For a generation it was called the Athens of the West, and it built like it. Between about 1910 and 1930, Berkeley's architects gave it a golden age: Bernard Maybeck's serene First Church of Christ, Scientist (1910), a landmark of Bay Area Arts and Crafts; John Galen Howard's bell tower, the Campanile, rising over the campus in 1914; and Julia Morgan's Little Castle in 1929. In the hills above, the brown-shingle houses of the First Bay Tradition tucked themselves among the oaks and the fog.
Berkeley's other revolution happened at the table. In 1966 Alfred Peet opened a small coffee shop at Walnut and Vine and taught America to take its coffee seriously; in 1971 Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse a few blocks away and invented what the world now calls California cuisine — cooking built on fresh, local, seasonal ingredients and direct ties to nearby farms. The stretch of North Shattuck around them earned the nickname the Gourmet Ghetto, and farm-to-table spread from these few blocks to the whole country. Wear local; feed local; it started here.
Why People Visit Berkeley
Berkeley balances learning with the outdoors. Visitors mix landmark architecture and famous kitchens with regional parks, rose terraces, and waterfront breezes. It is curious, green, and welcoming, with year-round appeal in its parks, paths, and public spaces. History and everyday culture sit side by side here in a welcoming way, from the Little Castle to the cafes of the Gourmet Ghetto and the trails of the hills above the Bay.
