Join us on Sunday, May 6th for a walk

Around Live Oak Park Spring 2001 house tour & reception

SUNDAY, MAY 6 one o’clock to five o’clock

map and tour booklet will be provided at your starting house

Tickets are $32 each; $25 for BAHA members and include 10 houses open for viewing.

Call (510) 841-2242 to order tickets

Volunteers are needed the day of the tour in exchange for free admission;
call Sarah at 510-845-1632 if you would like to help.

 

This year’s tour features two quintessential early Berkeley neighborhoods. Live Oak Park, created by the City in 1914, is one of North Berkeley’s gems and is the centerpiece of the several neighborhoods that surround it. The interiors and gardens of ten special houses dating from the first years of the last century will be open for viewing. These include the early work of architects Bernard Maybeck, Julia Morgan, and Henry Gutterson. There will be a reception in one of the gardens and a string quartet will perform, in one of the houses.

About the Park

Live Oak Park is one of Berkeley’s oldest and most naturalistic public parks. Codornices Creek meanders through its grove of native oaks, accented here and there with big, old specimen trees planted in the original gardens that preceded the park. But, the area did not grow up around the park; in fact most of the nearby houses were built long before 1914 when the land was purchased by the City of Berkeley for a public park. Two groupings of houses have been selected to best show the architecture of the area, as well as to allow for exploration of Live Oak Park and a glimpse of the old Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne homestead. There will be two houses designed by Bernard Maybeck as part of a large family compound. Both have the original redwood interiors and one even retains its wine-red velvet wall coverings. A pair of Julia Morgan houses from 1906 and 1910 stand side by side further up the hill. They show the careful symmetry and attention to detail that reflect Julia Morgan’s beaux arts training, which she translated into the local shingle vernacular. The 1908 Dempster House, perched on a large corner hillside lot, is the epitome of the Craftsman home and was designed by the owner to be earthquake-proof. It is owned by descendants of the original family. Next door, a large brown-shingle house features a wrap-around porch and a bay view: it was the recipient of a BAHA preservation award.

A Henry Gutterson-designed house from 1914, built for the Howell family (of San Francisco’s famed John Howell-Books), has a stage in the living room which was the setting for family theatricals; the string quartet will perform there on the tour. On a sunny southern slope is a 1905 house by Maybeck’s brother-in-law and sometime-partner John White. Its forest green attic feels like a treehouse. Another Craftsman house features a partially half-timbered exterior. Finally, the new house on the block, a large English Arts & Crafts house built in 1911 for a member of the pharmaceutical firm Cutter family, has just received the finishing touches of a loving and careful restoration.

Early History

In the early days of Berkeley, the vast area that now includes both the park and its neighborhoods and which extended over the top of the Berkeley Hills, was acquired in 1860 by one of Berkeley’s earliest settlers, Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne. He and his family and Pete and Hannah Byrne, two former slaves who had been freed prior to the journey west, made the long trek across the continent from Missouri to settle on the banks of Codornices Creek and to begin farming their 800 acres. In 1868 the Byrnes built an imposing Italianate villa set to the east of the park on Oxford Street. For more than 100 years the house stood. Then in 1985, while undergoing a long-awaited restoration, the house was severely damaged in two arson fires; it was subsequently demolished. The site of the house and its grounds, which includes a stretch of creek, continues to have significance as a reminder of Berkeley’s pioneers.

Because the Byrnes had invested in a farming venture in the Delta, they began selling their Berkeley property piece by piece, beginning in 1873. Henry Berryman purchased the Byrne House with ten adjoining acres and it became known as the Berryman place. Other acreage, bought by investors including Berryman, was surveyed for subdivisions. Envisioning a developing town, Henry Berryman, as owner of the Berkeley Waterworks, built the Berryman Reservoir (still located nearby), and also extended the steam train line north on Shattuck to Vine Street (Berryman Station), both as measures to increase the desirability of his North Berkeley lots. A few of the earliest houses built then are still standing today.

Site of Live Oak Park

Several early homes were built to the west, on pieces of property comparable in size to the Berryman place, the Russell Penniman estate and the home of Dr. Michael O’Toole, Glenda Lough became the nucleus of Live Oak Park. After Dr. O’Toole’s death in 1897, Mr. Penniman purchased the O’Toole property to add to his own on the southern banks of Codornices Creek in order that their beauty might be kept intact and not soon sacrificed through subdivision methods.

Through Penniman’s efforts, this large piece of property was a practically made to order garden for the City, when it was purchased in by the City March 1914. At that time Berkeley, like many other American cities, was swept up in the City Beautiful Movement, and had recently commissioned a report on city planning, which revealed a lack of public parks. The City’s ambitious plan was to gradually acquire other properties along Codornices Creek to link the new Live Oak Park with Codornices Park several blocks to the east. Eventually the park was extended to Oxford Street, with an entrance opposite the old Byrne-Berryman property.

The gardens surrounding the house were landscaped in a natural park-like style and for many years the house served as the parkâs club house. Improvements to the park, such as the stone fireplace and bridge, were built around 1919. The park once held a branch of the public library and an aviary donated by W. E. Miles who had served as a parks commissioner. Oak and Bay trees shade Codornices Creek which flows through the park.