Only One Complete, Operating Windmill Remains in Berkeley

The windmill pictured here is the last intact and operating windmill and water tank structure in Berkeley. It is located at 1201 Sixth St. behind a two-story corner-grocery style building, but is best viewed from around the corner on Harrison Street. 

The building has a sign on its south wall proclaiming it to be the Grand Food Market, but the market has been gone for decades. The building was built in 1908 and it once housed Arcieri Dairy, the last dairy in Berkeley. There were actually cows in the fields across the street until the early 1950s, but now there is a starkly new US Postal Service building on the former field.

Windmills that pumped water from wells up to a holding tank above were once common backyard structures, not just out in the countryside but also in urban settings such as in Berkeley, and they appear in many old photographs.

The earliest modern European windmills appeared in the 12th century and over time were adapted to a variety of tasks, including pumping water, sawing wood and grinding grains.

The water-pumping windmill does not actually pump the water but rather pushes it up a pipe. The rotation of the windmill blades causes a rod (that is inside a cylinder below the water level) to move up and down, pushing water up the pipe to a holding tank. The windmill is mechanically simple and dependable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windmill

Water-pumping windmills were essential to the settlement of the western United States and permitted farming far from streams and rivers. Windmills were used to pump water for the steam railroad trains that once provided the primary source of transportation across the continent. Other sources of domestic water before the large municipal water companies like East Bay Municipal Water District were wells with hand pumps and water piped from hillside reservoirs or springs.

In 1870 lighter and more efficient steel blades were developed and in the 1890s small wind turbine generators supplied electricity to rural areas. With the enactment of the Rural Electrification Act after World War II, federal funds were used to construct utility power lines into rural areas, which brought an end to the use of wind for generating electricity. However, with the need to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, interest in wind power has been renewed. 

In 2001 there were two Berkeley windmills, but the other one, located at 1129 Francisco St. and dating from about 1892, collapsed onto its water tank in a winter storm. The base structure is still there. Remnants of windmill structures whose bases have been converted to other uses also hide behind houses at 1830 Delaware, 1141-3 Hearst, and 705 Delaware. Windmill bases were sturdily built so they could carry the weight of the water in the tank above and are recognizable because their walls are angled inwardly, serving like a buttress.

My favorite windmill base is located in the town of Tomales in northwest Marin County on the grounds of the Church of the Assumption of Mary (1860). The former water tower was built in 1887. Although it has lost its windmill, it is in nice condition in a garden setting and it may be the only old water tower base that sports a window cut in its east wall with a religious statue standing behind the glass. 

Ira Serkes  has posted  a video of Berkeley’s last operating windmill:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/serkes/5701601342/in/pool-83661293@N00/

Susan Dinkelspiel Cerny is author of Berkeley Landmarks and An Architectural Guide Book to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Portions of this article first appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet.