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Protested when it began, the now venerated home to the world celebrates a big birthday. SOME 75 YEARS AGO, International House opened its doors as the first gender- and race-integrated residence west of the Mississippi. Its founder, a young YMCA worker named Harry Edmonds, had persuaded philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. to put up $1.8 million for construc-tion of a facility that would foster cross-cultural experiences that Berkeley is renowned for today. Diverse people would share rooms, study together, dine together, do laundry together, party together, share cultural nuances, and even challenge one another. But the notion of this social experiment in a segregated neighborhood above the campus stirred 900 Berkeleyans to protest, including landlords who feared their neighborhood would be overrun by foreigners. Fortunately, the first I-House residents had a wider view of the world. A global community took root atop Bancroft Avenue. More than 60,000 students of 90 nationalities have since resided at I-House, including two future California governors, a future state supreme court justice, seven future Nobel laureates, 10 future ambassadors, a crown prince, a future prime minister, and dozens of future CEOs. An even more significant legacy may be found in the nearly 750 couples (including future Google CEO Eric Schmidt M.S. ’79, Ph.D. ‘82 and his wife Wendy M.J. ’81) who met at I-House and later married. Hundreds of memorable performances, words of distinguished visitors, weddings, banquets, and bar mitzvahs also are woven into the I-House legacy. But what could personify I-House best comes from the problem Gary Bietch, director of dining, has faced since 1976. He’s overseen planning of more than 400,000 individual servings a year. “We’ve had hundreds of people and thousands of different tastes,” he says. And there are only so many ways you can cook rice. The birthday celebration will extend into 2006 as a $10 million capital improvement campaign to upgrade the venerable building continues. There is work ahead. The 1930s plumbing and ventilation systems must be upgraded. “You can’t bring people from all over the globe together if you can’t provide the most basic amenities for their daily lives,’’ says Joe Lurie, who celebrated his 18th anniversary as executive director this year. Visit ihouse.berkeley.edu/a/publications/CampaignOverview.pdf for more info. —Patrick Dillon   Berkeley was chosen for I-House because the Bay Area was the West’s point of entry from Asia and because Cal had the largest number of foreign students (200 at the time) of any university on the West Coast. The Spanish Colonial Revival structure was built along Piedmont Avenue in the heart of segregated fraternity row.
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