Identifying Maybecks Lost in the 1923 Berkeley Fire: A Proposed List

Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association

Using modern research techniques and local archives, researchers have developed a new list of  Maybeck-designed homes lost in the 1923 Fire.

Observing the 100th Anniversary of the 1923 Fire

BAHA is sponsoring lectures and a house tour in observance of the 100th Anniversary of the 1923 Berkeley Fire.

Among the over 500 homes burned in the 1923 Berkeley Fire were many by famed architect Bernard Maybeck. Until now, little was known publicly about these lost gems. On behalf of a small team of architectural heritage researchers, we present a suggested list of Maybeck structures destroyed in Berkeley's fire of 1923. Our list is based on various sources, but primarily on two near-comprehensive lists of Maybeck-designed structures and their fates, one published in 1983 by UC Professor of Architecture Kenneth Cardwell and the other by an anonymous author, circa 1947, found on the public shelves of UC Berkeley's Environmental Design Library. In addition, we have relied on the voluminous BAHA archives and other source documents. Pre-fire photographs of some of those houses lost will be shown, as well as an overview map upon which we have overprinted, using GIS (geographical information systems), the outlines of several contemporaneous main burn area maps. The complexity in assigning to the list the Boynton family's Temple of Wings will be described. Finally, we will recognize the two Maybeck houses lost in the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm of 1991 (the Tunnel Fire).SpeakersScott SibbettBorn in Berkeley, Scott Sibbett did his undergraduate work at University of California Berkeley, earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from OHSU/OGI School of Engineering, then was briefly at Stanford University for post-doctoral studies and teaching in the Department of Chemistry. After a 17 year career with Intel Corporation, he performed administrative, research and teaching duties in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at University of New Mexico for 15 years. Sibbett is retired and lives in Davis, California.Michele Tobias Michele Tobias is a geospatial data scientist with a background in geospatial methods for ecology. Michele earned her PhD from UC Davis in Geography where she studied California’s sandy beach ecosystem with traditional phytosociological methods and innovative remote sensing tools and was a postdoc at the UC Davis Information Center for the Environment. At DataLab, she applies geospatial tools to new avenues of research across disciplines.

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Identifying Maybecks Lost in the 1923 Berkeley Fire: A Proposed List

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Identifying Maybecks Lost in the 1923 Berkeley Fire: A Proposed List

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