CITY OF BERKELEY Ordinance #4694 N.S. LANDMARK APPLICATION

Ali & Marion Yazdi Building 2910–2912 Telegraph Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705

Figure 1. The Yazdi Building, 1967 (Ormsby Donogh files, BAHA archives)

Figure 2. The Yazdi Building, Jan. 2016 (photo by the authors) 1. Street Address: 2910–2912 Telegraph Avenue County: Alameda City: Berkeley ZIP: 94705

2. Assessor’s Parcel Number: 52-1579-3 (Suburban Tract, Block E, part of lot 8) Dimensions: 88.67 ft. x 50 ft. x 73.22 ft .x 48.16 ft. (3,898 sq. ft.) Cross Streets: Howe Street & Russell Street

3. Is property on the State Historic Resource Inventory? No Is property on the Berkeley Urban Conservation Survey? Yes Form #: 12256

4. Application for Landmark Includes: a. Building(s): Yes Garden: N/A Other Feature(s): b. Landscape or Open Space: Yes c. Historic Site: No d. District: No e. Other: Entire Property

5. Historic Name: Yazdi’s Commonly Known Name: Robert Bruce of Berkeley

6. Date of Construction: 1933 Factual: Yes Source of Information: Building permit #38025, 31 August 1933

7. Architect: William Isaac Garren (1892–1983)

8. Builder: William August Degen (1894–1970)

9. Style: Storybook

10. Original Owners: Ali Mohamed & Marion Carpenter Yazdi Original Use: Gift shop & two apartments

11. Present Owner: Linda Joseph Chaya Properties, Inc. 2150 Pyramid Drive, El Sobrante, CA 94803 Present Occupant: Vacant

12. Recent Use: Retail, office, and residential Current Zoning: C-1 Adjacent Property Zoning: C-1

13. Present Condition of Property: Exterior: Fair Interior: Fair Grounds: Fair Has the property’s exterior been altered? Yes, mostly in the rear

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Figure 3. Assessor's Map detail

Figure 4. Aerial view of Assessor’s Block 1579 (Apple Maps)

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Executive Summary

The Yazdi Building is the only Storybook Style building on Telegraph Avenue. It is one of only two solo projects in Berkeley by the notable architect William I. Garren, the other one being his own home (1927) at 2573 Buena Vista Way. The Yazdi Building is also Garren’s only mixed-use building in Berkeley and the last one he designed here. The building is notable for its complex massing, steep gable roofs, dormer gables, picturesque brick chimneys, and multi-paned steel-sash windows. The building was designed as the home and business of Ali M. Yazdi and his wife, Marion Carpenter Yazdi, who owned a Persian carpet and gift shop. Ali M. Yazdi was a well-known Bahá’í lecturer and writer, served on many national committees of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and was, for thirty years, chairman of the Spiritual Assembly of Berkeley. Marion Carpenter Yazdi was the first Bahá’í student at the University of California and a noted speaker and writer in her own right. The building also served as the home of Margery Carpenter, a leading Berkeley social worker and for many years the executive secretary of the City of Berkeley’s Commission of Public Charities. Following the Yazdi era, the building served a succession of design-oriented businesses, including Lila’s Antiques, Robert Bruce of Berkeley, and Gallery Extraña/Emily the Strange. The Yazdi Building has anchored its block since 1933, lending distinction and charm to Telegraph Avenue.

Figure 5. Yazdi Bldg., aerial view (Apple Maps)

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Figure 6. Telegraph Ave. façade (Google Street View)

14. Description

The Yazdi Building is a one- and two-story wood-frame, stucco-clad structure comprising several wings that are variously crowned by gable and flat roofs. It is located on a street corner, and its two main wings are perpendicular to each other, leaving a small landscaped plaza at the southeast corner. The building was designed in 1933 in the Storybook style, characterized here by complex massing; steep gable roofs; dormer gables; picturesque brick chimneys and brick trim; multi-paned steel-sash windows, originally with rustic wooden shutters; and an external staircase (altered). In Storybook-style fashion, the Yazdi Building evokes the character of an old northern European structure added onto over time. There is intentional asymmetry and broken-up massing, but all the elements come together in a harmonious whole and are unified by common detailing. Although the building has been expanded and altered, most alterations are interior and the expansions have largely been to the rear, where they do not impact the primary Telegraph Avenue façade and the Howe Street/Telegraph Avenue corner. The original design had the overall character of a narrow two-story house joined to the rear of a one-story shop building. This visual character reflects the original use of the property. Like the landmark Tupper & Reed Building (W.R. Yelland, 1925), the Yazdi Building sacrifices conventional commercial frontage to achieve a whimsical and picturesque façade. In both cases, the effect achieved is akin to walking through a European village or early American town and seeing a building with a ground-floor shop offering glimpses into an intriguing interior, rather than a blatantly 20th-century commercial façade.

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Figure 7. The Yazdi Bldg. in 1939 (Ormsby Donogh files, BAHA archives)

According to the original building permit, the Yazdi Building’s dimensions were 48 feet by 56 feet, and its maximum height was 24 feet. It was designed as a “two-story, seven-room frame building to be occupied as dwelling by 2 families, 1 store.” From 1933 to 1956, it housed a Persian carpet/gift shop; two apartments, occupied by the owners and a close relative; a garage; and, presumably, storage. The shop’s one-and-a-half-story showroom faced Telegraph Avenue, while the two apartments were located in the two-story residential wing along Howe Street. In the absence of architectural plans, the closest idea we can form about the original layout is based on the 1950 Sanborn map, since the Yazdis did not obtain any alteration permits during their period of ownership, which ended in 1956. This layout shows a rough C-shaped commercial structure arranged around a central courtyard, with a rectangular residential wing closing the gap on the south side (Fig. 8).

Figure 8. Yazdi Bldg. footprint in the 1950 Sanborn map

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The building’s second and third owners constructed additions between 1956 and 1977. The additions are concentrated in the rear of the lot or in the interior, and the 1956 extension facing Howe Street is compatible with the original Howe Street façade, utilizing similar materials.

Select Permit History, 1933–1977

Year Permit Owner Description Architect Contractor 1933 38025 Ali M. Yazdi 2-story, 7-room William I. William A. dwelling for 2 Garren Degen families + 1 store 1956 79936 Charles H. Lee Add 1 bedroom, N/A Lloyd W. dinette & hall on 2nd Sherman floor w/ 2-car storage below 1958 84211 Canady/Lee Storage room Owner Owner attached to dwelling 1958 86209 Canady/Lee Convert garage to Owner Owner playroom w/ large window 1968 111175 Bernice Ellis 2 wall openings; N/A remove wall between storeroom & showroom 1969- 115688 Bernice Ellis Roof over open court Walter D. Kirkham, 1970 w/ skylights Lucas Chaon & Kirkham 1971 41477510 Bernice Ellis Replace asbestos N/A Montclair shingle roof with Roofing Co. comp. shingle roof (partial) 1972 22372875 Bernice Ellis 9’6” x 12’6” storage Kirkham, addition w/ stucco Chaon & exterior Kirkham 1977 80477501 Bernice Ellis Storage room + deck, N/A fence on existing roof

The building changed hands twice in the past two years. Wayland, LLC purchased the property in February 2014 and sold it in February 2016. During this period, most of the plantings, as well as a number of original features on the residential wing, were removed, and the building was repainted in darker colors. These alterations are reversible.

Showroom Wing

The showroom wing is a tall, gable-roofed rectangle flanked by two lower cross-gabled wings. The main gable roof is open-eaved and features bargeboards that are under-mounted with four bullnosed wooden brackets on either side. The stucco walls are textured with broad palette knife marks.

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Figure 9. The Yazdi Building in 2010 (courtesy of Gallery Extraña)

East Façade Dominating the street façade of the showroom wing is a slightly recessed full- height, multi-paned, steel-sash show window with a brick sill. The lower two- thirds of this window are divided into 7-over-7 lights. The triangular portion at the top comprises three rows of lights that narrow from seven to three lights in the angle of the gable. Although most of the sash is fixed, the upper portion of the main window panel includes an operable awning panel of 3-over-2 lights. Two curlicued wrought-iron sign mounts flank the show window.

Northeast Cross-Gable Wing Extending north from the main gable is a small wing under a steep cross- gable. The interior of this wing forms part of the showroom and contains a brick fireplace whose chimney has a Venturi cap featuring two tiers of vertically laid, spaced bricks. Embedded at the top of the cross-gable wall are three clay-pipe vents arranged in a triangle (Fig. 10). The roof of this wing descends lower than that of the main showroom mass. Immediately below the roof eave is a corner steel-sash window glazed 4-over-2 on the east side and 2-over-2 on the north side. A wooden beam flush with the stucco wall defines the upper edge of the north- facing window. The windowsills are made of brick.

