Unofficial UC Berkeley Campus Walking Tour
Between 2020 and 2021, I ran Tripadvisor’s #1 Berkeley walking tour. I don’t run these tours anymore. This guide will help you retrace my route.
And yes, I still accept tips!
venmo: @freeberkeleytour
Stop 1: 2299 Piedmont Avenue — International House
Look down the intersection of Bancroft & Piedmont with the International House Cafe behind you. Against the horizon lies the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the Pacific ocean.
We are at the south-east corner of the UC Berkeley campus. The house behind us — International House- bearing the Spanish Mission-style architecture is home to over 600 students from 70 different countries (including the USA). PhD’s, graduates, post-docs, undergraduates — a microcosm of the Berkeley campus converges everyday over dinner in its iconic dining hall.
Founded on August 18, 1931, UC Berkeley’s International House was the first residence west of the Mississippi where men and women, colored and white lived under one roof. A bold statement to a better future in an era where segregation was rife. Notice the formerly white-only fraternities and sororities down Piedmont Ave; International House struck this bigotry in the nose and many of the first inter-racial marriages in the West coast can also be traced back to this residence.
Over the last 90 years, this residence has housed 7 Nobel laureates, diplomats, corporate tycoons, even prime ministers and princes (Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon stayed here during his exchange at Cal).
Notice the warnings about seismic activity in the alcove beside the cafe? The Hayward fault runs through the California Memorial Stadium behind I-house. And we are overdue for an earthquake :)
Pause by the patio beyond the cafe and the tiles tell of tales of love in the air
Stop 2: California Memorial Stadium
Home to the California Golden Bears this was the site of one of the finest moments in college football history : the Play. Nov 20, 1982 against Stanford. Victory couldn’t be any sweeter. ‘Nuff said.
As you walk along Piedmont Ave, keep an eye on the right and you’ll pass the rear of the histoic Greek Theatre: home to two of the oldest ceremonies on campus: Commencement and the Bonfire Rally.
Bonfire Rally: Cal and Stanford have a rivalry that dates back 122 years. The day before the Big Game (Stanford / Cal football game), we light a bonfire which has since been replaced by a more eco-friendly propane burner), and tell stories of Cal’s triumphs. Back in the day, the audience would chant — ’Freshmen more wood!’- as groups of freshmen would add firewood to the flame. Today, it’s a milder 'freshmen more fuel!’. We also diss on Stanford, and chop wood on one of the preceding days (Stanford’s mascot is a tree). They do the same with bear paraphernalia.
Stop 3: Founder’s Rock (Piedmont & Hearst)
Imagine you’re on top of the rock looking out to the Golden Gate Bay, a vast expanse of flat land stretching up to the Berkeley Marina. It’s difficult to see anything today because of the structure in front of us — Cory Hall. But here’s what it would have looked like:
In 1866, Frederick Billings — a trustee of the College of California- stood on this very rock, looked out across the Golden Gate straits, and was reminded of a poem penned by an Anglican bishop. That bishop (and noted philosopher) was George Berkeley: the person this university and city is eponymous with.
I’ve always wondered why the plaque lists the year as 1860 while the university seal has 1868.
Here’s the seal (the motif is found on the top of Sather Gate later in the tour)
I did some digging, and while the rock commemorates the founding of a new campus to the private college of California, the public University of California was only founded in 1868 after the Morrill land grant flushing the state with funds to invest. A private college with students, faculty and little funding joined hands with the cash-rich university of California that had no campus or students and thus the most successful public university system in the world was born.
We are the first campus of the UC system — hence we go by Cal. After all, there was a time when Berkeley was the University of California in its entirety.
Stop 4: Goldman School of Public Policy (On Hearst, next to a parking lot)
As you walk along Hearst Ave, notice the frat house structure on your right. This is the renowned Goldman School of Public Policy, home to the Masters in Public Policy, and Masters in Public Administration degree programs. It used to be a frat house before the university purchased it.
Every fall, Robert Reich — Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration — teaches a graduate class “Wealth & Poverty”. A class so famed that its undergraduate version (held in the historic Wheeler Hall) was featured in Netflix’s documentary — Capitalism.
Stop 5: Sutardja Dai Hall
A little ahead to your left is Sutardja Dai Hall.
