Berkeley Historic Civic Center District

Berkeley's Civic Center district covers parts of a five-block area around Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, bounded by McKinley Street, Milvia Street, Allston Way and Center Street. It contains nine contributing buildings, a park and a fountain, built between 1909 and 1950. The earliest are "Old" City Hall (1909), designed by John Bakewell and Arthur Brown Jr. in Beaux Arts style, and the 1914 Post Office in Classic Italian Renaissance style. Later buildings, including the 1928 Veterans Memorial Building, the former Federal Land Bank building and the Berkeley Community Theater, are largely Moderne. Four main buildings sit on a cross axis centered on the Moderne concrete fountain in the park, which was completed in 1942. The district matters because decades of City Beautiful planning, local progressive government and New Deal funding produced a cohesive ensemble. Its buildings share a compatible palette of pale colors and have kept a high degree of integrity.