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Figure 10. Showroom with northeast wing & former garage, 2016 (photo by the authors)

An unusual trait of the 1933 windows in the showroom wing is the way in which the vertical muntins “flow” over the horizontal ones. The muntins’ profile appears to be pinched—another uncommon detail. These treatments give the windows the appearance of having been hand-wrought rather than mass-produced and reflect the level of detail that William Garren devoted to achieving the building’s Storybook-style appearance.

Figure 11. Muntin detail, 2016 (photo by the authors)

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Figure 12. North chimney detail, 2016 (photo by the authors)

Garage/Playroom/Gallery Attached to the northeast wing is a flat-roofed structure, originally built as a garage. Its function was not indicated in the 1950 Sanborn map, nor was it specified in the 1933 building permit, but it is shown as a garage in a 1939 photo (Fig. 7). In December 1958, then co-owners William J. Canady and Charles H. Lee took out a permit to convert the garage into a playroom, describing the work to be done as “Take off garage doors & replace with a large window.”

Figure 13. Garage/playroom/gallery, 2016 (photo by the authors)

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The window, which occupies most of the stucco-clad east wall of this wing, is steel sash, but clearly not of the same vintage as the 1933 windows, since it lacks the “flowing muntin” feature seen in the original windows. The lower two-thirds of this window consist of a fixed panel of 6-over-2 lights. The upper part is divided into three equal rectangular openings filled with glass jalousies of unknown age. Sanborn maps and the current wall surface show that the northern wall along the property line is composed of eight-inch-thick masonry, consistent with a fire separation between a parking structure and adjacent property. Visual inspection of the exterior and photos of the interior shows unfinished masonry, painted over, along this wall. The former garage opens into the main showroom and has recently served as an art gallery (Fig. 14).

Figure 14. Former garage/playroom, 2010 (courtesy of Gallery Extraña)

Showroom Entrance The showroom entrance (Fig. 15) is located on the south wall of the showroom wing (later alterations to the interior also connected the original showroom area to the original downstairs apartment). The roof eave, which reaches down to just above the door, is decorated with the same type of bullnosed brackets seen on the east façade. The door is slightly recessed, and the top of the door opening is arched. The door itself is not original (the original door was semi-glazed, with diamond panes in the upper half).

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Figure 15. Entrance & southeast wing, 2016 (photo by the authors)

Southeast Cross-Gable Wing The cross-gabled wing on the south side of the showroom mirrors the one on the northeast side, featuring the same roofline, same clay pipe vents, and the same corner window defined by an upper wooden beam and a brick sill. The only variances here are that both sides of the window are the same size, with 4- over-2 glazing, and the row of bricks embedded in the gable wall (Fig. 16).

Figure 16. Bricks embedded in south cross-gable, 2016 (photo by the authors)

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Figure 17. Staircase & balcony, 2016 (photo by the authors)

Staircase & Balcony An exterior wooden staircase of recent construction is attached to the south wall of the showroom wing. It ascends to the second floor of the residential wing, where it ends in an open balcony. Its location is identical to that of the original.

William Garren designed exterior staircases in a number of his buildings, and they also appear in many other Storybook- style buildings. The original staircase, still there in 1990, was simple yet elegant; it featured delicate wrought- iron railings and arched bases that echoed the arches in the door openings.

Figure 18. The staircase & balcony in 1967 (Donogh files, BAHA archives)

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Figure 19. The residential wing in 1939 (Donogh files, BAHA archives)

Residential Wing

The residential wing is a two-story, stucco-clad rectangular mass facing Howe Street. The Yazdis’ three-bedroom residence (2910 Telegraph Ave.) was located on the ground floor. A one-bedroom apartment on the second floor (2912 Telegraph Ave.) was originally the home of Marion Yazdi’s elder sister, Margery Carpenter. The larger part of the original residential wing shelters under the gable roof, with a short flat-roofed segment extending to the west. This wing was expanded toward the west in 1956, when owner Charles H. Lee added a flat-roofed extension that included one bedroom, a dinette, and a hall on the second floor, with an open carport below. The materials used in constructing the 1956 extension matched the original, including stucco walls, steel-sash windows, and rustic wooden shutters.

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Figure 20. Residential wing, 2016 (photo by the authors)

Figure 21. Dormer detail, 2016 (photo by the authors)

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East Façade The east façade accommodates the entrance doors to the upper and lower apartments. It features two steep-roofed gable dormers, one of which contains a slightly recessed plain wooden door (not original) with wood molding, and the other a slightly recessed steel-sash single casement window with 3-over-4 glazing, a fixed upper row, and a wooden sill (Fig. 21). The ground-floor door is placed directly under the second-floor door. It is set in a slightly arched doorway and features three vertical wavy grooves and a rectangular peephole decorated with a curlicued wrought-iron screen (Fig. 22).

Figure 22. Door to lower apartment, 2016 (photos by the authors)

Howe Street (South) Façade The south façade consists of two halves. On the east side is the original 1933 residential wing, characterized by two horizontal rows of steel-sash windows, three per floor, all with wooden sills. The easternmost part under the gable is nearly symmetrical, featuring four 3-over-4 single casements with fixed upper rows, arranged in a square formation, two per floor. Breaking the symmetry is the dogleg roofline, whose open eaves are finished with a bargeboard under-mounted with ten bullnosed wooden brackets (five of them missing). From the roof ridge emerges a brick chimney with a Venturi cap consisting of two slightly overlapping double layers of brick acting as bookends for four corners of vertically laid brick framing square openings. The vents in this gable are made of overlapping curved clay tiles (Fig. 25).

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Figure 23. Howe Street façade, May 2011 (Google Street View)

Figure 24. Howe Street façade, 2016 (photo by the authors)

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Figure 25. South gable & chimney, 2016 (photo by the authors)

Figure 26. South gable interface, 2016 (photo by the authors)

The gable/flat roof interface is articulated with a downward extension of the dogleg on the west side of the gable.

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In the flat-roofed portion of the 1933 building, there are two steel-sash double-casement windows, one above the other. The upper window consists of two 2-over-3 sashes. In the lower window, the two operating sashes are flanked on either side by fixed 1-over-3 panels. Extending west from the 1933 façade is the flat-roofed addition constructed as a soft story in 1956. On the second floor, this addition features two steel-sash windows, each with a fixed central pane flanked by two single casements with 1- over-4 glazing. The window at the west end is considerably wider than its companion to the east, owing to a wider central pane. The two side casements in both windows are identical, and their panes are horizontal, unlike those in the windows of the 1933 construction. The ground floor of the 1956 addition was built as an open carport, as seen in Fig. 1. At some undetermined time, the carport was enclosed with a rolling door and a garage door. No permit was found for this work. The rolling door was extant in 1990, and the area to the right was recessed (Fig. 27).1 Later it was infilled with painted plywood and a door.

Figure 27. Plan drawn by Teresa Clarke for a Master of Architecture class paper, 1990 (BAHA archives)

Figures 23 and 24 show the very recent evolution of the Howe Street façade. Figure 23 shows the building as it was in May 2011. At the time, it was owned by Rob Reger/Telegraph Investments, LLC. Reger acquired it in May 2006 and sold it to Wayland, LLC in February 2014. Since then, portions of the Howe Street façade appear to have been re-stuccoed, particularly around the doorway to the right of the garage door and areas of the upper façade. Original features lost

1 Teresa Clarke. Examining a Building. Class paper for Prof. Dell Upton, U.C. Berkeley, Spring 1990.

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Other Façades

The west and north façades of the building are not primary, and are largely invisible from the street, since they come close to property lines and adjacent structures.

Interior Views

While not subject to review under the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, the original high-ceilinged showroom space is a significant interior feature of the building and appears to be largely intact. It has a plank floor, unpainted red- brick fireplace, and unpainted red-brick hearth that extends to both sides of the fireplace. The ceiling is dark-stained wood. There is a single scissors truss. The west end of the room contains a balcony of dark-stained wood with carved balustrades, accessed by a stair in the northwest angle of the room. This room, including the large showroom window on the east that extends into the gable, resembles rooms in some of architect Garren’s residential structures (see Figures 65–68). The balcony apparently originally connected with the upstairs apartment living room, but the doorway has been blocked up on the showroom side. On the apartment side, what appears to be the original wooden door remains.

Figure 28. Showroom, looking east, 2016 (contributed photo)

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Figure 29. Showroom, looking northeast, 2016 (contributed photo)

Figure 30. Showroom, looking northwest, 2016 (contributed photo)

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Figure 31. Showroom balcony, 2016 (contributed photo)

Figure 32. Showroom, looking west, 2016. Until recently, a wide doorway with twin French doors under the balcony led to a pebble-floored sales room that enclosed the original courtyard. (contributed photo)

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The original rear entrance and concrete back steps to the ground-floor apartment appear to survive within the Howe Street garage, along with some steel-sash windows that appear to be original or date to the 1956 addition. When the addition was built, these would have opened into the open-air carport. If they were on the exterior, they would be significant original features of the building. However, they are now completely contained within the enclosed garage.

