenue. When completed in 1924, it was the tallest in town. The building was designed in the style known as Commercial or Chicago School style, first introduced c by Louis Henri Sullivan ( ). This style is distinguished by the use of a steel frame under masonry cladding (usually brick and/or terra cotta). Elements of neoclassical architecture are often incorporated, the building being treated as the three parts of a classical column. The ground floor represents the column s base; the middle stories, having minimal ornamental detail, stand for the shaft of the column; and the upper floor

3 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 3 of 19 represents the capital, embellished with ornaments and capped with a cornice. A prominent early example of this style is Louis Sullivan s Guarantee Building ( ) in Buffalo, NY. The Koerber Building conforms to the tripartite pattern set by the Chicago School. Its street façade is divided into three major components. The ground floor comprises an entrance lobby, occupying a quarter of the street frontage at the eastern end; a central retail space, occupying five-eights of the frontage; and a recessed service entrance at the west end. The retail space was originally designed as two storefronts, although it has always served as a single business. The entrance door and retail façade consist of flat glazing with clerestories above. The lobby clerestory conforms to the original three-pane division. The rest of the clerestories may have followed the divisions of the windows on the floors above, being divided into six panes. They have been divided into eight panes since the 1940s or earlier. Every ground-floor surface that is not glazed is faced with cream-colored terra cotta. Above the clerestories, a wide band of terra cotta displays the building s name in concave letters.

4 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 4 of 19 Floors 2 through 5 are occupied by offices and present identical rows of eight double-hung windows per floor, flanked by vertical bands of narrow, lightcolored face brick. Spiral terra cotta fluting edges the brick vertically at the building s front corners on floors 2 through 5. The windows are separated by columns clad in the same type of brick. Between the columns, horizontal bands of ornamental cream-colored terra cotta separate the floors. They are decorated with a flower, twig, and leaf motif. The top floor is taller than the four middle floors. The façade of this floor is entirely clad in ornamental, glazed terra cotta. The eight windows are arched, the arches defined by terra-cotta voussoirs and keystones, with medallions between and above the arches. A narrow balcony with iron railing fronts the four central windows, supported on five corbels. Flanking the windows are spirally fluted round pilasters with capitals. The cornice is decorated with corbels and dentils. Since the building is situated in the middle of the block, its side walls are devoid of ornamentation and faced with plain red brick. On the east and west sides, an open light shaft with a window on each of its three sides separates the front wing with two windows on the outer wall of each floor from the rear

5 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 5 of 19 wing, with a single window on the outer wall of each floor. The rear façade is fenestrated with eight windows per floor, arranged in four pairs. It is no longer visible from the street, being obscured by the Berkeley Rep complex. The Koerber Building s distinguishing features to be preserved include the following: Terra cotta façade ornamentation. Including voussoirs and keystones defining the eight arched windows on the sixth floor; spirally fluted round pilasters with capitals flanking the arched windows on the sixth floor; medallions and shields between and above the arched windows; balcony siding and corbels under the arched windows; horizontal ornamental bands flanking the balcony; narrow horizontal band at the top of the fifth-story windows; four thick horizontal bands of ornamental terra cotta separating the rows of windows between the second and sixth floors; all façade facing on the ground floor, including the name Koerber Building above the retail space; vertical spiral fluting edging the brick at the building s front corners on floors 2 through 5. Sheet metal cornice decorated with corbels and dentils. Fenestration. Including the eight arched windows on the sixth floor; 32 double-hung windows (four rows of eight) on the street façade of floors 2 through 5; clerestories on the mezzanine; twelve double-hung windows (three per floor on floors 3 through 6) on the east-facing elevation; twelve double-hung windows (three per floor on floors 3 through 6) on the west-facing elevation; rear windows; light-shaft windows. Ornamental balcony. Shallow iron-railed balcony on the sixth-floor façade, four-windows wide, faced with ornamental terra cotta and resting on five neoclassical corbels. Brickwork. Including all the façade brick surrounding the fenestrations on floors 2 through 5.

