Albany is a small city—approximately 1.8 square miles—but it has a rich history, full of interesting people and intriguing events. In this blog, we’ll explore some of these, in no particular order.
© Karen Sorensen
Why is Albany Only 1.8 Square Miles?
Border Disputes from 1908 Reveal Answers
It was a clear winter day when the tour of the proposed new state capitol site began. After a lavish banquet with their local guides, the California State legislators were escorted up the hill—with 60 automobiles and a 250-person delegation—to the area envisioned for their new home.
They gathered near a huge boulder (likely Indian Rock) draped with a large banner featuring the slogan of the day: “State Capital for Berkeley.” As the legislators gazed out over the bay, taking in the sunset through the Golden Gate, it became apparent to their hosts: this was not a hard sell.
Not long after their return to Sacramento, the legislators voted overwhelmingly to move the state capital to Berkeley. “…many were the declarations that the proposed spot was one of almost unsurpassed natural beauty and emphatically fitting for the state’s capitol building,” declared The Berkeley Daily Gazette.
This 1907 effort, orchestrated by a group of East Bay developers and Berkeley businessmen, is well-known local history. What is less known is Albany’s involvement in it, which sparked a border dispute that resulted in a much smaller Albany.
After the legislators voted to approve the capital move, the next step was gaining approval from California voters. But the election to do so would not happen for many months. In the meantime, real estate interests had a golden opportunity to promote and sell property near the new capitol site (multiple acres in the Northbrae neighborhood near the top of Solano Avenue).
What they didn’t count on was a move by the nearby community of Ocean View (Albany’s original name) to incorporate and include the area within its new city.
Ocean View (Albany) and Berkeley Clash Over Capitol Site
After struggling to stop Berkeley’s garbage dumping near its waterfront, unincorporated Ocean View decided to become a city so it could enact a law to prevent others from dumping within its borders. However, the original proposed city boundaries encompassed much more land than that of today—like Berkeley and Oakland, Ocean View was designed to stretch from the bay shore to the hilltops.
But this area included the proposed Northbrae capitol site, which at this time was still unincorporated land north of Berkeley’s city line at Eunice Street. When the Berkeley capital group received word of Ocean View’s plans, they moved quickly to block the effort, so the capitol site could become part of Berkeley instead.
For a time, each group struggled to make sure its petition to acquire the land was first to be approved. The residents of Northbrae (a still-developing area of high-end homes) preferred to become part of Berkeley, so some speculated that Ocean View included the area in its proposed city in retaliation for Berkeley’s unwanted garbage dumping. However, both cities may have found Northbrae a desirable tract to acquire as the area promised to supply significant property tax revenue.
After some back and forth petition filing and paperwork errors, the two groups met and Ocean View agreed to simply eliminate the Northbrae area from its proposed city. This left the capitol site to be annexed by Berkeley, which local voters approved in August 1908, adding some 300 acres in the Northbrae area and reportedly $10,000 in tax revenue (a significant sum at the time) to Berkeley.
“Berkeley has added to its assessable property some of the choicest building sites to be found in the city and the new addition is destined to become a select residence section,” said The Berkeley Daily Gazette.
While Berkeley succeeded in obtaining Northbrae, it was not so lucky regarding the state capital. When California voters went to the polls in November 1908, the proposition to move the capital to Berkeley was soundly defeated: only a handful of Bay Area counties supported it. Some speculated that the effort was largely concocted by local real estate interests who promoted the Berkeley capital idea solely to help sell nearby property.
Left, San Francisco Examiner. Right, San Francisco Call.
Spring Construction Company and Edward Gill Oppose Ocean View Incorporation
The proposed city of Ocean View was now significantly smaller. But the capitol area was not the only section of land Ocean View struggled to include in its new city.
Just north of Solano Avenue near Neilson St., the Spring Construction Company, run by developer John Spring, had a camp where numerous workers lived. Given Spring opposed the incorporation of Ocean View, city founders decided it best to also cut this area from their proposed town, helping ensure victory at the incorporation election.
Today, this cut is reflected in an odd zigzag boundary along Solano Avenue where the northern side of the street from Neilson to Tulare is in Berkeley and the southern side is in Albany.
A third area was also nearly eliminated from the city: the 104 acres of the Gill Tract. Edward Gill and family, who ran their nursery business on the site, did not want their land to be included in the city of Ocean View. However, this would mean Gill’s property would become one of the only remaining tracts of unincorporated land in northern Alameda County and would need to operate its own election precinct and possibly its own school.
Fortunately for Ocean View, which was rapidly shrinking in size, the county Board of Supervisors denied Gill’s request to be excluded.
A Bayshore City Combining West Berkeley and Ocean View?
Yet another situation arose at the time of Ocean View’s incorporation that could have had a major impact on the formation of the city: a secession effort by West Berkeley.
Various disputes had arisen for some time between West Berkeley, a working-class manufacturing district near the bay shore, and East Berkeley where the university was developing. These differences reached a tipping point in 1908 over the prohibition of alcohol sales.
East Berkeley favored the decision to ban alcohol sales citywide, beyond the state-mandated one-mile limit around the university. But many in West Berkeley, which had more saloons, were opposed and they eventually launched a secession movement.
The pre-Albany Ocean View district—where most residents lived near San Pablo Avenue—shared some of West Berkeley’s sentiments. Not only had the district adopted the original West Berkeley name—Ocean View—it also did not want to be part of the city of Berkeley. Previous Berkeley attempts to annex the Ocean View district to the north had been rejected by Ocean View voters living close to West Berkeley.
Now that West Berkeley had announced a secession movement, it was not out of the question that the Ocean View district and West Berkeley might join together as one city. News accounts from the time indicate this was on the minds of some bay shore residents, even though West Berkeley was also entertaining the idea of joining with Oakland.
But the secession movement lost ground when various groups, including the Berkeley Manufacturers’ Association, came out against the plan. Berkeley city trustees also claimed there were not enough signatures on the secession petition to qualify it for a vote. As a result, the West Berkeley secession never appeared on a ballot for a formal vote.
In the end, the city of Ocean View—now just 1.8 square miles in size—incorporated in September 1908. One year later the name was changed to Albany, the hometown of the city’s first mayor, Frank Roberts.
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