Features to Be Preserved

The distinguishing features of the Yazdi Building include:

• Complex massing comprising a showroom wing and a residential wing • Open plaza at southeast corner with magnolia tree planted by Bernice Ellis • Steep gable roofs with open eaves, bargeboards & bullnosed brackets • Two cross-gables with corner windows on north & south of the showroom wing • Garage/playroom/gallery north of the showroom wing • Dogleg roofline with open eaves, bargeboards & bullnosed brackets on residential wing • Two unpainted brick chimneys with Venturi caps • Two steep-roofed dormers on east side of residential wing • Roofing materials selected to recall slate or tile • Textured stucco walls with decorative scoring • Multi-paned steel-sash windows of various types and dimensions, with brick or wooden sills • Embedded wooden beams above showroom corner windows • Clay pipe and clay tile vents in gable walls • Two curlicued wrought-iron sign mounts flanking main showroom window • Original metal downspouts (now disconnected from drainpipes) on south & east façades • Horizontal brick row under vents in showroom’s south cross-gable • Arched door openings in entrances to showroom and ground-floor unit • Door to ground-floor unit, with vertical wavy grooves and a rectangular peephole with a curlicued wrought-iron screen • Presence of exterior staircase along south wall of showroom and balcony on east wall of residential wing • Cement pathways and planter beds along the street façades

Features previously removed that could be replicated

• Original exterior doors to showroom & upstairs apartment • Eight pairs of rustic wooden shutters on Howe Street façade • Columnar evergreen plantings flanking showroom front window

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• Roof-eave brackets missing from south gable of residential wing • Embedded horizontal beam missing from south gable of residential wing • Original character of exterior stair and balcony, including wrought- iron railing and arched trim below stairs and balcony

15. History

The Suburban Tract, in which the Yazdi Building is located, is a six-block subdivision bounded by Russell Street to the north, Telegraph Avenue to the east, Ashby Avenue to the south, and Wheeler Street to the west. The undivided tract was recorded in Thompson & West’s 1878 Oakland and Vicinity Map No. 15 as comprising 19 acres. The owners were listed on the map as C.T.H. Palmer (misspelled as Patner) and others.

Figure 33. The undivided Suburban Tract in Thompson & West 1878 map (David Rumsey Map Collection)

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Figure 34. Block E (shaded) in the Suburban Tract map, filed 26 Sept. 1887

C.T.H. Palmer filed the Suburban Tract map on 26 September 1887. Palmer’s co-owners in the tract were Montgomery Howe, Samuel Howe, and George E. Wellington.

Charles Theodore Hart Palmer (1827– 1897) was a Yale Law School graduate who came to California in 1849 and practiced law in San Francisco, later establishing Sacramento’s first school. Later still he engaged in various business ventures and mining operations. During the latter part of his life, Palmer was president of the Oakland Paving Company.2 Palmer married Sherman Day’s daughter, Harriet. His brother-in-law, architect Clinton Day, built Palmer and his brother (who married Harriet’s sister) two ornate mansions on Piedmont Ave., north of Bancroft Way.

Figure 35. C.T.H. Palmer & wife (Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)

2 The Jubilee Anniversary Report of the Class of 1847, Yale University. New York: Styles & Cash, Printers, 1897.

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Figure 36. American Railroad Journal, 29 January 1876

The brothers Samuel and Montgomery Howe were New Hampshire natives who abandoned lumber milling in their hometown for gold mining in Nevada County, California. By the late 1860s, they had moved to Oakland, and within a decade had become railroad entrepreneurs. On 29 January 1876, the American Railroad Journal announced that the Broadway and Piedmont Railroad Company, whose directors included the two Howe brothers, was incorporated and would run a street railroad from Broadway in Oakland to Berkeley. In December 1887, two months after the filing of the Suburban Tract map, the Broadway and Piedmont Railroad Company was reorganized, and its name was changed to Broadway, Berkeley and Piedmont. The Howes were still among the directors.3 By 1893, Montgomery Howe was president of the Fourteenth Street Railroad Company of Oakland,4 which ran 12 horse cars on a 7.5-mile track.5

Figure 37. Entry in Street Railways of the United States and Canada, in The Manual of Statistics, 1893

Although the Suburban Tract blocks between Deakin and Wheeler streets were largely settled in the late 19th century, the blocks bordering on Telegraph Avenue were slow to attract homebuilders. In 1903, block E was still entirely undeveloped.

3 Railway World, 10 December 1887. 4 Poor’s Directory of Railway Officials, 1893. 5 Street Railways of the United States and Canada, in The Manual of Statistics, 1893

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Figure 38. Block E (shaded) in the 1903 Sanborn map

When laid out in 1887, block E contained nine large lots. Between 1903 and 1906, the block was re-subdivided into 21 lots. Only then did development begin. As houses went up, there was a significant amount of speculation by investors who did not live on the block, and properties changed hands frequently.

Figure 39. Block E in the 1911 Sanborn map

As occurred in the Ashby Station district,6 block E was developed almost all at once. The first three houses were assessed in 1905. By 1909, all but four of the lots were built up, and most of the 17 houses on the block were designed in the prevailing Colonial Revival style, with only a couple of brown-shingle houses providing a slight variation within the Howe streetscape. In 1911, a new Southern Pacific electric streetcar line (the “Red Trains”) opened on Ellsworth Street7 to serve commuting residents.

6 Lesley Emmington, Anthony Bruce & Dale Smith. “Ashby Station: A Classic American Streetcar Suburb.” BAHA Ashby Station Survey, February 2004. http://berkeleyheritage.com/essays/ashby_station.html 7 City of Berkeley. Downtown Berkeley Historic Resources Reconnaissance Survey. Prepared by Architectural Resources Group, August 2007.

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Little was changed on block E Between 1911 and 1929. Four new houses (one of them a fourplex, but scaled to resemble a two-story house) were constructed at the Ellsworth Street end of the block between 1921 and 1925. The fourplex, at Ellsworth and Howe streets, has an unusual exterior of exposed hollow-clay tile bricks and some Arts & Crafts elements. The other three buildings are stucco- clad, two of them with Arts & Crafts exterior detailing.

Figure 40. Block E in the 1929 Sanborn map

For unknown reasons, the two corner lots on Telegraph Avenue remained vacant for a long time after the rest of the block had filled up. In 1933, the Yazdi Building was the penultimate development on block E. The final structure erected on the block was the Streamline Moderne medical building at 2900 Telegraph Avenue, presumably constructed in 1941 (no building permit has been found for this property).

Figure 41. Block E in the 1950 Sanborn map

http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_DAP/3 Transportation.pdf

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The First Owners

Figure 42. Ali M. Yazdi and Marion Carpenter in the 1920s (photos published in Marion Yazdi’s memoir, “Youth in the Vanguard”)

Ali Mohamed Yazdi (1899–1978)

‘Ali Mohamed Yazdí was born on 26 February 1899, in Ramleh, a suburb of Alexandria, Egypt. His family had its roots in Yazd, Iran, where the cause of the Bahá’í faith was first proclaimed from the pulpit of a mosque in 1845. From the very beginning, the Bahá’í community suffered persecution. Many were tortured and imprisoned. Some, including the Yazdí family, left Iran for more tolerant locales. The tenets of the Bahá’í religion are described on the website of the worldwide Bahá’í community as follows:

Bahá’í beliefs address such essential themes as the oneness of God and religion, the oneness of humanity and freedom from prejudice, the inherent nobility of the human being, the progressive revelation of religious truth, the development of spiritual qualities, the integration of worship and service, the fundamental equality of the sexes, the harmony between religion and science, the centrality of justice to all human endeavours, the importance of education, and the dynamics of the relationships that are to bind together individuals, communities, and institutions as humanity advances towards its collective maturity.8

8 http://www.bahai.org/beliefs/

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Ali Yazdi was of an “accepted family at the Threshold of God,”9 namely, close to the supreme Bahá’í leadership. In an essay written toward the end of his life and published posthumously,10 Yazdi traced his antecedents in the Bahá’í faith, describing his origins, childhood, and acquaintance with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the eldest son and successor of Bahá’u’llah, founder of the Bahá’í Faith:

My father, Hájí Muhammad, who like his brother had joined the Faith when he was fourteen, left for the Holy Land with a friend, a donkey, lots of faith and very little money. He and his companion set out to see Bahá’u’lláh and traveled over steep, rugged mountains and across hot, arid plains until they arrived in ‘Akká, around 1870. Other members of the family followed later. Hájí ‘Abdu’r-Rahím, my grandfather, left Yazd after he had been tortured, beaten and bastinadoed. The story of this ‘precious soul’, as the Master called him, his arrival in ‘Akká, and his life there, is told with tender compassion by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Memorials of the Faithful. Each member of the Yazdí family was given an assignment by Bahá’u’lláh and sent out to accomplish it. Hájí Muhammad, my father, and two other youthful believers were sent to Egypt where they worked hard for many years and eventually built up a prosperous business. Through these believers—all young people—the Faith was first established in Alexandria, Cairo and Port Said. Although they were not free to openly teach the Faith they were on good terms with the population and were generally well-liked and respected. My family and I lived in a suburb of Alexandria called Ramleh, a beautiful and peaceful residential district on the edge of the Mediterranean. The house in which I was born and where I lived until I was about four or five, had a separate guest house and a large garden surrounded by a wall of rough-hewn stone. Within the garden there were many lime, sweet lemon, orange and pomegranate trees as well as rose bushes. In the summer a tropical scent hung in the air. The house to which we then moved also had a large garden. Jasmine grew over the veranda, a large porch adjoining the garden. Here our family often had breakfast, with father presiding at the samovar and dispensing glasses of hot tea to the adults and, to the children, hot water with a drop of tea floating on top. Before breakfast, however, we chanted our morning prayers and heard father tell wonderful stories about his experiences with Bahá’u’lláh and the Master, or read the latest communications from the Holy Land. It was in this setting, when I was a child of eleven, that I heard the news of the coming of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to Ramleh. The news came suddenly, without warning. The Master had left Haifa without notice on a steamer bound for Europe. Because of ill health and fatigue, He had stopped in Port Said and was coming on to Alexandria. Then the news came that He was coming to Ramleh! To Ramleh where we lived! What a miracle! There was intense joy within

9 Yazdi was described thus in a tablet written on 6 Sept. 1920 by Bahá’u’lláh, international leader of all the Bahá’í, to Roy Wilhelm, a New York City millionaire businessman who was an early American Bahá’í, informing Wilhelm that “his honor Sheikh Ali is going to America” and requesting, “Therefore you will do your best to help him in managing his affairs.” The text was quoted in Marion Carpenter Yazdi’s book, Youth in the Vanguard (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982). 10 ‘Alí M.Yazdí. Prophet Days: Memories of Abdu’l-Bahá (1975). The Bahá’í World Volume XVIII, 1979–1983. http://www.bahai.org/documents/essays/yazdi-ali-m/memories-abdul-baha

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the Bahá’í community, within my family, within me. Of all the places in the world, He happened to choose Ramleh as His headquarters for His trips to Europe and America during the period 1910-1913. Excitement, curiosity, anticipation swirled through my mind. All I knew about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was what my father had told us. No one in the immediate family except father and grandfather had seen Him. The only photograph was an early one taken when He was a young man in Adrianople. He was a prisoner beyond our reach, a legendary figure. Now He was free and coming to Ramleh! The Bahá’í Faith was an integral part of me, not something superimposed. In Ramleh I was surrounded by it, lived it, believed it, cherished its spiritual concepts and goals and principles. I realized its fundamental importance, its necessity for the world today. Yet my studies at the French school which I attended had opened other areas to my mind. The discoveries of science fascinated me and I believed they provided us with effective tools for the implementation of the teachings of the Faith. I prayed that I might be guided to play some role in this endeavour. I sensed that my contact with ‘Abdu’l- Bahá would provide the inspiration and the impetus to move in this direction. So I waited eagerly for the day of His arrival.

In December 1913, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá moved to Haifa, there to establish the Bahá’í World Centre. The following year, the Yazdí family left Egypt for Beirut, settling at a distance of just 80 miles from Haifa. Ali Yazdi enrolled in the Syrian Protestant College (later renamed the American University of Beirut), obtaining his B.A. in 1918. He had studied civil engineering and wished to continue his studies abroad, but money was tight. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá offered him a hundred pounds, which enabled Ali to go to Berlin for his graduate studies. He left the Middle East in the fall of 1919. A year later, on 24 November 1920, Ali Yazdi arrived in the United States. His initial destination, according to the S.S. Olympic’s passenger list, was Cambridge, Mass. He spent a year among the American Bahá’í converts in the Boston area before arriving in Berkeley in the fall of 1921, on a visit much anticipated by the Bay Area’s Bahá’í faithful.

Early Days of the Bahá’í Faith in Berkeley

“Berkeley was one of the first cities in America to have Bahá’ís, one of the few to have the distinction of a visit by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and one of the earliest to establish a Local Spiritual Assembly,” wrote Marion Carpenter Yazdi in her 1982 book, Youth in the Vanguard. She passed down the story of the beginnings from Ella Goodall Cooper, one of the earliest Bahá’í converts and leaders on the West Coast:

The Message came to the West in 1898 through Dr. Edward and Lua Getsinger. They came to California and visited Mrs. Phoebe Hearst in her country home near San Francisco [Hacienda del Pozo de Verona]. Mrs. Hearst was interested and invited her friends to hear Lua give a series of lessons, which led up to a climax called “the Pith.”

Mrs. Hearst converted to the Bahá’í faith and set out with a party of 15 friends on a pilgrimage to Ottoman-ruled Palestine, to visit ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, confined within the penal colony of Acre for three decades. They were the first Westerners to visit ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in prison.

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Upon their return home, a number of the people who made the pilgrimage to Acre became teachers in the Bahá’í cause. In 1912, freed after 40 years of imprisonment, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá came to the United States on a teaching tour. He visited Mrs. Hearst in her Hacienda, lectured at Stanford University at the invitation of president David Starr Jordan, and spoke at the Berkeley High School auditorium as the guest of the City of Berkeley and its mayor, J. Stitt Wilson. Phoebe Hearst, as a Regent of the University of California, had also written to the university administration, encouraging a speaking opportunity for him on the Berkeley campus. This may have translated into the Berkeley High School appearance. Although Bahá’í activities increased in Berkeley following ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit, it was not until 1920 that the first Bahá’í student enrolled in the University of California.

Marion Carpenter Yazdi (1902–1996)

Marion Bernice Carpenter was born on 9 October 1902 in Marcellus, Michigan, the daughter of Crowell Eddy Carpenter, a grain dealer, and his wife Elizabeth. In the early 1910s, the family relocated to Santa Paula in Ventura County, California. According to a profile of Marion, published in the Santa Paula Times, “Marion first heard about the Bahá’í faith in 1912, when her mother read a newspaper article in the Los Angeles Times. Two years later her family learned more about the new religion from a door-to-door salesman. Her mother became a member of the Bahá’í faith immediately. Marion joined in 1914.”11 In 1920, following graduation from Santa Paula High School, Marion entered the University of California. The first Bahá’í student at the university, she lodged in the home of Kathryn and Alec Frankland, early converts to the Bahá’í faith who lived at 1199 Spruce Street. “Now seventeen,” wrote Marion, “I eagerly joined the Berkeley Bahá’í and their manifold activities, […] The Bahá’í Faith was foremost in my life; I wanted to prepare to teach it.” In the fall of 1921, Marion met the recently arrived Ali Yazdi.

I first saw Ali across the room at a Cosmopolitan Club meeting in Stiles Hall on campus. He was young in years for a graduate student in civil engineering but poised and confident. I still remember his face—the natural “suntan,” expressive golden brown eyes, and the most engaging smile in the world. He cut a dashing figure in the traditional yellow “cords” and Stetson “sombrero” then worn by senior and graduate students. Those were the day of Rudolph Valentino and “The Sheik,” and here was a handsome, Persian Bahá’í youth with dash and charm and the name Sheikh-Ali! I soon found Ali to be a strong, exemplary Bahá’í, an intelligent and purposeful student, and a delightful young man with an original and winning sense of humor. We became fast friends. Now there were two Bahá’í students on campus.12

11 Kimberly Rivers. “Marion Carpenter Yazdi, Class of 1920.” Santa Paula Times, 15 March 2002. 12 Youth in the Vanguard.

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Figure 43. Marion Carpenter (center) in a Cosmopolitan Club production (source: “Youth in the Vanguard”)

Marion had been teaching a Sunday class for Bahá’í children and brought her college friends along. Following Ali Yazdi’s arrival in Berkeley, many college students began to attend those classes. On campus, Marion and Ali worked with the Cosmopolitan Club, an international organization that existed before International House was established. After three years at Cal, Marion enrolled for her senior year at Stanford University, where she obtained her B.A. in 1925 and an M.A. in 1928.

The Yazdi Marriage

In 1923, Ali Yazdi began working for the Southern Pacific Railroad and moved to Sacramento. Three years later, he and Marion married and settled in Berkeley. First they lived at 1175-A Arch Street, but following a 1928 pilgrimage to the Middle East, they settled at the Storybook-style Fox Court, 1472 University Avenue. Here they opened the Yazdi Persian Rug and Gift Shop in Unit J, a second-floor, one-bedroom apartment in the rear. Meanwhile, Ali continued working for Southern Pacific. On 5 July 1930, the couple’s first child, Robert Moneer Yazdi, was born. It’s likely that their Fox Court apartment became too small to contain both business and residence, for the Yazdis moved their home to 1211 Spruce Street, which had been an earlier abode for Marion’s elder sister, Margery Carpenter, and was also serving as a Bahá’í lending library. The Yazdi shop remained in Fox Court for five years.