6 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 6 of History: Frederick Charles Koerber ( ) was born in San Jose, California, one of nine siblings. His parents immigrated from Germany as teenagers. The father, George Koerber was a wood dealer, an occupation taken up by Adolph, one of Fred s brothers. Another brother, John, became a grocer, and Fred most likely got his start with him. In his mid-twenties, Fred moved to Oakland, where in 1904 he married the widow Sarah Elizabeth Cash Cook ( ). He established a grocery store at 1932 Broadway and was active in the California State Retail Grocers and Merchants Association, serving on the reception committee in 1906, when the association held its annual convention in Oakland. In 1907, Koerber constructed a 2-story building of shops and apartments at the junction of the newly completed Ashby Avenue streetcar line and the College Avenue Key Route lines. This Colonial Revival building, whose architect is unknown, is said to be the earliest commercial building in the Elmwood district. The Koerber grocery was relocated from Oakland to this building, and the owners took up residence in one of the apartments on the second floor. Koerber Bldg. (1907), College & Ashby Aves. The upscale grocery trade was based on home deliveries, and Koerber owned a horse and wagon for this purpose. On March 21, 1908, his delivery business suffered a temporary setback reported in the Oakland Tribune: DRIVER THROWN 40 FEET BY STREET CAR A. N. Kite, driver for Frederick C. Koerber, dealer in groceries and fruits, 2649 Ashby avenue, Berkeley, was thrown forty feet through the air from his seat, but landed uninjured, when his wagon was struck by Telegraph avenue car No. 350, at Sixtieth street and Telegraph avenue this morning. The wagon was smashed to pieces, the car crashing clear through the center of the side, and the horse was badly injured.

7 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 7 of 19 Fruits and groceries were scattered for half a block and for over an hour the small boys of the neighborhood fought over the spoils. Business flourished, and Koerber quickly added to his holdings on adjacent lots. In 1909 he obtained a permit to construct a one-story, two-room store at a cost of $1,800 on Ashby Avenue. By 1911, he owned three contiguous commercial buildings. On his World War I draft card in 1918, he reported two business addresses: 5498 College Avenue in the Rockridge district and th Street in downtown Oakland. In July 1919, Koerber was fined $5 after another store of his, Key Grocery at Fifth and Washington Streets in Oakland, was charged with selling rain-damaged prunes. Fermented prunes may be all right as the main ingredient of a home-made brand of booze, opined the Oakland Tribune, but they are prohibited from sale by Oakland grocery stores. By the early 1920s, Koerber had moved on from the grocery business to pursue other activities. In March 1923, he filed his candidacy for a seat on the Berkeley city council in the May election that would launch the city manager form of government. He was endorsed by the merchants association of his district but wasn t elected that year. In 1925 he ran again, on a slate of four candidates endorsed by the Berkeley Municipal League. All four (the others were Thomas Caldecott, Captain John Atthowe, and Walter Mork) won their seats, with Koerber coming in fourth, having garnered 6,700 votes. A month following the election, but before he had taken his elected place on the city council, Koerber was appointed interim councilmember for a month, sitting in for Agnes Claypole Moody, Berkeley s first woman mayor, who went to Europe. By mid-september, a mere four months past the election, Koerber tendered his resignation, claiming that owing to the press of private business he was unable to devote the required time to the council. The private business concerned real estate development and finance. In November 1922, it was announced in the Oakland Tribune that a four-store building Koerber was erecting next to the George Friend Company s office [on the northwest corner of Solano and Colusa Avenues] was nearing completion. Residents of the Berkeley Park district will soon have a shopping center of their own, and will not have to depend on downtown stores, predicted the paper. George Friend ( ) was a former actor who for many years starred in stock companies at Oakland s Ye Liberty Playhouse and Fulton Theatre. In 1906, he eloped with 15-year-old Gertrude Spring, daughter of the flamboyant capitalist John Hopkins Spring. The bride s father was furious, but by 1911 he had forgiven the couple and put George to work selling properties in his newly subdivided Thousand Oaks tract. George started in the office of Newell- Murdoch Co. (Newell was another Spring son-in-law), became the manager within a year, and a year later had taken over the firm, as Newell and Murdoch pursued their own developments. By 1915, Friend had moved his office from downtown Berkeley to Solano Avenue. He took with him several salesmen from the old office, including Thomas R. Wheldon and Reed W. Thomas, and added new ones, among them an Englishman called Percy Nutt. The association of this trio with Fred Koerber may have begun in 1922, when he built the four stores next to Friend s office.

