Page One

The first two replica historic urns to grace the Thousand Oaks subdivision were dedicated before an appreciative crowd in Berkeley’s Great Stoneface Park on Saturday, September 10, 2011. 

“This has been long in the making,” said project co-coordinator Elizabeth Sklut, standing next to Trish Hawthorne, her collaborator. “Trish and I began the project in two-hundred…” Sklut said, to considerable laughter, before correcting herself with a smile, to “two thousand and three. And frankly, we were skeptical about its success.” 

“It has sometimes seemed to Elizabeth and me that the project has taken a century to complete”, added Hawthorne, the historian of the neighborhood.  

“It’s rare on the occasion of a 100^th birthday to be able to do more than offer congratulations”, Hawthorne said. “Restoring a youthful feature is usually not an option. Our neighborhood’s centennial, however, provided the opportunity to recreate some long lost features—the new urns we celebrate today.” 

The measure of success stood behind the two, a massive ornamental urn on a stepped concrete pedestal downhill from one of the iconic boulders of Thousand Oaks in the half-acre park. The second replica urn stands a block away at the intersection of Yosemite Road and The Alameda. 

More than twenty urns originally graced the neighborhood. “The masses of trees and flowers planted in the parkings, the placement of monumental cement urns on every corner, and the additional of ornamental benches, all contributed to civic beauty”, Hawthorne wrote in a Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association brochure for a tour of the neighborhood several years ago. 

“The era was a progressive one, and one way to progress toward a better life in the public arena was through beautification of public areas.” 

Mark Daniels, the landscape designer employed by developer John Spring to lay out the neighborhood a century ago, curved the streets to fit the natural topography, and preserved the picturesque boulders and rock outcroppings in small public parks and the gardens of the newly built houses, including his own, just a stone’s toss from the urn dedication site. 

Views framed the iconic urns on many corners and street edges in the district, combining with the rocks and gnarled live oaks to make the neighborhood look like a scene from a painting by Maxfield Parrish. New houses were constructed, filling in the vacant lots, for about a quarter century.  

Over the years the original urns were damaged, weathered, and ultimately removed, until there was only one left on the corner of Indian Trail and The Alameda. 

Sklut and Hawthorne credited a $7,200 grant from the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund with helping to jumpstart the effort to recreate the urns a few years ago. They also thanked UC campus landscape architect Jim Horner for partnering with the project. “This project would never have happened without Jim’s involvement”, Hawthorne said. “He was with us every step of the way.” 

Beyond the UC grant “our fundraising was done solely through the Thousand Oaks Association Newsletter”, Sklut said. Each issue carried an update on the urn project, and “we have received more than 170 checks, large and small, from every street and several businesses on Solano.” 

The co-coordinators ran through a long list of supporters of the project, including City of Berkeley staff. “We really benefitted from the City people who helped us generously and graciously with whatever we asked”, Sklut said, crediting Diane Aikenhead of the Department of Public Works in particular for helping to get project approvals. 

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli arranged a fee waiver for the urns, Sklut said, and Professor Kurt Cuffey and scholar Gray Brechin of the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley were also partners in the Chancellor’s Grant process. 

A number of members of the project team were invited to stand in front of the urn to receive crowd applause. They included Sarita Camille Waite, the sculptor who designed the replica urns—as well as the bear cubs at the reconstructed fountain at The Circle on Marin Avenue—contractors Michael McCutcheon and Jim Duvall who had fabricated and installed the replicas, and designer Michael Casey. 

The Berkeley Historical Plaque Project arranged the fabrication of a pedestal plaque on the history of Thousand Oaks that was installed the same week and unveiled across a path from the Great Stoneface Park urn. The Berkeley Path Wanderers and City parks staff cleaned the area in preparation for the installation and dedication.  

Hawthorne said that when the urns were lifted into place on August 30, “it was amazing to see the reaction immediately…people with smiles” passing by. 

“The designers of the urns knew the lasting power of creating something beautiful for all to enjoy”, she added. “Such things create a community identity, a sense of place, and refresh our spirits.” 

“A century later, we respond to the urns as our earlier neighbors must have done– with pleasure and the recognition that this is right. Such experiences make us feel connected to one another and stretch us to be our best selves.” 

“We thank the creators of the urns for their vision, and we thank all of you for your help in reaffirming that vision 100 years later”, Hawthorne concluded. “Now we can once again enjoy more of these handsome works of civic art.” 

“Please take pride in our neighborhood, and the spirit of Thousand Oaks,” Sklut added. 

“We officially dedicate these new urns to the City of Berkeley, in the spirit of those who saw Berkeley as the Athens of the West and built for the generations to come”, said Hawthorne.  

Jill Martinucci, representing Councilmember Capitelli, and Pam Gray, the current chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission, formally accepted the urns. 

“I want to personally thank Elizabeth and Trish who have shown tremendous vision, grace and, in this town, tenacity in all kinds of challenges to see this through. Thank you so much!” Martinucci said. 

‘There’s a very small handful of things that we as Berkeleyites can actually agree on, is that we have a real shared love of our parks”, said Pam Gray. “What a gift it has been to have this donation…of these beautiful pieces of civic art.” 

The crowd numbered a hundred or more. After the re-dedication ceremony most adjourned to the nearby Mark Daniels home where owner John Harris had lent the garden for a celebration party.  

Cookies in the shape of urns had been prepared by “neighborhood bakers” Sklut said, and were quickly consumed along with lemonade and wine, as visitors perused a display on Thousand Oaks and Mark Daniels put together by Harris. 

(Steven Finacom is a founding member of the Berkeley Historical Plaque Project.)