State hearings on rail and ferry transit serving the East Bay produced some interesting statistics a century ago. For 1925, it was estimated that East Bay streetcar and interurban rail lines would provide some 98,700,000 passenger trips, while cross-bay ferries would provide 17,766,000 passenger trips. Motor coach buses had carried about 335,000 passenger trips in the 1924/25 Fiscal Year.
The Southern Pacific Railway (which, like the Key System, ran a streetcar system) was proposing a fare of 25 cents for a one-way ferry ride across the Bay, or 30 cents for a round trip, plus 8 cents for a trip on the streetcars.
The statistics were provided at a Sept. 22, 1925, hearing of the State Railroad Commission in Oakland. Testimony also reported that “a large slice of the profit” made by the Key System was from restaurant service on the ferry boats.
Bay Bridge: On Sept. 28, 1925, a proposal for a bridge across San Francisco Bay was presented to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The structure was intended to connect to San Francisco at Hunter’s Point, cross the Bay to Alameda and extend onwards to Oakland at Seventh and Peralta.
The bridge would be nearly 100 feet wide, with six lanes for traffic and three train tracks.
Why so far south? To avoid interfering with harbor and port development and operations in both San Francisco and Oakland, and to comply with Army Corps of Engineers regulations which strictly controlled structures across waterways where military vessels needed to pass.
Zoning dispute: Marshall Steel, a “prominent cleaner and dyer” in Berkeley, lost his bid to rebuild or expand his plant at Dwight and Grove (today’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Way), Sept. 22, 1925. The long-running dispute had been between the businessman who wanted to enlarge his successful business at its current location and neighbors who were opposed to enlarging it in their rapidly growing residential district.
That part of Berkeley was seeing considerable subdivision and construction of new houses in the early 20th century, transitioning from farmlands that had previously covered the area between Downtown Berkeley and the industrial/residential community of West Berkeley.
The City Council’s decision in the zoning dispute reclassified the site for retail. That meant Steel could continue operating his cleaning business, but not enlarge it or sell it for another light industrial use.
At the council meeting an attorney for nearby residents said neighbors preferred the street be developed “as a high class apartment house district,” rather than continue as light industrial or transition to retail.
Covenant plan: On Sept. 25, 1925, some of the neighbors met to celebrate their victory and also hear a report on the “Covenant Plan.” This was a racist effort — then popular in Berkeley — to persuade homeowners to sign voluntary “covenants” saying they would not sell or rent residential property in a particular area to non-white renters or buyers.
Flyers return: On Sept. 25, 1925, thousands of spectators “jammed” the Greek Theatre on the UC Berkeley campus to welcome back the naval airmen who had tried a non-stop flight from the Bay Area to Hawaii.
The flyers arrived in Berkeley on a Key System train, disembarked at Ward and Shattuck, then were taken on an automobile parade through Downtown, past cheering crowds of locals.
Population: “On the basis of school attendance,” the population of Berkeley was estimated to be 78,887 as of mid-1925, the Gazette reported Sept. 22, 1925. The number was based on federal statistics on the average size of families with school age children and did not take into account students attending private schools in Berkeley.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.