Christmas was carefully approaching this week a century in the past in Berkeley, the place each buying excursions and native celebrations had been effectively underway.
A “mammoth public holiday celebration” was deliberate for the Greek Theatre on Dec. 20, 1925. Firemen at Berkeley’s Durant Avenue station had constructed a sleigh for Santa to reach in, and a fireplace captain had taken a “special municipal truck” to an space close to Cloverdale to chop down a 40-foot tree for the occasion.
“Another (tree) of the same type will be illuminated with incandescent globes in front of the City Hall,” the Berkeley Day by day Gazette reported.
The Greek Theatre occasion included neighborhood singing and a whole lot of native college youngsters in costumes performing a Christmas pageant. Santa Claus would additionally “personally greet” any Berkeley youngsters who got here to the occasion after he arrived in a parade up Telegraph Avenue.
New constructing: On Dec. 19, 1925, the brand new Mercantile Belief financial institution opened on the northeast nook of Faculty and Ashby avenues (right this moment it’s a Wells Fargo Financial institution department).
“Striking in its combination of the utility and the aesthetic, the spacious banking room evoked many expressions of admiration from the visitors (during an open house),” the Gazette reported. “Modified Spanish might be taken as the term best fitted to describe the building.”
The primary banking corridor featured big stuffed heads of buffalo, elk and caribou on the partitions.
“These would seem to be an entirely new feature for a banking room,” in line with the Gazette, which famous {that a} “pleasingly furnished ladies’ rest room” was additionally offered. Have you ever puzzled if these pillars flanking the doorway are actual stone? Sure, “they are of solid red Missouri granite,” the Gazette reported.
Theft capturing: On Dec. 17, 1925, “An unidentified man, believed to have been the bandit who has held up two west end stores in the last month was shot and killed today by Albert Verzi, 55, proprietor of a shoe store at 2442 San Pablo Avenue. Verzi told police the the man entered the store and demanded the best shoes he had in the place,” in line with the Gazette.
Verzi went right into a again room and returned with a shotgun.
“When the supposed bandit saw Verzi was armed he shouted, ‘Don’t shoot!’ Verzi says he told the man to stand still, whereupon the man jumped toward him and made to seize the shotgun. Verzi fired one shot. The man dropped with a charge of shot through his heart.”
Police interviewed Verzi after which launched him, stating that they believed he had shot in self-defense. Two different males lately robbed in West Berkeley had been dropped at see the physique and recognized it as that of a person who had lately robbed them.
The constructing the place the capturing occurred nonetheless stands right this moment (if the road numbering system remains to be the identical). It’s a bit picket storefront presently painted shiny crimson on San Pablo Avenue north of Dwight Approach, subsequent to a photo voltaic automotive wash.
Drowning: Two males, one in every of them from Berkeley, apparently drowned within the Pacific Ocean when their “fishing launch” broke up at evening on Dec. 16, 1925. Wreckage was later discovered on the mouth of the Salinas River. The lifeless Berkeley man was Nicholas Romano, of 1115 Glen Ave., an “importer and exporter.”
His son had apparently been following his boat in one other boat and noticed the lights of his father’s craft immediately disappear. Searchers later discovered damaged items of the boat scattered alongside the shore.