8 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 8 of 19 On February 10, 1923, the Berkeley Courier reported, The property situated on University just behind the Courier Building has just been sold. There will be a building upon it before the summer is here. On April 9, 1923, the Oakland Tribune gave further details: A one-story business block and basement will be erected on the south side of University avenue, 252 feet west of Shattuck avenue, by Fred C. Koerber and Henry Bischoff, according to an announcement made today. The building will have a frontage of 51 feet on University avenue with a depth of 90 feet and will contain three stores and basements. The building permit issued on April 10, 1923 specified a one-story, 3-room, Class C building, 51 by 90 feet, on a lot of 51 by 150 feet. The building was to reach a maximum height of 30 feet, cost $10,000, and be occupied by stores. This scheme was soon scuttled. On July 14, 1923, the Berkeley Courier published the following item: ANOTHER STRUCTURE ON UNIVERSITY AVENUE Fred C. Koerber, and associates, are to erect an eight-story store and office building on the south side of University avenue, between Milvia street and Shattuck avenue. The cost of the building is estimated at $175,000 and there is planned two stores and sixty offices. Mr. Koerber states that since he first gave publicity to the proposal to build that demands for both stores and offices assures those interested that leases can be secured for a University avenue building before its completion. On September 16, 1923, the Berkeley Gazette announced on its first page: START WORK ON BERKELEY'S BIGGEST BLOCK Actual work on Berkeley s biggest building, the new Koerber Block, on the south side of University avenue, just east of the U.C. Theater, has been started. Contracts call for the completion of the structure by February 1, according to Fred C. Koerber who, with Dr. L. L. Koerber, his sister, and H. C. Bischoff, well-known local builder, will be the owners. When completed, the building will represent an investment of upwards of $200,000. It will be six stories of steel, brick and cement and considerably larger than the Berkeley Bank Building, at present the city s tallest building. The building will be of Class A, strictly fireproof construction, and will have a frontage of 51 feet and a depth of 80 feet. Plans call for two stores on the street floor with an attractive lobby, entrance and elevator shaft. There will be 60 offices on the upper floors. Several of the offices already have been leased, Koerber says, and call for occupancy February 1. A steam shovel is now excavating for a deep foundation for the new structure. The new building permit was not issued until nine days later, September 25, It specified a 6-story, 60-room, special Class B building with a footprint of

9 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 9 of by 75 feet. The cost was estimated at $100,000, and the building was to have one passenger elevator and be occupied by offices. The three owners were Fred C. Koerber, Lillie L. Koerber, and Henry C. Bischoff, whose address was given as Ashby & College Aves., Berkeley. The architect and contractor was the Berkeley Building Company, Solano & Colusa Aves., Berkeley. Henry C. Bischoff was not a well-known local builder as the Gazette had suggested (that was John A. Bischoff, father of the artist Elmer Bischoff) but a grocer with a store at 2848 Grant Street. In the 1930s, he would move his store to 2635 Ashby Avenue, in Koerber s Elmwood building. Far more interesting than Bischoff was the third partner, Lillie Louise Koerber, M.D. ( ). A strong and independent woman, Lillie graduated from San Francisco s Cooper Medical College in 1901 and took up residence in the Mission district, where she spent her entire working life as a physician and surgeon. She was a member of the California Organization of Women Physicians for Federal Recognition and was listed in Who s Who Among the Women of California in Lillie Koerber s domestic life was highly unconventional for her time. She was always head of the household, remained unmarried into her seventies, brought up a girl she adopted on her own, and for over four decades maintained what appears to have been a personal and professional partnership with a Greekborn physician by the name of John N. Tavlopoulos. It might have been Lillie s investment that made the Koerber Building mushroom from the planned one story to the actual six. The idea may have been hers as well, since when completed, the 60 offices were marketed to physicians and dentists. Dr. Koerber may have also been behind the design choice for the building. The Berkeley Building Company, ostensibly the project s architect, was run by the three realtors Reed W. Thomas, Thomas R. Wheldon, and Percy Nutt. Initially based in George Friend s office on Solano and Colusa Avenues, they soon established their own office at 2029 Shattuck Avenue. Here they managed two companies simultaneously, the other being a real estate firm known as Thomas, Wheldon & Nutt. Despite the magnitude of the Koerber project and the building s elegant design, no architect s name appears on the building plans. It s likely that the Berkeley Building Co. employed an in-house draftsman possibly a former architectural student. The design could have been adapted from the California Casket Company Building at 965 Mission Street in San Francisco. Designed by Albert Pissis in 1905, that building bears a remarkable resemblance to the Koreber Building. Dr. Lillie Koerber, who lived at 1185 Valencia Street, will have seen it often, as it was on the way between her home and downtown San Francisco. California Casket Bldg., San Francisco