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Figure 44. Berkeley Gazette, 20 June 1929

In the spring of 1933, Marion became pregnant with the couple’s second child, Barbara Nur Yazdi. About that time, the Yazdis commissioned architect William I. Garren to design for them a new building that would house both their business and their residence, as well as an apartment for Margery Carpenter. The Yazdis’ preference for Storybook-style architecture appears evident from their choice of Fox Court as a residence and business location. William Garren, a past master in this style, was just the architect to give them what they wanted in the new building. The announcement of the opening of the Yazdi Persian Rug and Gift Shop in its new location on Telegraph Avenue mentioned that the building “has been the center of much interest during construction and now congratulations are being received from old and new friends on its beauty and originality. The shop was planned and built expressly to provide a proper setting for the Yazdis’ fine collection of Persian rugs and decorative arts.”13 The Stanford Illustrated Review described the Yazdi Shop’s wares in its announcement of the opening: “Stanford visitors to the U.C. campus are invited to enjoy the Yazdi exhibit of rare Persian rugs and textiles, lacquer work, pottery, miniature paintings, and other gifts in the new studio building at 2910 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, where Marion Carpenter Yazdi is a member of the firm.”

13 “Yazdi Shop Moves Into New Quarter.” Berkeley Daily Gazette, 1 December 1933.

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Figure 45. Berkeley Gazette, 1 December 1933

Figure 46. Ad in the Berkeley Gazette, 1 December 1933

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The new shop opened on Saturday, 2 December 1933, just in time for the Christmas shopping season. In an ad placed in the Berkeley Gazette, the Yazdis announced, “The Yazdi Shop comes out of hiding. For five years our patrons sought us in our sheltered retreat. Now we step forth.” Eventually, Ali Yazdi no longer practiced as an engineer and dedicated himself to running the shop and to spreading the Bahá’í word through writing and public speaking. The shop was often used as the venue for Bahá’í classes and exhibits, such as a fireside discussion on “Religion or Superstition,” held in February 1941; a free course in public speaking, held in May 1943; or the San Francisco Bahá’í Peace Committee exhibit, displayed in 1944. As summarized in his obituary in the 1979 Bahá’í Yearbook, Ali Yazdi was “a noted Bahá’í lecturer and writer, served on many national committees of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and was, for thirty years, chairman of the Local Spiritual Assembly of Berkeley, California.” Both Ali and Marion Yazdi worked tirelessly for decades to promote the cause of World Peace. They kept their shop until October 1956, at which time they sold the building to Charles H. Lee, who owned C.H. Lee Jewelers at 2070 Allston Way, on the Shattuck Hotel block. After selling their building, the Yazdis moved to Merced, where Ali taught at Atwater High School. Returning to Berkeley in the 1960s, Ali taught for a while at the Bentley School on Benvenue Avenue. Ali M. Yazdi passed away on 18 February 1978. Marion survived him by 18 years. She spent her last years with her daughter in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and died on 2 February 1996. When the Yazdi family made Berkeley its home, and the Bahá’í faith a public centerpiece of its community life, acceptance of non-Christian believers was not universal in the local community, which was predominantly Protestant. Just a few years after the Yazdis settled at 2910 Telegraph Avenue, there was vehement neighborhood reaction only about a mile away—including appeals to the City Council and protest petitions—when the Vedanta Society proposed to open a Berkeley worship center near Piedmont Ave. and Dwight Way. Those objecting argued, in part, that “Hindus” (in this case a code word for dark-skinned individuals) shouldn’t be allowed in one of Berkeley’s more upscale residential districts, and that Berkeley was a Christian community. The Vedanta group withdrew its proposal in the face of this protest and moved to a site farther west at Bowditch and Haste, where they still faced another round of neighborhood protests before successfully building their Berkeley facility. The presence of the Yazdi family in Berkeley from the 1920s to the 1960s, the apparent acceptance of Ali Yazdi as a foreign-born non-Christian (albeit from a Caucasian race), the Yazdis’ “mixed marriage,” and the fact that they were able to establish and operate a successful business here for three decades, including the entire Depression period, can be seen as part of the early stages of multi- culturalism in this community. In this sense, the Yazdis and their business are a tangible symbol of the slow development of diversity within the Berkeley community.

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Figure 47. Berkeley Gazette articles. Top left: 10 March 1945. Bottom left: 26 June 1942. Right: 18 March 1948.

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Margery Carpenter (1893–1973)

Nine years older than her sister Marion, Margery Eva Carpenter was born on 22 December 1893 in Marcellus, Michigan. She attended the University of Idaho in 1912– 1913 but following the family’s move to Santa Paula, she enrolled in Pomona College, where she obtained her B.A. in 1916. For a few years beginning in 1919, Margery worked at the local public library. An active Bahá’í like her mother, sister, and younger brother, Margery moved to Berkeley at the beginning of the 1920s and enrolled at U.C. as a graduate student in psychology. She lodged with Elizabeth Perry, a prominent social worker, in Perry’s bungalow at 1211 Spruce Street. This connection may have steered Margery into Figure 48. Margery Carpenter in a the social service profession that she 1924 passport photo followed for the rest of her career.

In March 1924, the Bulletin of the California Conference of Social Work announced, “Miss Elizabeth Perry, head of the social service department of the Alameda County Health Center, has resigned and Miss Margery Carpenter is at present acting head.” In 1925, Elizabeth Perry became the agent of the Commission of Berkeley Public Charities, another post in which Margery Carpenter would replace her. Miss Perry explained the commission’s responsibilities to the Berkeley League of Women Voters in its meeting of 23 September 1925:

The commission, established in 1909, whose powers were enlarged and clearly defined by ordinance 706 in 1919, is empowered to investigate, endorse and report, to collect statistics, to recommend to the sympathetic attention of the city council the needs of children and other groups and to encourage the foundation of new charitable undertakings. It has a very definite and close relation to the Community Chest, which was established in 1923 and with which it cooperates. In order to avoid overlapping and conflict, the agent of the Charities Commission makes the investigation of all agencies applying to the Chest. The commission then discusses, endorses and makes suitable recommendations. The Community Chest, with this information before it, is assisted to make a considered decision. The commissions thus sets standards and approves or disapproves social methods much as the health officers verify and standardize the milk supply of the city. The four social agencies which receive appropriations from the city budget are among those investigated and endorsed and the commission thus safeguards their interests as well as those of the citizens. In brief, the

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commission, composed of seven unpaid, experienced and distinguished people, has for its motto: Mutual education and helpfulness.14

By 1926, Margery Carpenter was the Public Charities Commission’s secretary/agent. That year she wrote Study of Social Work in Berkeley, which was published in November and was widely cited and reviewed. One of the reviews15 began thus:

The recently published Study of Social Work in Berkeley, by Margery Carpenter, Agent of the Commission of Public Charities of Berkeley, Cal., is as comprehensive an effort as I have seen to “see social work whole” in a single community. Each social agency which serves Berkeley is listed, state, county, city and private, and the character and amount of its services, the amount and sources of its income, and the methods of its administration are shown. The unique contribution of this study is the completeness with which the field has been covered. Miss Carpenter has made a careful study of the philanthropic activities of churches, fraternal and veterans’ organizations, national societies and men’s and women’s clubs. The cost of the philanthropic activities of all these groups was $21,750 in 1925, only eight per cent of the cost in taxes and contributions of the recognized social agencies, or 2pc per capita for the population of 74,000.

Figure 49. Berkeley Gazette, 16 Nov. 1926 Figure 50. Berkeley Gazette, 1 Jan. 1935

14 “Problems as to Juveniles Told to Women Voters.” Berkeley Daily Gazette, 25 September 1925. 15 Raymond Clapp. Social Work in Berkeley. The Survey, Vol. 58, 15 April 1927.

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The Architect

William I. Garren (1892–1983)

William Isaac Garren was born on 22 November 1892 in San Francisco. His paternal grandparents, Louis and Hannah Garren, were Polish Jews who had immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the United States in the 1850s. His maternal grandparents, also Jewish, had come from Russia. William’s parents, David and Jennie Garren, were born in California in 1862 and 1864, respectively. The Garren family was working class. Grandfather Louis (1830–1904) began as a cap maker and ended as a glazier. Father David, one of six siblings, worked as a salesman, porter, and shipping clerk in a men’s clothing store.