This looks like an unremarkable academic building. But every fall, the Banatao Auditorium within plays host to the Berkeley ACM A.M. Turing Laureate Colloquium. The Turing Award is the ‘Nobel’ of the field of computing. John Ousterhout, professor of computer science at Stanford University once mentioned that “if you use Turing Awards as the metric, you could make the case that the greatest team of computer researchers ever assembled at one place and time was at UC Berkeley in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Some of the smartest minds in the world in nearly every discipline are concentrated within a 1 mile radius of where we stand. This thought never fails to send shiver down my spine.
Take the left, go down the ramp and walk further into campus. As you make your way, pause to observe the towering Campanile in front of us.
Stop 6: Hearst Memorial Mining Building
The two biggest benefactors to the University of California happen to be women: Phoebe Hearst, and Jane Sather. The building before us is in memory of mining baron and husband to Phoebe Hearst: George Hearst. Described by the campus architect John Galen Howard as “the kind, buff brother amid a bevy of lovely sisters”, this is one of the most beautiful buildings in the UC system.
Go up the steps and peep inside! Notice the brick flooring, steel girders,brick-lined industrial interiors, and Guastavino tiled ceiling.
Notice the masculine, Doric columns in the exterior. In the early 1900’s, mining was the most popular discipline of its day with more than 15 percent of the 3000 students then enrolled in Berkeley, making UC Berkeley’s College of Mining the largest school of its kind in the world. Our next stop will take us to a vestige of that past.
But, before that, it’s only proper that we segue to see the building consistently voted as the ugliest one on campus, a monstrosity most students would like to see taken down — Evans Hall. Right next to the magnificent Hearst Mining structure, this gloomy, brutalist building is characterized by windowless classrooms (the windows you see are offices), and very difficult math (I heard anecdotally that it gets more difficult the higher up you go)
Stop 7: Lawson Adit
Take a left onto the little dead-end rod towards the east of Hearst Mining
This adit, built by Berkeley students for training purposes, goes 200 ft. into the Berkeley Hills. It remains unused today for safety reasons. The timber over the door is original and dates back to 1916.
Stop 8: Parking Lots
Clark Kerr — former UC Berkeley Chancellor once mentioned
“I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty”
At Oppenheimer Way & University Drive, look east and notice the parking lots on your left. They have ‘NL Reserved’ painted on the road. NL = Nobel Laureate. When faculty members at UC Berkeley receive a nobel prize, they are also presented with a coveted Nobel parking permit.
And this location is appropriate because we are between the 2 departments which have given UC Berkeley 2/3rd of its 25 faculty Nobel Prizes: Physics and Chemistry
Stop 9: Oppenheimer Way
Go down Oppenheimer Way; as you reach the end experience 2 buildings that gave more to Berkeley than any other: Gilman on your left (Chemistry), and the erstwhile Le Conte on your right (Physics).
Gilbert Newton Lewis — a doyen of chemistry, mentor to Nobel laureates, and the man who gave the world the concetps of covalent bonds, theory of acids and bases, and electron dot diagrams ran Cal’s Chemistry department from 1912 till his death in 1946.
He worked in a lab on the first floor of Gilman Hall, spent his nights in this very building (and later the Faculty club), and often showered here. In room 102 (which does not exist any more but was located in the southern end), Lewis would preside every Wednesday evening over seminars where his students would present their research.
Look up at the top floor attic: herein lies room 307 where Plutonium was chemically identified in Dec 1940. Right beside it, is the room where the fissionability of U-235 was demonstrated. A lot of the pivotal work that went into the Manhattan project and the atom bomb took place in these corridors. Go inside Gilman if you can, walk up two flights of stairs to reach the attic.
Turn over to Le Conte, and the fine corner office on the top floor was where Robert Oppenheimer held court. E.O Lawrence — Cal’s first Nobel laureate and inventor of the cyclotron was hired by Lewis, and would also spent time in these halls. He invented the cyclotron in what is today a classroom on the 2nd floor.
16 elements were discovered at Cal, including Berkelium (Bk) named for the city. That’s 13% of the entire periodic table!!!!
The cyclotron was pivotal in their discovery.
Stop 10: Faculty Glade and Pappy
Let’s walk south and weave our way to the more quieter sections of campus. Hear the babbling stream? That’s Strawberry creek! It rises in the Berkeley Hills, weaves its way through the UC campus and empties into San Francisco Bay. And the timber structure before us is the Faculty Club.
Back in the day, students would catch the attention of faculty members and roll down the hill to request a grade reevaluation. The hill came to be correlated with higher grades, and is today known as 4.0 hill.
