A century ago, Berkeley residents owned 15,000 automobiles, “according to Chief Assessor Harry J. Squires,” the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported. “This is an increase of more than 3,000 cars over last year and based on the percentage of valuations meant that Berkeleyans have spent more than $11,000,000 on automobiles in the last five years.”
Squires was, on March 4, 1926, planning to mail out assessment cards and tax bills to “13,054 motor car owners” giving them the estimated taxable value of their vehicles, based on model make and year. “He expects that he will receive the names of owners of between 2,000 and 3,000 more cars from the state Motor Vehicle Department within the next 10 days.”
It may be of interest to note here that in the mid-1920s rail transit was still robust in Berkeley. There were two competing streetcar lines, numerous routes serving most of the city, interurban trains and regular ferries to and from San Francisco. Still, automobile ownership and use was rapidly growing.
In the same issue of the Berkeley Daily Gazette, City Manager John Edy reported a plan to increase the number of paved streets in Berkeley to better handle increased traffic. Berkeley at the time had about 200 miles of streets: 170 miles “oil-macadamized,” 22 miles paved and 10 miles “unimproved.”
“Oil-macadamized” streets, which placed tar over packed gravel, couldn’t stand up to increasing traffic, so the city was planning to pave them with asphalt to create an “arterial highway system” within Berkeley. “The plans call for certain streets to be paved and equipped to handle heavy traffic, which will then be diverted to them. This will save the cost of maintenance and will result in the city having more money to spend on the residential streets,” Edy declared.
School dedication: On March 8, 1926, the grounds at Berkeley’s new Hillside School were dedicated. The ceremony involved speeches and recitations, singing the school song “Hillside, Oh Hillside,” raising the school colors and “bringing earth from the old school (and) ashes from the burnt building,” which had been destroyed in the 1923 Berkeley Fire.
The old school had been on a different site, on the southwest corner of Le Roy Avenue and Virginia Street. The new school was on Le Roy between Buena Vista Way and La Loma Avenue.
Police facilities: Berkeley City Hall’s renovation that I mentioned in last week’s column was going to result in Berkeley’s police station being “made into a scientific plant,” the Gazette reported March 1, 1926.
The construction of the City Hall Annex, still standing on Allston Way west of Martin Luther King Jr. Way (then known as Grove Street), and the transfer the of “fire department and bacteriological laboratory” and other offices freed up space in City Hall’s main building for an expansion of the police facilities that had long been termed ‘inadequate.”
“Within three months the headquarters will be completely modernized with special bureaus for various police functions,” the Gazette reported. “The entire ground floor will be utilized.”
The department would gain separate spaces for the juvenile division; traffic bureau; cases involving women or girls; and records and property storage, including a new vault, new switchboard and alarm system and a bigger office for the chief.
Phone anniversary: On March 10, 1926, the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. held an open house at its local headquarters at 2116 Bancroft Way “in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the telephone,” by which was meant “the first complete sentence of speech by wire.” “Old-timers” who visited recalled that in 1884 (eight years after the device was invented) only four telephones were in all of Berkeley; in 1926, there were 22,000.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.
Hence then, the article about berkeley a look back automobile tax bills were in works 100 years ago was published today ( ) and is available on mercury news ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Berkeley, a Look Back: Automobile tax bills were in works 100 years ago )
Also on site :
- Trump dismisses criticism from Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson over Iran attacks: ‘MAGA loves what I’m doing’
- Epstein deposition videos show Hillary Clinton in heated moments with lawmakers, Bill Clinton addressing hot tub photo
- Shareholder Alert: The Ademi Firm investigates whether Select Medical Holdings Corporation is obtaining a Fair Price for its Public Shareholders