1712 Euclid Ave.

90 years of a Berkeley building and its changing residents, from frat boys to friars to Muslim undergrads.

1712 Euclid Avenue1925.  Teeks (young men who are members of Tau Kappa Epsilon) move into the newly constructed stucco fraternity house at 1712 Euclid in Berkeley.  The whole Northside neighborhood was rebuilding in the aftermath of a huge fire that had swept through the Berkeley hills two years before, destroying hundreds of structures.  The UC Berkeley student body was growing, and the TKE fraternity was one of many Greek organizations to buy up property in the neighborhood.  It was a hopeful time to be a college student, post war, pre-Depression.  To be accepted as a Teek was an honor; their motto was “TKE Builds Better Men for a Better World.”

1970.  Brown-robed Franciscan friars now inhabit 1712 Euclid.  The Franciscan School of Theology bought it from the Teeks, who like many fraternities had shrunk in the activism of the 1960’s and could not fill the house.  Mario Savio’s Free Speech Movement, war protests, hippies – not a lot of interest in pledging.  Many of the Northside frats sold their huge rambling buildings to seminaries, both Catholic and Protestant.  Nine such schools had in 1964 formed the Graduate Theological Union, a consortium of theological schools, a new hopeful experiment in ecumenism and higher education.  The three Catholic schools were the Franciscans, the Jesuits and the Dominicans, who had all bought Northside frat houses.  The Franciscans were the hippest of the three.  Instead of the Teek’s beer parties, the common room now hosted health food potlucks and folk masses.

2015.  Hijab-clad Muslim women are part of the student body of Zaytuna University, the new owners of 1712 Euclid, and the first Muslim liberal arts college in the US.  As frats lost popularity in the 60’s, so did the Franciscan’s in the 90’s. Priest sex scandals hurt enrollment and lawsuits by victims emptied endowments.  FST, which by the 90’s was the only Franciscan seminary in the US, retrenched further by moving south to San Diego and become part of a Catholic university there.  As they left they said they were glad to sell to Zaytuna, that “by reaching out beyond the Christian traditions, the many communtities on “Holy Hill” can only strengthen the future health and stability of the GTU.”

Zaytuna's first Holy Hill building, a former Protestant churchZaytuna compares itself to Yeshiva University, and Wheaton College, religiously affiliated independent schools offering a liberal arts education.  1712 Euclid is the third GTU building they have rented or bought. Learn more by looking at this article about the student body and curriculum,  and the school’s own website, Zaytuna College.  (They were recently accredited by the Western Association of Colleges and Universities, which means they can use the <edu> url.)

What a dramatic shift this building at 1712 Euclid has seen, or embodied, in its 90-year history!  Just these three snapshots, 45 year leaps from 1925 to 1970 to 2015, point to the profound changes in the US religious landscape, American higher education, and the Northside neighborhood of Berkeley.  

Faithful readers know I like thinking about repurposed buildings.  I’ve written about the building that is now the Congregational Church of Belmont, but began as a country club and also served as a research lab.  I wrote then, “Buildings change.  A lot of buildings (not all) have character, I think, and some actually are characters.  And even might have souls.   So I am wondering: just as our body’s cells completely change every seven years, does a building’s character or soul change when its purpose changes, when different workers show up, or a locker room becomes a Sunday school room?  What changes and what remains the same?“

And more recently I asked the same questions about the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, that began as the Public Library.   “I wonder, do buildings have souls, and do they remember their past?  Does the library building next door look across Hyde St. to its modern successor building in confusion or affection?  Does the grand staircase, with all the inspiring quotes above it, about how reading ennobles the soul, think – Where did all the books go?”

So it’s fun to imagine the walls and corridors of 1712 Euclid conversing late at night:

-Where did the frat boys go? (or, Thank God the beer and vomit are gone.)

-I miss the incense and theological discussion.

-Nice to have some women in the building.

-We walls have heard English and drinking song, then Latin and Gregorian chant and now it’s Arabic and the Quran.  Pretty classy education for this old stucco building.