10 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 10 of 19 Two days after the Berkeley Gazette announced the beginning of construction on the Koerber Building, the great Berkeley Fire decimated almost 600 homes. As a result, the Koerber Building was completed three months later than planned. Immediately after the fire, the Berkeley Building Company began placing ads in the Berkeley Gazette. These depicted a cottage and invited, Let us build your home. We finance and plan all classes of construction on percentage or contract. Koerber Bldg. under construction, 1923

11 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 11 of 19 As the Koerber building neared completion in April 1924, the official leasing agents, Thomas, Wheldon & Nutt, began taking daily ads in the Oakland Tribune, targeting doctors, dentists, and all professional men and promising neat, attractive, well lighted, fully equipped offices in a building located where all the transportation meets. The retail space on the ground floor was leased by the American Grill, which installed a large electric sign on the roof, facing east. Tenants in the street-facing offices on the second and third floors had their names painted on the windows in gold letters. A photograph taken shortly after the building was completed shows these names. On the second floor were the insurance office of Fred S. Stripp, representing the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Co.; law offices of L.G. Faulkner; and the office of the Koerber Development Company, specializing in mortgage loans. On the third floor were dental and chiropractic offices. Koerber Bldg. shortly after completion On December 16, 1924, the Oakland Tribune reported that Fred C. Koerber, Jr. had donated a campaign office in the Koerber Building for the annual Community Chest drive.

12 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 12 of 19 Koerber sold the building in early 1933, as reported in the Oakland Tribune: Koerber Building In Berkeley Sold Berkeley, Feb. 10. Sale of the Koerber building, one of the principal downtown office structures, by Fred C. Koerber, owner and former councilman, to George E. Beedle, state manager of the State Farm Mutual Insurance Company, was announced today. According to Beedle, the offices of his insurance company will be moved to Berkeley within the next few months and houses in the building which he has just purchased. As part of the transaction, Koerber obtained a acre ranch near Duncan Mills, on the Russian River, which he says he plans to subdivide. According to a report in the Berkeley Daily Gazette on February 9, The State Farm Insurance Company will move to the Koerber Building within the next few months, it is reported, and will occupy the ground and second floors. Following the sale, State Farm Mutual Insurance Co. occupied the Koerber Building until A three story high State Farm electric sign went up on the west side of the roof, facing incoming traffic. In the late 1930s, the building was sold to Russell J. Morgan, who renamed it the Morgan Building. The building changed hands again in December 1946, as reported in the Berkeley Gazette on Dec. 26: Morgan Bldg. Is Sold Here Herman A. Shoening, one-time building contractor, and his wife, Martha Shoening, both of 882 Cleveland Ave., Oakland, today are the owners of the Morgan Building at 2054 University Ave. which has been occupied by the State Farm Mutual Insurance Co. since [ ] No plans concerning the building s future use have been formulated as yet, it was announced by the new owners, although plans are being considered for making it into a professional building. The State Farm Mutual Insurance Co. will move into its spacious new building, now under construction on Center St., sometime next year. Also in 1946, Lewis Hill set in motion the founding of the nation s first listener-sponsored radio. A pacifist who had registered as a conscientious objector in 1941, Hill was working as a news announcer for a small Washington, D.C. radio station. One day in January 1946, Hill was asked to read on the air a news report that he knew from first-hand experience to be untrue. He promptly resigned and headed for California to start his own station. In The Lengthening Shadow: Lewis Hill and the Origins of Listener-Sponsored Broadcasting in America, John Whiting describes those early days: It took Lewis Hill from 1946 to 1949 to assemble the staff and raise the money he needed to obtain a license and go on the air.