Notice the statue of the football player towards the west of the Faculty Glade. This is Pappy Waldorf: Cal’s most successful football coach; in the only football game that matters: The Big Game against Stanford. His eyes are blindfolded before each game, so that he can remain focused and undistracted by the statue of the naked nymph.
Stop 11: Campanile
The third-tallest free standing bell-tower in the world; Sather Tower (fondly called the Campanile) is modeled after the Venetian bell tower of the Basilica de San Marco. This is also the center of the historical campus. The bears by the entrance at the base of the tower are known as the mourning bears: in memory of those who died in the first World War.
Take a moment to pause at the floor-plaque in memory of John Galen Howard: the architect who gave us this fine, Beaux Art campus
At the top of the campanile reside falcons! When they have chicks, their names are decided based on popular vote. One of the falcons is called Fauci :)
Read more about the falcons here
Walk towards the steps on the west of the campanile, and before you is the best spot on campus to watch a sunset: the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the Pacific Ocean.
Stop 12: South Hall
This Victorian structure is the oldest building on campus. You can find it on the left in this 1873 image.
Today home to the Masters in Information Science program, it first housed an Agriculture college. Notice the sheaf of grain paneled on the side walls: a testament to its more agrarian roots.
This is also the site of the smallest bear sculpture on campus. Look at the balcony railing above the entrance, you’ll see it nestled on the third circle from the left. Go bears!
Stop 13: Memorial Glade / Doe Library
The glade is a great picnic spot / congregation site on campus. During dead week, llamas show up at Memorial glade to help students destress. And near the library (underneath the glade) lie the Gardner Main Stacks: 3 floors of books and one of the largest university library collections.
This is also the site of the Naked Run: a biannual tradition during Dead week (week before finals) where students run naked through the library and dance at the bottom of the staircase for a few minutes.
Right across the glade is the CV Starr East Asian Library: with over 1 million volumes in East Asian languages, this is one of the largest collections outside the Library of Congress.
Stop 14: Valley Life Sciences Building
I don’t have much to say here, except that there is a really cute T-Rex replica inside. The original bone set is part of the university’s collection, and is one of the most complete T-Rex bone sets.
Remember the theory of how an asteroid wiped out all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago? That is a Berkeley theory: the work of a father-son duo, Walter and Luis Alvarez. Luis Alvarez went on to win a Nobel prize in Physics for his work on hydrogen bubble chambers (unrelated)
Stop 15: Football Players
Another forgotten part of the UC campus at the eastern end of Grinell’s path. Back in 1897, Cal was yet to win a football game against stanford. James Duval Phelan — Mayor of San Francisco and Regent of university purchased a casting to be awarded to the winner of the best of the next three games. And lo and behold: 1898 and 1899, Cal won!
Notice the inscription on the base: “Prize of Superiority in Football”. But there’s more. The sculptor — Douglas Tilden — had a tendency to portray male nudes in his artwork and there have always been questions about his sexual orientation. In the 1970s, the statue was ‘queered’ and embraced by the LGBTQ community as representative of two young males sharing a tender, bonding moment — the Gay Bears.
Stop 16: Sather Gate
This charming, bronze gate marks the southern entrance to campus. In fact, till 1950, Telegraph Avenue extended up to Sather Gate. Taking a before / after picture at matriculation and commencement is an old, time-honored tradition.
Notice the emblem on the gate’s midpoint: rays of light emanating from the star. And the University of California’s motto —Fiat Lux ( Let There Be Light)
Notice the little stream going under the gate: that’s Strawberry Creek and it flows through campus from the Berkeley hills before emptying into the Berkeley marina.
I’ve always wondered why we have a gate a block inside campus. Turns out, this was the entrance right till the 1950s when UC purchased the first block of Telegraph Avenue to expand campus
This is also the site of the iconic Free Speech Movement photo
Stop 17: Free Speech Monument
Near the steps of Sproul Hall lies an invisible sculpture— a coloumn of air where freedom prevails.
UC Berkeley was the site of the first mass civil disobedience movement on a US college campus. It is synonymous with Free Speech. Even today, campus protests begin on Sproul Plaza with speeches delivered from the steps of Sproul Hall — the very steps where MLK spoke to students from in 1967,
This memorial — built in 1989- is testament to that iconoclastic past which continues to be embraced in the present.
If this guide has been helpful, do donate to my venmo: @freeberkeleytour
Go bears!