Figure 51. William Garren toward the end of his life (Albany Library)

Little is known about William Garren’s childhood. In 1900, when he was seven years old, his parents lived in his grandparents’ house at 13 Minna Street, but William was absent from the household.16 A 1965 article17 By Jim Sadler, Jr., reported that Bill Garren attended Fremont Grammar School and James Lick High [sic] School. Garren first emerged in the census records in 1910, as a 17-year-old draftsman in an architect’s office. By then, the family had moved to 508 Lyon Street. Garren’s “Who’s Who in This Issue” capsule biography, published in The Architect and Engineer in May 1929, provided the following information:

WILLIAM I. GARREN, architect, who edits the Modern Art and Architecture Department, received his early education in the San Francisco schools. His practical architectural training was received in the offices of John Galen Howard and Louis Christian Mullgardt. His professional training was received in the Ateliers of Arthur Brown Jr., John Bakewell and Warren C. Perry and in the classes of the San Francisco Architectural Club and in the Department of Architecture of the University of California. Mr. Garren was until 1924 [sic] in partnership with Irving F. Morrow, under the firm name of Morrow & Garren. Two years were spent by Mr. Garren in active service in France. Following the war, Mr. Garren attended classes in City Planning at the University of London, England. He was one of the organizers of the Architects’ State Association and is its

16 U.S. Census, 1900. 17 Jim Sadler, Jr. “Those Were the Days.” Albany News Review, 6 January 1965.

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secretary. He is a member of San Francisco Chapter, A. I. A., the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, and the Alumnae [sic] of the Department of Architecture of the University of California.

On 23 October 1913, Garren was hired as a draftsman for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE).18 The 1915 and 1916 University of California Register listed him as an architecture student, although Jim Sadler maintained that Garren attended the university from 1914 to 1917. The San Francisco city directory of 1915 listed Garren (then residing at 1014 Masonic Avenue) as “draftsman PPI Ex.” Art historian Robert Judson Clark, the leading Louis Christian Mullgardt expert, interviewed Garren on 20 December 1960 about his recollections of working as a draftsman in Mullgardt’s office during that period.19, 20 In his 1917 World War I registration card, the 24-year-old Garren specified his occupation as a self-employed architect and engineer with an office at 1501 Chronicle Building, San Francisco. He listed his military training as one-and-a- half years in the University of California Cadets, with the rank of infantry private. In 1916, Garren entered into a partnership with Irving F. Morrow (1884– 1952), who had also worked for the PPIE. In October 1917, The Architect and Engineer reported that Garren “had enlisted in the Officers’ Reserve Corps and is now at the training camp at American Lake.” Following the signing of the Armistice, Garren became an exchange student of the American Expeditionary Forces in Great Britain. His return to San Francisco was announced in the August 1919 issue of The Architect and Engineer. A few months later, Garren published the article “An Architect’s Post-War Impressions,” in which he included his sketches of landmark English buildings.21

Morrow & Garren

The Morrow & Garren partnership lasted until 1925. Their first project was Clear Lake Union High School (1916) in Lakeport, CA. In 1925, Morrow cast a retrospective eye on this project, revealing the conflicts that often arise between architect and client:

The Clear Lake Union High School was unique in that all the architecture was not put on the outside for the benefit of passing motorists; but some went inside for the occupants of the building. This wastefulness has caused considerable comment in the town; and in particular the strange device of tinting each of the classrooms a different color, when one uniform tone throughout the interior would have done, has been the source of much

18 Minutes of the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the PPIE. Bancroft Library. Information courtesy of Michael Corbett. 19 Robert Judson Clark. “Louis Christian Mullgardt and the Court of the Ages.” JSAH, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Dec. 1962), pp. 171–178. 20 Robert Judson Clark. “Louis Christian Mullgardt,” in Winter (ed.). Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts & Crafts Architects of California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 21 William Garren. “An Architect’s Post-War Impressions.” The Architect and Engineer, November 1919.

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uncertainty as to our sanity and competence.22

Figure 52. Clear Lake Union High School (courtesy of Anita Crabtree)

Conflicts notwithstanding, Morrow & Garren went on to design another school and a bank in Lakeport. Over the nine years of their prolific partnership, the two amassed a portfolio of private residences, apartment buildings, stores, offices, a clubhouse, a refinery, a mortuary, community centers, restaurants, and cinemas. One of their repeat clients was the San Francisco real estate firm Bernhard Getz Co., which commissioned store buildings and cinemas on West Portal Avenue and in San Mateo, among other locations. In Berkeley, Morrow & Garren designed two elegant residences, still standing at 33 Tanglewood Road and 97 Tamalpais Road.

Figure 53. Powell residence, 33 Tanglewood Road (A & E, April 1925)

22 Irving F. Morrow. “Architecture or Building? Work by Morrow & Garren, Architects.” The Architect and Engineer, April 1925, pp. 42–81.

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Figure 54. Store buildings for B. Getz, West Figure 55. Cinema, West Portal, SF, 1925 (SF Portal, SF (Architect & Engineer, April 1925) Public Library)

Figure 56. Aaron A. Alper Memorial Building, SF (A & E, April 1925)

Figure 57. Study for commercial center with theatre and hotel, for B. Getz (A & E, April 1925)

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Figure 58. Store bldg., Clement St., SF (A & E, April 1925)

Figure 59. Golden Gate Mortuary, SF (A & E, April 1925)

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Figure 60. San Mateo Theatre & shops (A & E, Dec. 1925)

Figure 61. San Mateo Theatre (A & E, Dec. 1925)

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Figure 62. Apartments, SF (A & E, April 1925) Figure 63. Jewish Community Center, Oakland (A & E, April 1925)

Figure 64. Restaurant for Noah Williams, San Figure 65. Oak Tree Inn, San Mateo (A & E, Mateo (A & E, April 1925) Dec. 1927)

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Solo Career

Morrow & Garren dissolved their partnership in 1925. Morrow teamed up with his wife, the architect Gertrude Comfort Morrow, while Garren embarked on a solo career, which continued until 1936, when he became a full-time cinema owner/manager. During this time, Garren designed several more movie theatres, including the Allendale in Oakland, the Redwood in Redwood City, and the Victory in San Jose. His interest in the cinema was already evident early in his career; in October 1920, The Architect and Engineer published his article “Architecture and the Motion Picture.” In 1929, Garren joined the editorial staff of The Architect and Engineer as Modern Art and Architecture editor. He also contributed to other publications. His review of William Wurster’s Gregory Farmhouse in the July 1930 issue of Sunset bore the headline “There Must Be Romance in the Home You Build.” Romance was indeed evident in Garren’s solo residential work, and nowhere more so than in his own house at 2573 Buena Vista Way, featuring aged brick walls; a steep, wood-shingled roof; fanciful copper-trimmed dormers; and a walled courtyard.

Figure 66. Garren house, Berkeley (Photo: Daniella Thompson, 2011)

The residences Garren designed in the late 1920s varied in style, but all exhibited a strong element of romance, both inside and out.

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Figure 67. Kaufmann house, Atherton. Note the glazed gable. (A & E, Dec. 1928)

Figure 68. Left, Kaufmann house, Atherton; right, Meyers house, St. Francis Wood, SF (A & E, Dec. 1928)

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Figure 69. Copper fireplace hood (left) & Figure 70. Light fixtures, Garren house, staircase, Garren house, Berkeley (A & E, Dec. Berkeley. (A & E, Dec. 1928) 1928)

The living rooms in Garren’s houses are often notable for their verticality; steep wooden ceilings with exposed timbers; massive fireplaces; prominent staircases; and modern light fixtures designed by Garren in collaboration with Thomas Day Company. Several of these elements were visible in Morrow & Garren’s Oak Tree Inn (1925), a San Mateo restaurant that included a romantic dining courtyard with an ancient oak tree as focal point. The Yazdi Building incorporates some of these elements on a smaller scale. The store includes a steep gable roof with exposed timbers, a large brick fireplace, and a staircase to an upper gallery. Initially, it was arranged around a courtyard, like the Oak Tree Inn and the Garren residence.

Figure 71. Oak Tree Inn (A & E, Dec. 1927)

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From 1930 to c. 1936, Garren shared office space with Frederick J. Reimers at 233 Post Street in San Francisco. In 1935, along with several other architects— Henry H. Gutterson, Charles F. Masten, Lester W. Hurd, and Reimers—he was a co-founder of the San Francisco Federal Savings and Loan Association, of which he remained a director for decades.23 In 1933, Garren built the Redwood Theatre in Redwood City for theatrical agent and exhibitor Philip A. Frease. A year later, Frease acquired an eight-year- old Italian clubhouse on Solano Avenue and engaged Garren to transform it into the Albany Theatre.

Garren’s practice remained active during the Great Depression. In 1935, he remodeled a San Jose store-and-office building and the adjacent Victory Theatre for the Phelan estate. In July–Sept 1936, The Architect and Engineer reported that Garren was doing more commercial work for the Phelan estate, as well as store alterations and private residences in several cities. The same year, Pacific Constructor listed Garren’s contracts for substantial new single-family residences in San Francisco, Oakland, Montclair, San Rafael, and Los Altos; stores in San Francisco, San Bruno, Palo Alto, and San Jose; and a country clubhouse in Los Altos.