13 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 13 of 19 His two overlapping pools of talent and information were the University at Berkeley and the bohemian enclaves of North Beach in San Francisco. One major figure who was equally at home in both was Thomas Parkinson, Professor of English at the University, whose influence in bringing the best of the Bay Area writers to KPFA, and thence to the whole of America, can hardly be exaggerated. Of equal importance was the poet, essayist and critic Kenneth Rexroth, whose drawling, unedited, primitively homerecorded monologs, like an endless proliferation of Krapp s Last Tapes, captivated or infuriated listeners for many years. Their end product, in print, is some of America s most vivid cultural and personal history. In the area of Public Affairs, the greatest single influence on Pacifica s founders was Alexander Meiklejohn, an educator (President of Amherst College, ) and jurist who, in the 1950s, was to become the most noted defender and interpreter of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech. When Lew and Joy Hill came to the Bay Area, they assumed that they would be starting an AM station, and they worked from that premise for some time. But they came up against the financial realities of media control: We anticipated getting on the air a lot sooner than we did. Our son was born in March 1947 and we were hoping to get on the air around his birth time, but were not able to. There was an AM channel available, but we did not qualify for it because we didn t have the money for it. This was a great blow and we had in effect to start over. [ ] Perhaps the hardest part of the whole thing was switching from AM to FM, which was brand new and no one had access to it. (HJI) FM radio was just being launched in America. Therefore there were open channels available which were not yet worth a great deal of money, since there were very few receivers and only a small audience. The new medium was especially suited to the kind of broadcasting Hill intended, which was to achieve a high technical as well as intellectual and artistic standard. A few years earlier there would have been only low-fidelity AM channels, prohibitively expensive to acquire; a few years later FM would also become expensive, though not in the same league as AM, whose broadcast radius and therefore its audience were much greater. In the meantime the asset, a greenfield site, would become also a liability as KPFA struggled to reach an audience without FM receivers. FM was so new that, like some primitive witchcraft, its technical parameters were still clouded by superstition. Gert Chiarito [who hosted the Midnight Special every Saturday night] reports that, incredibly, [ ] the original plan was for the transmitter to be at Point Isabel in Richmond. That was because

14 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 14 of 19 at that time they thought that FM transmitters had to have their feet in salt water, and Point Isabel was the ideal location to reach all sides of the Bay Area. If we had been able to get property at Point Isabel, which would have been very cheap, we probably would have tried to build something there or use some trailers. The location finally chosen and successfully negotiated was in Berkeley at the top of the Koerber Building, a six-story structure at 2050 University Avenue. As Eleanor McKinney [KPFA s first program director] reports in The Exacting Ear: The studios and control room were custom built, mostly from used equipment. Friends and strangers heard about the new venture and came up to help stuff sound-proofing materials into the studio walls, hammer on sound tile, help with the carpentry and painting [ ] The offices were jammed with different groups rehearsing programs, with carpenters, engineers and staff members trying to be everywhere at once. One night the first signals of the new transmitter were tested. At home, in the early morning, we turned on a radio. There came the familiar voice of our engineer. The thing actually worked. It was a miracle. At three o clock in the afternoon on April 15th, 1949, Lew Hill stepped to the microphone, and the workmen, hammering down the carpet at the last minute, paused at their work. The rest of us were busy pounding out program copy and continuity on typewriters nearby. He announced for the first time: This is KPFA, listenersponsored radio in Berkeley. For a moment the typewriter copy blurred before our eyes and the project was underway. (MEE, pp ) On August 6, 1950, KPFA suspended broadcasting. With only 270 subscribers, the station was forced to devote all its time to fundraising. It returned to the air nine months later with an expanded schedule, and at the beginning of 1952 moved to larger premises at 2207 Shattuck Avenue, where it was to remain until In the 1970s, the Koerber Building was home to the radical magazine Ramparts. The ground floor space was occupied by Eden Natural Foods. Eden s vertical sign was still attached to the building in 2008, although Plearn Thai Cuisine had replaced that store over twenty years earlier. In March 1974, the Center for Independent Living, founded two years earlier, outgrew the two-bedroom Haste Street apartment that had been its first office and moved into the Koerber Building, taking offices on the second and fourth floors. The new premises were far from ideal for this group. In her oral history at the Bancroft Library, Mary Lester, the CIL receptionist at that time, recalled: There was this huge marble staircase that was very...the steps were all bowed from years and years of being worn down.

