That habit of argument made national history. In 1964, students gathered on Sproul Plaza in what became the Free Speech Movement, a landmark in the history of campus expression that gave Berkeley a lasting reputation as a city where speech is taken seriously. Whatever one makes of the politics that followed, the movement itself is now a fixed part of the American civic story, and of Berkeley's.
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.
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.
