Once the showcase of valuable minerals and the centerpiece of the University’s mining education heritage, the lobby of Hearst Memorial Mining Building is itself a gem of architectural distinction. Rising three stories behind the building’s arched granite facade with the lightness and honesty of industrial construction, it is the most dramatic interior on campus. Its eight slender steel columns and lattice girders support surrounding galleries at the upper floors and arched tiled vaults beneath a triple-domed skylight 50 feet above the floor.

Measuring 40 feet by 88 feet, the Beaux-Arts space reflects supervising architect John Galen Howard’s vision that the building should be both utilitarian and beautiful. He centered the lobby in the quiet public front of the building, while in the rear, where “everything is work-a-day,” was placed the mining laboratory, with crushing tower, copper- and lead-smelting shop, and gold and silver mill. At its dedication in 1907, the building was celebrated as both the greatest mining school ever built and the first piece of the University’s new Hearst Architectural Plan.

Originally named the Memorial Vestibule, the lobby honored the building’s namesake, Senator George Hearst, described by his widow, Regent Phoebe Hearst, as “an earnest student of mineralogy, a practical miner—a man who measured men by their truth, and methods by their honesty.” The fortune the senator compiled from Western mining, especially the Homestake Mine in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, made possible both the University’s master plan and Mining Building.

Howard’s use of buff brick for the main floor and walls gave the lobby an earthy appearance. A late suggestion from Hearst’s son, politician and publisher William Randolph Hearst, to finish the space in marble instead could not be followed because of budget constraints. In the end, Howard used white marble only for the double set of stairs leading to the galleries, and for three small squares inlaid in the brick floor. It seems just as well that funds were limited. A touch of elegance had been included, but without overpowering the rusticity of the brickwork that fits well with the mining context.

Mounted on the brick walls are two bronze tablets featuring a bas-relief bust and testimonial memorializing George Hearst. They were modeled in 1909 by sculpture instructor Melvin Earl Cummings under the scrutiny of President Wheeler, who composed the inscription and advised on facial nuances. A third bronze work, a bust of Phoebe Hearst completed in 1918 by Connecticut sculptor Willard Dryden Paddock, stood nearby the tablets for decades and can now be seen just inside the office west of the lobby. Howard’s signature feature is the skylight of three glazed domes supported by tiled pendentives, or curved triangular vaulting. The ribbed, laminated tiles laid in a herringbone pattern are an example of Catalan shell structures created in Spain by Raphael Guastavino and used in New York’s Grand Central Terminal and the Boston Public Library, buildings familiar to Howard during his early career in the east. The ceiling is often compared to the nine terra-cotta domes of French architect Henri Labrouste’s Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, completed in 1868, a landmark that may have also influenced Howard.

Designed also as a Museum of Mining and Metallurgy, the lobby gradually filled with eclectic gifts to the University. Regent Hearst contributed two pyramid-shaped columns of ore cut from the working levels of the Homestake Mine, rare Peruvian ore specimens, and 145 Carleton Watkins photographs of western mines and landscapes. An Alaskan mine handed down models and gold-gilded bricks exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and 1905 Exposition in Portland, Oregon. Locally, the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco produced a Homestake Mine model, a seven-and-a-half ton block of magnetite from the Swedish government, and a four-foot square shaft of coal standing 25 feet high. By-products from the United States Circuit Court, which gave detailed mine models used to settle claim disputes, also found their way there.

But the most extraordinary exhibit was a 25-piece collection of sterling-silver service placed within a special oak cabinet. Created in 1854–55 for Tiffany & Company by the New York firm of John Chandler Moore and Edward C. Moore, it was ordered by Massachusetts businessman James E. Birch, who amassed a fortune in California operating a stagecoach line for prospectors during the gold rush. The tureens, pitchers, trays, and goblets composed a shining record of old California, with exquisitely engraved cartouches of mining camps and landmarks, and finials and handles of sculpted stagecoaches and bears.

The 1940s saw new building uses, including the Museum of Paleontology. Along with the old mineral specimens and models, the lobby now featured a miniature oil derrick rising past the second floor railing, as well as collections of fossils and life-size reproductions of prehistoric animals.

Today, the lobby looks as pristine as it did at the unveiling a century ago. The seismic rehabilitation of the landmark building completed in 2002 also renovated the former museum space, now renamed for its donors as the Betty and Gordon Moore Lobby. The revitalized lobby is treasured for alumni banquets, commencement receptions, class reunions, and other events. But for fire-safety concerns, most of the exhibits have been stored, leaving only memories of their place in the University’s mining legacy.

A former Berkeley campus planner, Helfand is the author and photographer of Campus Guide: The University of California, Berkeley, the authoritative guidebook to Cal’s 133-year-old campus. His Bearings column is a regular feature of California magazine.