I generally disapprove of fraternities.   I can remember gloating, when I was a student on Holy Hill, that an ecumenical community of seekers and preachers and scholars was a distinct improvement in the use of those buildings over crude frat boys.  Not to say that we didn’t still partied pretty well ourselves.  (It was generally agreed that the Jesuits had the best wine cellar and some pretty mean parties.)  Seminary students then were younger than today so we also indulged in some adolescent high jinx.  Maybe I can blame the legacy of the frat buildings on my bad behavior. 

But I was really sad to see the Franciscans leave.  Some of the other seminaries are also on the verge of closing.  Was this 50-year ecumenical experiment a failure?  Will theological education survive in any form or is it doomed to become just distance learning and “practical theology” – no classrooms or libraries?  As both religion and higher education change dramatically, what does the future hold for the teachers and students of religion?  Sure, Francis disapproved of owning property, so maybe it’s fitting they sold.  How could I study the life of Jesus, and of Francis, and still get all excited about how great buildings are? 

Then comes Zaytuna, still small, but growing, just like the growing Muslim population in the US.  And these folks are committed to a broad liberal arts education, and in some way interested in being part of a larger religious community, while maintaining their autonomy.  Might this be a divine gift for the community?  And for the buildings?  Better Muslims than condos. 

And if every student is a seeker, even the frat boys, then not so much has changed.   There are still seekers in 1712 Euclid, and the buildings still stands. 

That is some consolation, even a blessing.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

Solid and Shaky Art Museums

How an afternoon at an art museum makes me feel both more and less secure.  I’m thankful for the big strong walls, and I’m also thankful that the art shows me the folly of walls.

Art museums are built to be strong and secure, safe from theft, reassuring sanctuaries from the instability of the outside world.  When I spend an afternoon at an art museum my soul feels curiously stronger and safer as well.  Just the building itself reassures me that countless people have cared enough to collect and secure this art.  Then when I see all the other visitors my faith in humanity is restored a bit; not everyone is spending this day at the mall or in front of a TV.

Stanford University Art MuseumFor example, I spent a pleasant afternoon at the Stanford University Art Museum last week.  I’ve been going there for almost 50 years, ever since I was a Stanford undergraduate. It’s been a happy refuge for me from final exams, a blessed respite from sad work as a chaplain at Stanford Hospital, an entertaining place to take my children, a calm interlude between tense or boring work meetings, a lovely indulgence in the world of California landscape, Egyptian mummies, Northwest Coast Native art, Rodin’s Thinker.  Sometimes I just stop by for a short visit, to sit in front of one favorite painting.

The building itself is reassuring, a neoclassical monolith, with inspiring mosaics of European and ancient world buildings on the columned façade and marble floors and staircases that suggest wealthy permanence.

But I often leave an art museum with my happy life assumptions a little shaken up as well, some foundational assumptions teetering, the art having forced me to rethink my need for a sanctuary from the real world.  Last week I left the Stanford Art Museum a little disquieted, sad at changed assumptions.  Metaphorically it was sort of like the building’s own history; twice in its nearly 125-year history its permanence has been literally shattered when devastating earthquakes in 1906 and 1989 tumbled and crumbled statues and staircases.  I didn’t go through an earthquake last week, but I was a little shaken.

Part of the problem (if it’s a problem, which it may not be) is that I am so very familiar with the building and the collection that I quickly notice changes.  If I’m looking for a static sanctuary then a good art museum, like this one, will show me that no such thing exists.  One example is the slow but inexorable disappearance of the Greek and Roman art.  The museum began 125 years ago with simply the boyhood hodgepodge collection of Roman and Greek coins and pottery that the teenage Leland Stanford Jr. had amassed on Grand Tours with his wealthy parents. Little Leland’s untimely 1885 death from scarlet fever in Rome inspired his parents to found the university, including the museum. 

