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The battle that broke out in Berkeley in 1905 over carving the Big C into the side of Charter Hill never made its way into the history books. But the tempest that erupted over the University’s plan to build a 60-foot long, 26-foot wide cement “C” on the sloping hillside above town was a watershed event. The disagreement within the campus and between town and gown was perhaps the first occasion that strong objections were raised on environmental grounds to a planned project on the Berkeley campus. The dispute foreshadowed the 1920s battle over the siting of Memorial Stadium in the mouth of Strawberry Canyon and later disputes over the preservation of open spaces on campus and in the hills.  The origin of the Big C controversy occurred late in the 19th century, when male-oriented class activities included spirited, and sometimes violent, competitions, rivalries, and fights between classes, particularly the freshmen and the sophomores. The two classes did battle each year on Charter Day—March 23, the “birthday” of the University—on the hill where the Big C now is enshrined. Freshmen, miffed at being denied a student representative at Charter Day festivities, began the tradition of “taking” Charter Hill each Charter Day and marking their class numerals on the slope. The sophomores responded by rushing the hill. The hill became an annual battlefield, with one class climbing to the high ground and daring the other to drive it off. In addition to physical injuries to participants, the University received a black eye from the publicity about boisterous student behavior. After one particularly bloody year, students and administrators proposed that the two classes abandon their rivalry and work together, on Charter Day, to build the Big C, a concrete initial, on their former battleground. Since students were already familiar with the tradition of Student Labor Day—celebrated with volunteer work on the campus grounds every four years, on February 29—the same approach was adopted for construction of the “C.” Men of the freshman and sophomore classes would labor together to build the “C,” then descend to the campus proper to enjoy lunch prepared by the cooperative efforts of their female classmates. The men would pay for the building materials; the women would buy the food.  The proposal received official blessing from a presumably relieved President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who vigorously preached the virtues of a unified “University family” and deplored violent and destructive class confrontations, as well as from University architect John Galen Howard. The fight to redirect the students’ energies was won. But when the town, and some faculty members, heard of the plan, the real battle began. In 1905, the Berkeley hills, although grazed by cattle and planted here and there with eucalyptus and conifers, were in a largely undeveloped state, their natural contours and character clearly visible, their upper slopes free of streets, houses, transmission wires and towers, and other development. In those pre-Campanile days, the proposed “C” would be by far the most prominent and distantly visible emblem of not only the campus, but also the town. Today, the “C” is bordered on three sides by obscuring trees; but in 1905 the slope around it was largely grassland, making the site highly visible from several angles and for several miles. Perhaps, assistant professor Walter Morris Hart suggested, “the protests of the citizens of Berkeley ought to be at least considered” before constructing so conspicuous a symbol. On March 13, five days before construction was to begin, another assistant professor raised a voice of protest. In a letter to the Daily Californian, Albert Whitney called the project an example of “vulgarity and Philistinism” and wrote: “All the hills above the bay are the common heritage of the people of California. It is our birthright to look upon them, to watch their passing shadows, to note their response to the fall showers, and to follow their gradual changes from delicate green through the luxuriant color of spring into the russet hue of summer. That is one of the privileges of being a Californian; to desecrate this scene . . . is a blow to the moral rights of the people of California.” Whitney continued by contrasting the rights of some 3,000 students with “a community of a hundred thousand people within easy sight of the hills to whom this desecration is an affront, and not for a day, but for twenty years of days.” He concluded: “Let 3,000 young people for four years live in the contemplation of this kind of vulgarity and the state need not be surprised to find them painting ‘C’s upon El Capitan.” Many individuals who opposed the Big C construction lived near the campus where the Hillside Club movement was in full flower. The Hillside Club philosophy advocated streets that conformed to the contours of the land, the use of natural materials (such as unpainted redwood shingles) in construction, and a reverence and respect for the landscape. Out of this turn-of-the-century movement in Berkeley arose not only proponents of regional architecture like Bernard Maybeck but leaders of the early conservation movement and its seminal organizations—many of the founders of the national conservation movement lived in or had connections to Berkeley, and found a large and sympathetic audience there. It was an era when Phoebe Hearst lent her support to save California’s redwoods, and the Sierra Club was founded by a group mainly composed of Berkeley and Stanford professors. Undoubtedly many of these people and groups would have seen the construction of a large concrete letter on the hillside as a direct affront to the harmony they were seeking to promote. Opponents of the “C” offered various kinder and gentler alternatives. Charles Keeler, spiritual father of the Hillside Club movement and a central figure in Berkeley’s cultural community, suggested that the concrete already gathered for the “C” be used instead to construct a bridge, fountain, or bench lower on the campus. One professor suggested a tug of war between the two classes, after which the rope would be cut into 2-inch segments and distributed as souvenirs. Professor Charles Mills Gayley, author of “The Golden Bear” and faculty sponsor of the Order of the Golden Bear, suggested that the students consider “a great C of acacia trees” or a “C” made of “that golden broom that bursts into blossom early in March, or something else; anything else, for that matter. “ Nevertheless, the project was approved. John Galen Howard lent crucial support to the project by stating that the placement of the “C” would not interferer with the construction plans for the “Greater University,” then expected to climb in triumphant terraces to the summit. On the planned day of construction, March 18, man could no longer intercede, but Nature acted on her own behalf. Rain drizzled down over the 200 students who turned out to work on the project, and only eight tons of material, primarily gravel, were successfully passed from man to man in a chain up the steep slope. Several tons of sand and cement remained at the bottom of the hill. The day was further marred when the freshmen and sophomores happily threw empty sacks at each other and the eye of one participant was injured. But work continued the following week, and on Charter Day, March 23, the concrete construction was finished. Days later, a crew of freshmen painted the concrete “C” yellow to complete the official project—the first paint job of hundreds the “C” would receive. Over the years the memory of the controversy faded, and the Big C became a fixture of the landscape and one of the central symbols of the spirit of the Berkeley campus. In large part, it fulfilled the sentiment expressed by a Daily Californian writer in 1905: “Undergraduate sentiment is always illogical, and to one who is not in sympathy with it, seems trivial and not worthwhile. Such a one cannot realize that to us the ‘C’ will be an ever-visible inspiration, typical of love of the University, which must inevitably force class antagonism into the background.” So it proved to be. Today, the era of class rivalry is almost forgotten, and students from various class years join together to guard the “C” against Stanford students who try to paint it red. And, from time to time, other miscreants attempt to paint the letter green—an unwitting homage, perhaps, to those early conservationists who campaigned to prevent the symbol from being built at all. Steven Finacom works in the Office of Planning on the Berkeley campus. His article was adapted from the Chronicle of the University of California, issue number 3, “West of Eden: The University and the Environment.” For more information about the Chronicle, contact Carroll Brentano, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley, 94720-4650. |
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