Figure 72. Victory Theatre, San Jose (A & E, May 1936)

Figure 73. Albany Theatre c. 1941 (courtesy of Jack Tillmany)

23 Calif Hist Q J Calif Hist Soc, Vol. 45 No. 2, Jun., 1966; (pp. 181–182) DOI: 10.2307/25154136

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Garren’s career took an unforeseen turn in May 1936, when Phil Frease died of a heart attack, leaving behind unpaid bills. In lieu of loans toward the cost of alterations,24 Garren took over the Albany Theatre building and became a full- time exhibitor. He remodeled the theatre three more times, in 1940, 1949, and 1961, and ran it for 30 years. During his tenure as cinema owner, Garren became a leader of the Albany business community and served on Albany commissions, including the Park, Planning, and Zoning Board. In 1965, the 72-year-old Garren sold the Albany Theatre to Martin Foster and retired from business, although he continued his civic activities. William Garren died on 30 June 1983. His son, Dr. Alper A. Garren, is a well- known physicist.

Figure 74. The Yazdi shop in 1946 (Bob McVey photo, Don Brown collection, published in Vernon J. Sappers, “Key System Streetcars,” Signature Press, 2007)

2910–2912 Telegraph Avenue Occupancy History

1933–1956 Yazdi Persian Carpet & Gift Shop 1956–1968 Lila’s Antiques 1968–1992 Robert Bruce of Berkeley 1992–2006 WinterLAN/Winterlink (network service provider) 2006–2015 Rob Reger/Emily the Strange/Gallery Extraña

For over 80 years, the Yazdi Building served as home to a nearly unbroken succession of design-oriented businesses. Of the five businesses that operated

24 Sadler.

2910–12 Telegraph Avenue Landmark Application, Page 51 of 61 here, four were associated with arts, crafts, antiques, interior design, and/or fashion, giving the structure a remarkable continuity of use. 25

Lila’s Antiques

The Yazdis sold their building in 1956 to Charles H. Lee, a veteran jeweler who owned C.H. Lee Jewelers at 2070 Allston Way, on the Shattuck Hotel block. Lee’s acquisition of the Yazdi Building gave his young daughter a business location and a home. The daughter, Lila Edyth Canady (1929–1981), had married Bill Joe Canady (1929–2012) an exterminator. The Canadys purchased a half-interest in the building and enlarged the living quarters. In late 1967, they found a larger property in Lafayette and put the building up for sale.

Figure 75. Ad in the 1964 telephone directory Robert Bruce of Berkeley

In February 1968, the Yazdi Building was acquired by Bernice W. Ellis (1911– 2002), who moved her store of Asian antiques and imports into it. Mrs. Ellis was the daughter of Luther and Jessie Williamson, a prominent Berkeley couple. Luther M. Williamson was a major developer, builder, and property owner in Berkeley. He is remembered today for having built and co- owned the U.C. Theatre and the adjoining Stark Hotel on University Avenue, as well as the landmark Williamson Building on Dwight Way. Jessie Williamson served as California Secretary for Social Services under Governor Warren and was a Republican Committeewoman at the presidential convention that nominated Thomas Dewey.26 Mrs. Ellis entered the Asian antiques and home design business by taking over the Roger Barber Trends and Traditions store, which had relocated in the

25 Throughout the 20th century, this use was part of a pattern of dispersed home-furnishing businesses located along main avenues in south/southeast Berkeley, including at least three from the first half of the 20th century established by Middle Eastern immigrants. Among the oldest were Tulanian Carpets, operating in the Elmwood since 1922, and the ornate two-story Oriental rug store of Armenian-born Mardig Yedicardashian Parnay at 2441 Bancroft Way (later demolished for construction of Eshleman Hall on the U.C. campus), dating to the mid-1910s. Later home furnishing businesses in the general vicinity included Fraser’s, 2409 Telegraph Ave.; D’Onofrio’s Interiors, 2809 Telegraph Ave.; Roger Barber Trends and Traditions (discussed below); Slater/Marinoff & Co., College and Ashby; and the long-standing cluster of antiques stores around the intersection of Adeline Street and Ashby Avenue. 26 Information obtained in e-mail correspondence with Bernice W. Ellis’s daughter, Susan E. Williams, March 2016.

2910–12 Telegraph Avenue Landmark Application, Page 52 of 61 mid-1960 from 2491 Telegraph Ave. to 2620 Telegraph Ave. at Carleton Street. Mrs. Ellis’s daughter, Susan Ellis Williams, related:

Roger Barber was not thrilled with the new Telegraph Avenue location. The building had been a gym before he moved in. It was a big open space and had mirrors on all the walls, not at all like the building on upper Telegraph. He told my mother he wanted to sell the business and she jumped at the chance. But she did not like renting, and when the 2910 Telegraph property came up for sale, she decided to move the business there.

Figure 76. Bernice Ellis, her daughter Susan, and a Japanese friend, c. 1973 (courtesy of Susan E. Williams)

According to family lore, the shop was named after their remote ancestor, Robert I of Scotland (popularly known as Robert the Bruce), although the initials shared with Roger Barber may also have had something to do with the naming. The shop included two “Continental” rooms offering English antique furniture, bone china, crystal, and cutlery from Scandinavia, Holland, and England. A kitchen showcase displayed French, Chinese, and Japanese gourmet cookware. Two Japanese-themed rooms—one of them the former courtyard, now with a pebbled floor—featured tansu, cha-dansu (tea chests), pottery, lacquer ware, hibachi, and stone lanterns. The gallery exhibited drawings, paintings, prints, calligraphic books, and photography by local artists. Mrs. Ellis visited Japan often and was reported in 1973 to be writing a scholarly work on Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the 16th-century general who unified Japan.27

27 Susan de Jongh-Kearl. “Robert Bruce of Berkeley.” Berkeley Monthly, 21 November 1973.

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Figure 77. Robert Bruce Christmas Figure 78. Bernice Ellis & visitor (courtesy of Susan catalog, 1969 (courtesy of Anthony Bruce) E. Williams)

A 1975 listing in Architectural Digest included among Robert Bruce’s offering Mashiko pottery, Imari porcelain, Korean chests, silks, bronzes, and direct imports from England and Scotland. Robert Bruce of Berkeley was the subject of a long article in the Berkeley Monthly, published on 21 November 1973. Its author noted that from the outside, the building resembled an English cottage—“all it needs is a thatched roof.” As noted earlier, Bernice Ellis remodeled the building several times between 1968 and 1977, enlarging the showroom area via connecting rooms and adding storage space. She also planted the magnolia tree at the corner, according to her daughter Susan. Robert Bruce of Berkeley operated until 1992, although Bernice Ellis had withdrawn from managing the business some years earlier. The final operator was Guillermina Emy LaFever, who later opened a shop of her own in Richmond. Mrs. Ellis continued to own the Yazdi Building for the rest of her life. She passed away in 2002. Her daughter Susan sold the building in 2006 to Rob Reger’s Telegraph Investments, LLC.

2910–12 Telegraph Avenue Landmark Application, Page 54 of 61

Figure 79. Article clipping from the Berkeley Monthly, 21 Nov. 1973

Figure 80. The tatami alcove in the Japanese room (Berkeley Monthly, 21 Nov. 1973)

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Figure 81. An exhibition opening at Gallery Extraña, May 2010 (courtesy of Gallery Extraña)

Rob Reger/Emily the Strange/Gallery Extraña

Artist Rob Reger acquired the Yazdi Building in 2006. In July 2008, Gallery Extraña opened in the showroom space. According to the gallery’s blog,28

Gallery Extraña was founded by Emily the Strange creator Rob Reger and artist, curator, and filmmaker Aimee Friberg in the spring of 2008. Its first show in July of the 2008 turned the heads of national press with the elegant illustrations of Nicomi Nix Turner. Its mission is to showcase contemporary, emerging, and mid-career artists primarily from the Bay Area, with a special focus on talent from the East Bay, where the gallery is situated. Gallery Extraña is committed to exhibiting eccentric, “strange”, and off-center work, and seeks to promote local and underrepresented talent. […] Rob Reger is the founder, owner, creative director and president of Cosmic Debris - a design house based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rob and Cosmic introduced the world to Emily the Strange, now the international icon for empowering young alternative girls. Rob has been designing Emily for over a decade and has generated millions of fans of the character. Aimee Friberg has exhibited, performed and screened her short films in Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York , California, Texas and Mexico; she resides in Berkeley. She is passionate about being curious, living simply, laughter as medicine and trusting the now. She works in a variety of media including photography, tactile installation, video/film-making, sound, electronics, performance, drawing and most recently -- collage. Seeking the sublime in the mundane, her artwork illuminates the subtle forces at play in

28 http://galleryextrana.blogspot.com

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our daily interactions. With this new collage work, Friberg pays tribute to the white on the page and the fruit of looking, then looking again.

Figure 82. Gallery Extraña, 2010. The main showroom was connected to the pebble-floored room (former courtyard) via a wide doorway, now walled over. (courtesy of Gallery Extraña)

In addition to exhibiting contemporary artists, Gallery Extraña was a boutique selling Emily the Strange merchandise, which includes art, graphic books, and fashions. The gallery closed in September 2015.

