One hundred years ago in February 1926, Berkeley heard of big plans to build a large manufacturing plant. The national company Heinz Co. had purchased a 15-acre site, the “old Snyder property” at the northwest corner of downtown Ashby and San Pablo avenues and was proposing to build a food processing plant there, according to Berkeley Daily Gazette archives.
The facility will have approximately 1,000 jobs (some of them seasonal) and will cost approximately $1 million to build. It was said that parts of it might start working in 1927. City officials accepted the project and moved quickly to zone the land for manufacturing and abandon the portion of the road that was to be built.
The chairman of the city’s Planning Commission told the Gazette that as far as he’s concerned, planning commissioners want to “do everything possible to encourage quality industries to be in Berkeley.” The proposed project will lead to the construction of an extensive factory like a European palace on the streets, with pillars, decorations, arches and landscape barriers.
The building, now a landmark of the city, still stands. Major tenants currently include Outdoor Supply Hardware and Kala Art Institute.
The police shot: An Oakland police officer shot and fatally wounded a Berkeley woman on Feb. 5, 1926. Patrolman AW Sim shot a car at 2:30 that morning at Park and 19th avenues in Oakland. Mrs. Ruth Paulucci, of 2119 Addison St. in Berkeley, he was riding in a car and was hit from behind when the driver got out of Sim, who was yelling at him to stop.
Sim said he was suspicious of the car and thought it was owned by criminals. Instead, it was taking people who had attended the dance out of their homes. Paulucci was hit in the spine and at first others in the car thought he was “crazy” when he fell, because they didn’t see any blood.
After the shooting, he was taken to Berkeley General Hospital, where doctors determined that his spinal cord had been severed and that he would be partially paralyzed when he recovered. Within a week, Oakland’s police chief ruled that the shooting was justified, saying the officer was “obsessed with police work.”
City fire: A spectacular fire, “one of the most stubborn fires of recent years,” destroyed an early Berkeley building at the corner of Allston and Harold avenues on the night of Feb. 18-19, 1926.
The log structure that burned was an old barn, a remnant of the Shattuck family’s former residence. The barn was used to store newspapers and delivery trucks by the Gazette, which has its printing center to the north of the building.
A strong southerly wind fanned the flames at the printing plant, and Berkeley firefighters had an uphill battle to save it. There was water damage to the press, but the building was saved. A nearby garage in Shattuck was also threatened, and its crews quickly removed 110 cars parked there from nearby streets.
The light of the fire attracted many spectators, some of whom came from neighboring towns. Today the site is part of the Berkeley YMCA complex on Allston Way.
UCLA campus: On Feb. 16, 1926, the University of California took over the Westwood campus in Los Angeles as the new home of UC’s Southern Branch. UC facilities were previously located on the Vermont Avenue campus, which housed a state teachers college before it was converted to the UC Southern Branch. The Westwood area would later be developed as the home of what is now UCLA.
Bay Area community historian Steven Finacom holds the copyright for this column.
