Captain William J. Bowen’s Inn
834 Delaware Street, Berkeley, CA
Captain Bowen’s Inn (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2004)In chapter two of his book Berkeley, A City in History, Charles Wollenberg describes the beginnings of the town:
The first of the founding communities was Ocean View, an informal, unincorporated settlement located along the bayshore, immediately north and south of the mouth of Strawberry Creek. The key to its existence was the decision of Captain James Jacobs to anchor his sloop at the creek’s mouth in 1853.
Berkeley Pier (built 1874)
By that time, the Bay Area was already becoming a metropolitan region, with a number of small communities developing around the bay to provide goods and services to San Francisco. Access to the bay was crucial, since that waterway was the region’s chief transportation and communication route, linking communities with San Francisco’s urban core. A native of Denmark who had become a New England resident and merchant seaman before coming to California, Jacobs was originally a gold seeker. Like many miners, however, he soon decided there had to be a better way to make a living than standing in cold water shoveling gravel. He bought a small sailing vessel and began hauling cargoes on the bay. Jacobs’s decision in 1853 to base his operations on what was to become the Berkeley waterfront was certainly linked to Domingo Peralta’s land sales during the same year. As the rancho property was transformed into cropland, the area’s new farmers desperately needed access to markets. That’s what Jacobs’s vessel provided. In 1854 he built a small wharf, inevitably called Jacobs’s Landing, which became the hub of the new community’s commerce.
Also in 1854, another former merchant seaman, Captain William Bowen, opened an inn on Contra Costa Road, a wagon and stage route that extended north-south along the East Bay shoreline. Since the alignment paralleled the old trail to the Castro family’s Rancho San Pablo, locals informally called the thoroughfare “San Pablo Road.” Eventually it became San Pablo Avenue. Bowen initially served food and drink and soon added a general store for the convenience of the growing number of farm families in the region. His inn was thus Berkeley’s first retail establishment. If Contra Costa Road, a.k.a. San Pablo Avenue, was Berkeley’s first north-south street, the well-worn trail between Bowen’s Inn and Jacobs’s Landing, roughly today’s Delaware Street, might qualify as the city’s first east-west boulevard.
The 800 block of Delaware Street
Photos: Daniella Thompson, 2004Susan Cerny points out in her Berkeley Daily Planet article “West Berkeley origins on grazing land”:
__________________Based on comparisons with old photographs, and because of its size, style, and method of construction, the building at 834 Delaware St. is believed to be the original Bowen’s Inn.
County records show that Captain J.S. Higgins purchased the inn from Captain William J. Bowen in 1870 and opened a grocery store in the building. The first Ocean View Post Office was established in the grocery in 1877. It was moved twice: the first time, in 1890, from San Pablo Avenue to Fifth and Delaware Streets; and the second time, in 1985, to the present location at 834 Delaware Street.
The building has not been substantially altered and—if the date of circa 1854 is correct—may be Berkeley’s oldest standing structure.
Captain Bowen’s Inn was designated a City of Berkeley Landmark on 17 June 1985. It is listed in the California State Historic Resources Inventory.
See also:
Workmen’s Cottages, Sixth St.
Copyright © 2004–2007 Daniella Thompson. Texts © 2001–2007 Susan Cerny; © 2002–2007 Charles Wollenberg. All rights reserved.
