Berkeley, a Look Back: Heinz plant was in planning stages a century ago
A century ago in February 1926, Berkeley was hearing of big plans to build a major manufacturing plant. The national Heinz Co. had purchased 15 acres of land, “the old Snyder property” at the city’s northwest corner of Ashby and San Pablo avenues and was proposing to build a food processing plant there, according to Berkeley Daily Gazette archives.
The plant would have an estimated 1,000 jobs (some of them seasonal) and would cost an estimated $1 million to build. It was stated that portions of it could be in operation sometime in 1927. City officials welcomed the project and swiftly moved to reclassify the site for manufacturing uses and abandon a portion of street for the project.
The chair of the city’s Planning Commission told the Gazette that as far as he was concerned, planning commissioners wanted “to go as far as is reasonably possible to encourage high-class industries to locate in Berkeley.” The proposed project would result in an extensive factory structure resembling a European palace on the street footage, with columns, ornamentation, arches and landscaped setbacks.
The building, now a city landmark, still stands. Major current tenants include Outdoor Supply Hardware and the Kala Art Institute.
Police shooting: An Oakland police officer shot and seriously injured a Berkeley woman on Feb. 5, 1926. Patrolman A.W. Sim fired at a car at 2:30 a.m. that day at Park and 19th avenues in Oakland. Mrs. Ruth Paulucci, of 2119 Addison St. in Berkeley, was a passenger in the car and was hit in the back as the driver pulled away from Sim, who had yelled at him to stop.
Sim said he was suspicious of the car and thought it contained burglars. Instead, it had been dropping off people who had attended a dance at their homes. Paulucci was hit in the spine and initially others in the car thought she was “hysterical” when she collapsed, because they didn’t see any blood.
After the shooting she was taken to Berkeley General Hospital, where doctors determined that her spinal cord was severed and she would be partially paralyzed if she recovered. Within a week the Oakland police chief ruled the shooting justifiable, saying the officer “was playing close attention to police duty.”
Downtown fire: A spectacular blaze, “one of the most stubborn fires in years,” destroyed an early Berkeley building at the corner of Allston and Harold ways on the night of Feb. 18-19, 1926.
The wooden building that burned was an old barn, a remnant of the Shattuck family estate grounds that had occupied the block. The barn was being used for storage of newsprint and delivery trucks by the Gazette, which had its printing plant to the north of the structure.
A strong south wind blew the flames against the printing plant, and Berkeley firefighters had a hard fight to save it. There was water damage to the printing floor, but the building was preserved. The adjacent Shattuck garage was also threatened, and staff there hastily removed 110 cars parked in it onto nearby streets.
The light of the fire attracted many spectators, some of whom came from adjacent 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 possession of the Westwood campus site in Los Angeles as the new home of UC’s Southern Branch. UC facilities were previously at the Vermont Avenue campus, which had housed a state teachers college before it’s conversion into the UC Southern Branch. The Westwood site would later be developed as the home of what is now UCLA.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.