Figure 83. Emily the Strange merchandise in the pebble-floored room (courtesy of Gallery Extraña)

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Figure 84. Exhibition opening concert, 2009 (courtesy of Gallery Extraña)

16. Context

The Suburban Tract lies at the southeast corner of what is now known as the Le Conte neighborhood, a “Flatlands” residential district bordered by Telegraph Avenue, Ashby Avenue, Shattuck Avenue, and Dwight Way. The Le Conte neighborhood—named for the public elementary school located a block northwest of the Yazdi Building—grew up as a patchwork of single homes and small tract developments. It has significant clusters of 19th-century Victorians and some infill houses built as late as the 1940s–’50s on scattered vacant lots. However, most of the neighborhood structures and dwellings, especially south of Parker Street, were constructed from the turn of the century through the 1920s. This was Berkeley’s most vigorous era of population growth, house construction, and streetcar-suburb development. The growth of Le Conte as a residential neighborhood benefited from the proximity of streetcar lines on Adeline/Shattuck, Ashby, Telegraph, Dwight, and Ellsworth. Most of its pre-World War II buildings were single-family homes, although there are a number of early duplexes and other multi-unit properties. Unlike the Willard neighborhood across Telegraph Avenue to the east and other planned subdivisions further east, where developers touted substantial homes for the well-to-do professional classes, Le Conte was always a middle- class district with a mix of homeowners and both long- and short-term renters. In the 1950s and ’60s a building boom saw the demolition of a number of older houses and their replacement by 2-to-4-story modern apartment buildings, particularly north of Parker Street, but also on scattered sites further to the south. Many of the blocks in the Le Conte neighborhood retain most of their original houses. This is the case on the block where the Yazdi Building stands; every building on the block is the original structure on its lot, and the most recent

2910–12 Telegraph Avenue Landmark Application, Page 58 of 61 building (the medical office at the corner of Russell and Telegraph) dates to the early 1940s. Thus the Yazdi Building is one of the most visible parts of an entirely intact residential and commercial block from the first half of the 20th century. Telegraph Avenue paralleling the Le Conte neighborhood was a primary corridor between Berkeley and Oakland from the earliest years of Berkeley development. Originally named Humboldt Avenue (for the German 19th-century explorer and naturalist) along much of its Berkeley length, the name was ultimately switched to Telegraph to match the Oakland street, which was called the Telegraph Road, following the route of the transcontinental telegraph line. Although trains ran up Shattuck and Adeline to downtown Berkeley as early as the 1870s, Telegraph Avenue was an even more direct transit corridor from downtown Oakland through the countryside to the emerging Berkeley community and U.C. Berkeley campus. A horse car pulled on rails began service on Telegraph Avenue in the 1870s and was later replaced with a “steam dummy” engine-drawn tram, later followed by more modern streetcars operated by the Key System. As was the case on other main boulevards in the central East Bay, in its earliest years of development, the Telegraph Avenue street frontage between Dwight Way and the Oakland border was a location for large, single-family homes and scattered businesses. By the early 20th century, a number of prominent and wealthy families built mansions on larger parcels facing Telegraph Avenue; several of these were found on the blocks immediately north of Howe Street, on both sides of the street. Some were large enough to occupy an entire block frontage. In addition, residential developers built smaller, but still substantial, speculative houses, often in the Colonial Revival style, fronting on Telegraph Avenue. One such cluster survives on Telegraph south of Derby Street. This era of Telegraph Avenue as one of Berkeley’s fashionable addresses didn’t last long. The expanded Key System streetcar lines also allowed the development of planned residential tracts to the east and far to the north of campus, and well-to-do families began to move to these new and exclusive upscale subdivisions—Claremont, Elmwood Park, Thousand Oaks, Northbrae— where non-residential uses were banned, poor (and non-white) residents were discouraged, and the homes were safely situated away from the increasing noise and bustle of the growing town’s main streets. However, despite the transition of wealthier residents to areas away from the main street, Telegraph Avenue never transitioned to a fully commercial street along the south Berkeley stretch from Parker Street to the Oakland border. It remains a mosaic of relatively low-rise residential structures, small businesses, and some institutional properties. Some of the early mansions even survived as late as the 1950s and ’60s, sometimes converted to rooming houses. Even today, few properties on this stretch of Telegraph Avenue are built to the sidewalk line. Most have some landscaping between building and street, and several block-faces along the avenue are lined with homes or small apartment building, along with restaurants and commercial storefronts. In recent decades, probably because of the proximity of Alta Bates Hospital to the southeast, a number of medical offices or businesses providing health-care supplies and services have clustered on Telegraph Avenue north and south of Ashby Avenue,

2910–12 Telegraph Avenue Landmark Application, Page 59 of 61 including one on the block where the Yazdi Building is located and others on adjacent blocks.

17. Significance

Consistent with Section 3.24.110A.1.a., the Ali & Marion Yazdi Building is worth preserving for its architectural merit. It is the only Storybook Style building on Berkeley’s stretch of Telegraph Avenue. Consistent with Section 3.24.110A.1.b., the Yazdi Building is a fine example of Storybook-style architecture, notable for its complex massing, steep gable roofs, dormer gables, picturesque brick chimneys, and multi-paned steel-sash windows. It is one of only two solo projects in Berkeley by the notable architect William I. Garren, the other one being his own home (1927) at 2573 Buena Vista Way. The Yazdi Building is also Garren’s only mixed-use building in Berkeley and the last one he designed here. The Yazdi Building is also an excellent example of how the Storybook Style was adapted to the economic constraints of the Great Depression, retaining the overall whimsical character of the style but employing less expensive materials and/or construction techniques. For example, instead of using brick for exterior walls, textured stucco was used, with elements of brick trim. Instead of masonry construction, the building is wood-framed, but detailed to resemble an older masonry structure, with deep doorway embrasures and window reveals. Instead of slate or tile, composition shingles that resembled flat tiles were used for the roof. Consistent with Section 3.24.110A.1.c., the Yazdi Building makes an exceptional contribution to the neighborhood fabric, lending distinction and charm to Telegraph Avenue. As a residentially scaled structure, it relates well to its immediate residential neighbors; the building was carefully and creatively designed to “turn the corner” from a commercial frontage on Telegraph Ave. to the residential frontage on Howe Street. It is part of a rare completely original and intact block and block-face on Telegraph Avenue; the block-face retains all of its original buildings, none dating from later than the early 1940s. Consistent with Section 3.24.110A.4., the Yazdi Building possesses historic value. The building was designed as the home and business of Ali M. Yazdi and his wife, Marion Carpenter Yazdi, who owned a Persian carpet and gift shop. Ali M. Yazdi was a well-known Bahá’í lecturer and writer, served on many national committees of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and was, for thirty years, chairman of the Bahá’í Spiritual Assembly of Berkeley. Marion Carpenter Yazdi was the first Bahá’í student at the University of California and a noted speaker and writer in her own right. Together, they are important figures in the development of ethnic and religious multiculturalism in 20th-century Berkeley. The building also served as the home of Margery Carpenter, a leading Berkeley social worker who was for many years the executive secretary of the City of Berkeley’s Commission of Public Charities. The Yazdi Building is also notable for having been home to an almost continuous succession of design-oriented businesses over a period of nearly eight decades, from 1933 to 2015.

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The Yazdi Building retains integrity of location, design, materials, feeling, and association. Recent small alterations to the exterior street façades are all reversible, and other changes to the building have been concentrated in interior or rear areas, not visible from the street.

Period of Significance

The period of significance of the physical Yazdi Building is from 1933 to 1958, encompassing the original William Garren–designed structure and the stylistically similar and sympathetic additions and modifications constructed in the 1950s by the second owners. The period of cultural significance is 1933 to 1992, the time during which the building was occupied by an unbroken succession of three antiques/design businesses well known to Berkeley residents.

Historic Value: City Yes Neighborhood Yes Architectural Value: City Yes Neighborhood Yes

18. Is the property endangered? Not known. There has recently been a change in ownership.

19. Reference Sources

Building permits. BAHA; City of Berkeley.

Berkeley and Oakland directories. BAHA; Ancestry.com.

Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. BAHA.

Assessor’s block maps and deed records. Alameda County Assessor’s Office.

U.S. Census records, California voter registration records, military records, passport applications. Ancestry.com.

E-mail correspondence with Jack Tillmany, former manager of the Albany Theatre; Susan E. Williams.

Telephone interviews with Guillermina Emy LaFever.

Nelson, Marie. Surveys for Local Governments—A Context for Best Practices. California Office of Historic Preservation, 2005. http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/pages/1054/files/Survey Savvy CCAPA.pps

20. Recorders

Daniella Thompson Steven Finacom Berkeley, CA 94709 Berkeley, CA 94705

Date: April 2016

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