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Health & Fitness

San Pablo Park: A Quiet, Hidden Berkeley Neighborhood

San Pablo Park is exceptional and rare because it escaped the intrusion of apartment houses during the 1950s to 1970s that have disrupted the ambience of many of central Berkeley's neighborhoods.

Of course, San Pablo Park is not a hidden neighborhood nor a hidden park to those who live in the area or use the park, but for many in Berkeley it is a “hidden” place. There are no major roads that pass through it and the residential streets that do are engineered to calm and divert any through traffic: one of Berkeley’s mazes.

San Pablo Park is both a city park and a residential subdivision. The residential tract was subdivided in 1906 by the West Berkeley Development Company whose principals were also involved with the Claremont (1905) and Northbrae (1907) subdivisions and later became the Mason McDuffie Company. The San Pablo Park Tract lies between Russell and Ward streets one block east of San Pablo Avenue and two blocks west of Sacramento Street.

The tract consists of an area of approximately fourteen blocks surrounding a 12.9-acre park equivalent in size to four city blocks. A map of the subdivision shows that the corners of all the blocks have rounded rather than square corners. In addition, Oregon, Mabel and Mathews streets have a gentle curve that breaks the harsher grid of the customary street pattern.

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The public park in the center was purchased by the city from the developers making it Berkeley’s first municipal park. Professor John Gregg, who taught at the University, was the landscape architect. The Frances Albrier Recreation Center, that replaced an earlier one, was built in 1964.

A bit of a different history is published by the National Park Service. Their history states that San Pablo Park was donated by the developers

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Although regular and coordinated streetcar service along Sacramento Street, San Pablo and Ashby avenues was operating by 1909, San Pablo Park remained sparsely populated in 1911 according to Sanborn Insurance maps. After the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad opened a passenger station on Sacramento Street in 1912, just a few blocks east of San Pablo Park, the area began to grow rapidly. By the late 1920s the subdivision was almost fully built with one and two-story bungalows. The old railroad right-of-way is still evident at Ward, just east of Dohr streets, where it is named Sojourner Truth.

A sales brochure for San Pablo Park proclaimed: “LOTS-$100 DOWN-$10 PER MONTH-NO INTEREST... All street work from sewers to sidewalks done free... water mains laid... trees planted... the price you pay is the WHOLE price... every bit of street work-concrete sidewalks and gutters, curbs, macadam pavement, sewers, water pipes... even street trees.”

As in other residential subdivisions, deed restrictions prohibited saloons, corner groceries or "neighboring shacks. The brochure advised people to "just read the restrictions contained in the contract. They’re made for YOUR benefit and they WILL benefit you.”

The brochure also had photographs of shingled bungalows that the developers would build for “$500 down and this house is yours... a pleasant shingled, Swiss chalet-with dining room paneled in redwood ...a clinker brick fire-place, window seats... an artistic bungalow of five rooms.” The “Swiss Chalet” stands today at 1215 Ward Street, built by the West Berkeley Land Co. in 1907 as a model home. It is a two-story brown-shingle with carved eve brackets.

Other highlights include seven nearly identical one-story hipped roofed Colonial Revival bungalows between 2701 and 2708 Mathews Street constructed by builder John L. Stewart in 1909-10. At 2747 Mathews Street is the eccentric hand-made house Ojo del Sol” (1993-1995)  shaped like a microscopic creature called a Tardigrade,  It is also known . It was built by architect, owner-builder Eugene Tsui,

San Pablo Park was home to William Byron Rumford. Rumford (1908-1986) was a pharmacist with a business on Sacramento Street and moved to 2776 Dohr Street (built 1927) in 1937. He served on the State Assembly from 1948 to 1966 as the first African American to be elected to public office in Northern California. He sponsored several bills, including the Rumford Fair Housing Act that prohibited discrimination in real estate transactions. Enacted in 1963, it was revoked by an amendment to the State Constitution in 1964. The Supreme Court overturned the revocation in 1967.

Although San Pablo Park one of Berkeley’s older neighborhoods it is exceptional and rare because it escaped the intrusion of apartment houses during the 1950s to 1970s that have disrupted the ambience and desirability of many central Berkeley neighborhoods.

Today, San Pablo Park is a great place to ,  or maybe even . 

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. A walking tour of the neighborhood can be found in 41 Berkeley Walking Tours, published by Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.

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