15 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 15 of 19 It was a funky place. I remember the plaster coming out of the walls right about foot-pedal-level from all of the corners. In his oral history, accessibility expert Eric Dibner reminisced: The offices [...] were really terrible. It was this really kinky hallway, very tight turns and tight doorways, an ancient elevator, and they had outgrown the size. There were probably twenty-five regular people working there at that time providing services. The elevator was chronically malfunctional, which led to an eviction notice from the fire department after little over a year on the premises. Mary Lester added: One of my primary responsibilities was unjamming the elevator. The elevator was very funky, and we had this giant screwdriver, and you had to wedge it between the doors to pry them open [laughter]. People were getting stuck in the elevator all the time. It would fit two power wheelchairs very snugly if they were standard-size power wheelchairs. There were a number of people that had larger size, and then that was just a one-person operation. The elevator was always getting stuck. In fact, not too long after I started working there we received an eviction notice from the fire department because, in the course of the months that I was there, we had to call them five or six times; we couldn t get the elevator going again, and they had to bring people down those marble stairs from the second floor and sometimes from the fourth floor. The fire department had just had it. The last straw came in the early summer of 1975, when the elevator motor burned out and the fire department was called in to carry many people down the stairs. On the Fourth of July weekend of that year, CIL moved to its current headquarters at 2539 Telegraph Avenue. Other notable tenants in the Koerber Building have been New Age magazine; Yoga Journal; Vegetarian Times magazine; Heyday Books; East Bay Media Center; Canterbury Press; The Ruckus Society; Frances Futterman, founder of the Achromatopsia Network; the Foundation for Infinite Survival; Network Against Psychiatric Assault; Americans for Nonsmokers Rights; Advocates for Women; Pacific Academy of Homeopathic Medicine; Beserkley Records; and World Book Company. Architectural historian Michael Corbett, who had his office in the Koerber Building from 1990 to 2006, reminisced: Among employees of the building in my years were Rosko who studied Arabic and performed alternative medical treatments, preferably on very attractive young women. The Hate Man was my janitor for several years. When I wanted my

16 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 16 of 19 floor mopped I was told to leave him a note and not to say Please or Thank You. I should only say Mop the floor. Once there was a cutesy picture of kittens in the hall with Hate Man Loves You written on it in magic marker. William, who is now homeless, lived in the building and helped the janitors and maintenance people. I felt that the building and some of the businesses were run in part as unofficial non-profit social service agencies, employing people who were otherwise unemployable. 17. Context: The 2000 block of University Avenue has been an important enclave of Berkeley s downtown since the 1870s. Until the Koerber Building went up, the block consisted of wood-frame buildings, none taller than three stories. It was dominated by the Victorian Fischel Block on the northwest corner of the Shattuck-University intersection. In 1911, the western half of the block was still residential, with one- and twostory homes lining both sides of the street. The eastern half was mostly stores with rooms above. The Koerber Building site was occupied by the pump house of the People s Water Company. Its two immediate neighbors to the west were hay, feed, and fuel warehouses. To its east were a paint store and a creamery. Directly across the street stood the home of the Simon Fischel family, owners of the Liberty Meat Market. Next to the Simon Fischel home, the house of Ignatz Fichel had burned down in 1908 and was replaced the following year by the 3- story University Apartments, one of whose two storefronts served as an early movie theater. A more elaborate cinema the U.C. Theater was built at 2036 University Ave. in Yet the block could not be said to be fully developed. The Berkeley Gazette article that heralded the construction of the Koerber Building on September 16, 1923 held out hopes for accelerated development: It is reported among local realtors that the start on the Koerber building will be the starting of extensive building operations on University avenue between Shattuck avenue and Grant street during the fall and winter months. The Fischel estate is said to be now figuring on a four-story store and office building almost directly across the street from the U.C. Theater. This structure probably would cost in the vicinity of $40,000. On the property now is an old-fashioned homestead which has been used by the Berkeley Undertaking Company, which was zoned off University avenue as the result of a petition of University avenue property owners. Lou Williamson, owner of considerable University avenue property, today said that he is likely to erect a store building on his property adjoining the Fischel estate. He now owns the University Hotel Apartments on the other side of the Fischel buildings. Williamson plans to erect stores at once on the northwest corner of University avenue and Grove street on the Lynch property, which Williamson and his brother purchased

