City of Berkeley Landmark Application
Walter H. Ratcliff Corporation Yard

The development of the Corporation Yard formally began on January 4, 1913 when the City of Berkeley entered into a lease with an option to purchase four parcels of land located at the corner of Allston Way and West Street.(5) The vacant lot measured 312 ft. x 470 ft., and was just a fraction more than 3 acres. Since then, acquisitions of adjoining properties and the Santa Fe right-of-way have expanded the site to nearly five acres.

Prior to 1913, the City had maintained two storage yards, one associated with the fire department, and a central corporation yard at University Avenue and Sacramento Street. This earliest of corporation yards was little more than horse stables. At the time, it was described as "overcrowded, ramshackle quarters."(6) The move to consolidate these yards and create a new facility was driven by many forces, including the costs associated with separate yards. Also, the City's stables were no longer appropriate for the site since University Avenue was rapidly becoming a main street. Another reason for selecting the new site was the property's central location. READ MORE

 

City of Berkeley Landmark Application
Bevatron and Building 51

Bevatron and Building 51 Landmark Application City of Berkeley

The Bevatron, the largest high-energy accelerator in the world, when it opened in 1954 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then called the UC Radiation Laboratory), was declared eligible on December 5, 1995, for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. On that same date the California State Office of Historic Preservation listed the Bevatron on the California Inventory of Historic Places.

The historic importance of this cold-war era architecturally significant structure, the Bevatron, renders the idea of its demolition tragic. The Bevatron meets all (3) three criteria for listing eligibility on the National Register of Historic Places.

Criterion A. By its “significant contribution to broad patterns of our history”, the Bevatron was among the world’s leading particle accelerators during the 1950s and 1960s and was considered the most productive accelerator of its time. It helped establish American leadership in scientific research with significant contributions in the fields of particle and nuclear physics. Four Nobel Prizes were awarded for this research, largely conducted at the Bevatron.

Criterion B. The Bevatron is associated with many significant persons who worked at the Bevatron during the productive period of their lives. Some spent their entire careers there. Notably, Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain won the Nobel Prize in 1959 for their discovery of the anti-protron in an experiment at the Bevatron. Luis Alvarez won the Nobel Prize in 1968 for his development of the bubble chamber particle detector and for his role in finding 18 particle resonances with the LBL bubble chamber used in conjunction with the Bevatron.

Criterion C. The Bevatron “embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type” of building. That is, it is a distinguished example of a rare international building type, the accelerator building. The Bevatron possesses the distinguishing characteristics of the type that “can be expressed in terms such as form, proportion, structure, plan, style or materials”. The design is a reflection of the research process in form, materials, structural systems and plan. The Bevatron illustrates patterns associated with all accelerator buildings, the individuality of the particular situation and the evolution of the processes it was designed to accommodate.

Further, the Bevatron meets Critierion C in “ representing the work of a master”, i.e. the architectural firm of Masten and Hurd. At that time they specialized in large-scale institutional projects, which in addition to the Bevatron, included San Francisco’s Hasting College of Law and Warren Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.

The citations above are from the Dobkin/Corbett Historic Architectural Evaluation Report prepared in1994 for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. READ MORE