La Loma Park is a tract of land located in the

Berkeley Hills The Berkeley Hills are a range of the Pacific Coast Ranges that overlook the northeast side of the valley that encompasses San Francisco Bay. They were previously called the "Contra Costa Range/Hills" (from the original Spanish ''Sierra de l ...

section of the city of

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

. The Spanish word ''loma'' means "rise/low hill". It was the property of Captain Richard Parks Thomas, a veteran of the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...

and Berkeley businessman. Today, it is entirely a residential area. Although hilly throughout, its average elevation is about .

History

Captain Thomas' home was located on the site of what is today Greenwood Terrace. Some of the large trees here were originally planted by Captain Thomas and managed to survive the devastating fire of 1923 which swept through this part of Berkeley. Thomas enclosed his vast property with a low, whitewashed fence on its north, west and south sides, leaving the east side — the upper hillside — open. Captain Thomas was the owner of the Standard Soap Company in West Berkeley, president of the California National Bank of San Francisco, and owner of the Berkeley Ferryboat Line. He had a reputation as a friend of the working man and an eccentric character, and was probably the first person who inspired the nickname for the district: "Nut Hill". An old map includes a notation that he kept an illegal still on his property. He devised a scheme for an aerial tramway running from the Berkeley flatlands to the hills. Every Fourth of July, he fired off an old civil war cannon from "Fort La Loma", a plaza he constructed up the hill from his home. The site is today occupied by "Hume Cloister," also known as "Hume Castle" on Buena Vista Way, named for Samuel James Hume and his wife, who had architect

John Hudson Thomas John Hudson Thomas (1878-1945) was an American architect who practiced in the northern California area. Biography John H. Thomas was born in Nevada in 1878. His family relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was still young. He attended Y ...

design a reduced-scale replica of a

cloister A cloister (from Latin ''claustrum'', "enclosure") is a covered walk, open gallery, or open arcade running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against ...

Toulouse, France Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...

. In the 19th century, a stone

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envir ...

was opened at the head of Codornices Creek, abutting the north boundary of the La Loma Park tract. Some of the rock quarried here had a pinkish hue and was used to tint the concrete sidewalks and pathways throughout parts of North Berkeley, a practice that has been maintained by the City to this day, albeit using tint from other sources. The quarry was closed by the 1940s. In the late 1960s the quarry was made into a public park, "Glendale-La Loma Park". A number of notable people have lived in the La Loma Park/Nut Hill area over the years, including many professors from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, among them,

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...

and his nemesis-colleague,

Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for ...

. Famed San Francisco Bay Area architect

Bernard Maybeck Bernard Ralph Maybeck (February 7, 1862 – October 3, 1957) was an American architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He was an instructor at University of California, Berkeley. Most of his major buildings were in ...

made his home here, as well as the homes of several others in the neighborhood, a fact memorialized by Maybeck Twin Drive off of Buena Vista above La Loma. Further up Buena Vista is a structure known as the Temple of the Wings with its Grecian columns, an early 20th-century

bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Beer * National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst * Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...

hangout. A former public school,

Hillside Elementary School Hillside Elementary School is a 50,302 ft2 former public elementary school in the hills of Berkeley, California, at 1581 Le Roy Avenue, bordered by Le Roy Avenue, Buena Vista Way, and La Loma Avenue. It is registered as a local h ...

is located in the La Loma district on the block bounded by Le Roy Avenue, Buena Vista Way and La Loma Avenue. It is registered as a local historic landmark. The present structure was built after the 1923 fire destroyed its predecessor, located on the southwest corner of Le Roy and Virginia Street. Hillside was closed as a public school both because of a declining school-age population and because it sits immediately adjacent to the

Hayward Fault The Hayward Fault Zone is a right-lateral strike-slip geologic fault zone capable of generating destructive earthquakes. This fault is about long, situated mainly along the western base of the hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay. It run ...

, which runs directly behind it on La Loma Avenue. Upon being subdivided and developed, some residents of the district formed the La Loma Improvement Club. One of their efforts included subsidizing the northward extension of the Euclid Avenue streetcar line from Hilgard to the Berryman Reservoir, which today is adjacent to Codornices Park and the

Berkeley Rose Garden The Berkeley Rose Garden is a city-owned park in the North Berkeley area of Berkeley, California. The rose garden is situated in a residential area of the Berkeley Hills between the Cragmont and the La Loma Park neighborhoods, occupying most of t ...

. The Euclid line was first constructed in 1903 as an extension of the Telegraph Avenue streetcar line, and originally terminated at Hilgard and Arch streets. The extension to the Berryman Reservoir (Rose Street, now Rose Walk) was completed in August 1910.San Francisco Call, 25 August 1910
/ref> A subsequent further extension was made in 1912, across Codornices Canyon, by means of a trestle for both streetcar and autos. The line was built to Regal Road and remained active until the end of all streetcar service in 1948.

History

References

General references

Inline citations

External links