17 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 17 of 19 several months ago. The old Lynch home has been razed and the property cleared of trees and shrubbery. Despite the hopes generated by the emergence of the avenue s first high-rise office block, the Sanborn fire insurance map of 1929 showed several vacant lots on the north side of the street. The most significant development to have taken place after the completion of the Koerber Building was the erection, in 1924, of the 3-story Nash Hotel on the former site of the Simon Fischel house. As late as the current decade, the block still contained one of its original 19 th - century buildings, the John Doyle house at University Avenue. It was demolished in May 2003 and replaced by the Touriel Building, the first high-rise to be added to the block in 80 years. Today, the Koerber Building continues to dominate its block. Its ownership changed a few years ago, and all the traditional tenants have dispersed. The distinct Berkeley flavor is gone, but the distinct architecture remains. 18. Significance: The Koerber Building, consistent with Section A.1.a, has architectural merit as the earliest high-rise building on University Avenue and the first of only two examples in Berkeley of the architectural style known as Commercial or Chicago School style, introduced c by Louis H. Sullivan. The Koerber Building, consistent with Section A.1.b, has architectural merit as a graceful example of the Commercial or Chicago School style. The building emulates the structure of a classical column. Much of the handsome street façade is clad in ornamental glazed terra cotta, and the top floor is particularly elegant, with a row of arched windows and an elaborate cornice. The Koerber Building, consistent with Section A.2, has cultural value. It has played a significant role in Berkeley s cultural history, having been the original home of Pacifica Foundation-KPFA FM, the nation s first listenersponsored radio, and having also housed the Center for Independent Living, Ramparts magazine, New Age magazine, Yoga Journal, Heyday Press, and numerous other organizations closely associated with Berkeley s unique culture. The Koerber Building, consistent with Section A.4, has historic value. It was constructed for Fred C. Koerber, a prominent Berkeley merchant, capitalist, and politician, whose first Berkeley building, dating from 1907, still stands on the northwest corner of College and Ashby Avenues. The Koerber Building retains a high level of integrity, having undergone relatively little alteration, and would unquestionably be recognizable by someone who knew it during its period of significance. Historic Value: County Yes City Yes Neighborhood Yes Architectural Value: County Yes City Yes Neighborhood Yes 19. Photographs & Illustrations: 1. University Avenue streetscape 2. Koerber Bldg. façade 3. Koerber Bldg. side view, east

18 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 18 of Koerber Bldg. side view, west 5. Koerber Bldg. entrance 6. Koerber Bldg. name 7. Cornice 8. Upper floors 9. Middle floors 10. Terracotta detail 11. Koerber Bldg. on College & Ashby Aves. 12. Berkeley Courier, July 14, Building Permit #15023, Sept. 25, Koerber Bldg. construction frame, Koerber Bldg. construction, front, Koerber Bldg. construction, rear, Koerber Bldg. after completion, c Ad for Koerber Bldg., Oakland Tribune, May 11, Koerber Bldg. with State Farm sign 20. Sale of the Morgan Bldg., Gazette, Dec. 26, Sanborn map, Sanborn map, Sanborn map, References: U.S. Census records for Frederick Charles Koerber and family. Building permit for Fred C. Koerber store on Ashby Ave. (Oakland Tribune, Oct. 17, 1909). World War I Draft Registration record for Fred Charles Koerber, Sept Alameda County assessment records for F.C. Koerber. Berkeley directory listings for Fred C. Koerber. Retail Grocers of the State to Hold Annual Convention (San Francisco Call, Sept. 24, 1906). Berkeley Adopts City Manager Plan (in Frank Clinton Merritt, History of Alameda County, S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1928) Another Structure on University Avenue (Berkeley Courier, July 14, 1923). Start Work on Berkeley s Biggest Block (Berkeley Daily Gazette, Sept. 16, 1923). Koerber Takes Post (Oakland Tribune, June 2, 1925). [Koerber resigns from council] (Oakland Tribune, Sept. 15, 1925). Insurance Man Buys Koerber Building (Berkeley Daily Gazette, Feb. 9, 1933). Koerber Building In Berkeley Sold (Oakland Tribune, Feb. 10, 1933). Morgan Building Is Sold Here (Berkeley Daily Gazette, Dec. 26, 1946). Whiting, John, The Lengthening Shadow: Lewis Hill and the Origins of Listener-Sponsored Broadcasting in America (in Dale Carter, Cracking the Ike Age: Aspects of Fifties America, Aarhus University Press, 1992). Center for Independent Living oral history (Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley). Correspondence with Peggy Thomas. Correspondence with Michael Corbett. Thompson, Daniella, Grocer-Politician Fred C. Koerber Left Berkeley a Double Legacy (Berkeley Daily Planet, January 11, 2008).

19 Koerber Building Landmark Application, Page 19 of 19 Thompson, Daniella, Bohemian Jewish Butchers Dominated Downtown s Meat Trade (Berkeley Daily Planet, May 29, 2008). Nelson, Marie: Surveys for Local Governments A Context for Best Practices. California Office of Historic Preservation, Savvy CCAPA.pps 21. Recorder: Daniella Thompson, 2663 Le Conte Avenue, Berkeley, CA Tel: Recorded: June 2009