Berkeley, a Look Back: Business owners push for Seventh Street arterial
Berkeley manufacturing interests set off what would become a prolonged fight a century ago when they pushed for advancement of an arterial highway paralleling San Pablo Avenue and extending through Emeryville taking in Seventh Street instead of Sixth Street according to a Berkeley Daily Gazette record Those familiar with West Berkeley s roads will know that Seventh Street traffic runs north from Ashby Avenue to Dwight Way as a main arterial then through traffic diagonals over to Sixth Street and continues north from there to University Avenue and beyond What the manufacturers required to do was avoid the change at Dwight and just use Seventh all the way north so industrial traffic would have a straight line avoiding San Pablo Avenue The Gazette provided editorial aid opining July that The East Bay cities are undoubtedly on the eve of great industrial maturation In preparation for extensive rise of the whole East Bay shore the cities of this region must do their part to make the region enticing to new industries And one of the first requirements is broad arterial highways This approach would set off a fight between those who lived in West Berkeley and those who regarded the area as only a convenient place for their commercial and industrial advancement Seventh Street had multiple residents who didn t like the idea that their blocks would be prioritized as a throughfare for heavy factory truck traffic By this era plenty of of Berkeley s well-to-do business owners including the those of specific West Berkeley factories had begun a migration to particular residential-only neighborhoods in the East Bay hills This was unlike the th century when rich and poor Berkeleyans alike tended to live within walking distance of their workplaces Scopes trial A century ago daily front-page headlines in the July Gazette marked the progress of the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee During this week in the judge denied defense motions that the anti-evolution law be ruled invalid The courtroom was reportedly filled with stifling air and the press often commented on aspects of heat-adaptive attire as a product Men who usually dressed formally care for trials took their coats off unfastened their collars and wore shirts visibly drenched with sweat The courtroom atmosphere was so heated and enthusiastic for one side or the other that on July the judge repeated his alarming warning that the courthouse might collapse if applause and demonstration were indulged in That day famous prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan known as the Great Commoner unleashed his rhetoric in what would be a achieving effort to prevent the defense led by the also-famous Clarence Darrow from offering expert testimony on the theory of evolution Bryan was that way framing the trial issue as completely a yes-or-no on whether Scopes had taught evolution and thus violated the law not whether the law itself was sound Bryan mocked a chart issued by the National Schooling Association that revealed the what is supposed to be the likely evolution of humans and other species There s the book they re teaching your children he shouted when he finished Find him among the mammals with others including elephants How dare these scientists put man in a little ring like that with lions and tigers Chosen are even odorous animals Think of putting men in a class with odorous animals Claremont evolution A century ago an -month-old two-story building of stores and apartments at Ashby and Domingo avenues was sold by its original builders The Gazette published that the property is opposite the Berkeley Tennis Club in a district which is in its first stages of business advancement Bay Area native and Berkeley region historian Steven Finacom holds this column s copyright