Gates of HellGood robber barons that they were they augmented the collection with some very fine classical art, which filled the first floor for decades.  But when an art history professor specialist in Rodin befriended a wealthy patron the museum started acquiring Rodins, which now number in the hundreds, inside and out.  (Try visiting the massive two story Rodin “Gates of Hell” at night outside in the Rodin Garden – now that’s unsettling.) Like invasive plants the black marble hands and kisses and anguished burghers, more popular with the public imagination than ancient vases, forced the red and black figure vases first upstairs into the European section with vague labels about how Greece and Rome are in Europe and influenced the Romantics.  On this last visit they were down to one glass case.

Gates of HellIn their place was a student curated exhibit called Blood and Sugar. Unlike when I was a student there are now more exhibits prepared as a class project, often interdisciplinary, like art and engineering, design and medical technology, art history and political science.  A good change of course; this is a university art museum.  Blood and Sugar is about the slave trade and how art patron families in England funded their genteel collections on the backs and dead bodies of sugar plantation slave workers.  I took a course on Latin America colonialism in the Stanford classrooms, but these students took me out of the books and taught me with the ironic and tragic juxtapositions of lovely silver sugar bowls and charming portraits of young English sugar heirs, next to lithographs of African human beings hanging from trees and being sold at auction.

OK, not a charming afternoon with the Impressionists.  As I left I grumbled about political correctness invading the hallowed halls of art museums.  But I haven’t been able to get that exhibit out of my head.  I’ve had to remind myself that art’s job is to challenge as well as console. 

So I will remain thankful for the rich collectors, for building and rebuilding, for strong walls and art to hang on those walls.  And I will thank this bolder administration for opening up the walls to new kinds of exhibits and curators.  I can still spend an afternoon in front of the Georgia O’Keefe or the Edward Hopper (if not the black figure vase.)  I can also ruminate on art and money and colonialism.  A good university helps us tear down as well as build up.  So does art.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

Spirit of Place

Your architecture critic reflects on saintly buildings.

I'm reading a book about St. Francis that my friend Keith gave me. 

It’s a guide to the various buildings in and around Assisi and Rome where Francis, and Clare, his follower and then colleague, were born, wandered in the countryside, worshipped, had visions, rejected their rich controlling parents, touched lepers, went on pilgrimage, rebuilt churches, attracted thousands of followers, settled into community, met the pope, preached to animals, retreated into caves, and finally, where each of them died and were buried. 

My friend Keith is a Franciscan friar, a member of the order Francis started 800 years ago.  Unlike Clare and Francis, Keith was not born rich and noble.  But like them, he did reject the norms of his upbringing, in his case suburban Protestantism, and became like them a free spirit.  His spiritual rebellion was to become a 70’s Jesus Freak, living with others like him in a commune in rural Oregon, devoting themselves to planting trees for Jesus.

Someone told Keith that his love of Jesus and of nature reminded them of St. Francis's.  That intrigued him.  Also the wet Oregon forests were starting to get to him.  So Keith came back to civilization, did the long process of becoming a Franciscan, got a Ph.D. in sustainable agriculture from UC Santa Cruz and now teaches spirituality and sustainability at Santa Clara University.  Interesting guy.

A few years ago Keith and I were leading a retreat together where he lives at the St. Francis Retreat Center and we were in their bookstore looking at hundreds of books about Francis.  “What’s one book I could read about Francis that would give me a good flavor of the man and his ministry, his world view, his call?”  Keith and I are both sort of academic types, we like history and theology.  I expected a straight biography with lots of footnotes.  So I was surprised when he recommended this book, In the Footsteps of Francis and Clare, by another friar who has lead retreats to Assisi and Rome for 25 years. 

The book is a pilgrimage guide, 20 or so short chapters, not really chronological, or with a thesis to propound, but more meditative, especially about “spirit of place,” how not just people but places can inspire and change us. It encourages the pilgrim reader to learn about Francis and Clare by visiting a range of sacred sites associated with them, houses and churches and piazzas and walls and caves and roads and mountains.  There’s travel advice but also pastoral reflections about what the visitor pilgrim can learn of their own life and faith by visiting these sites.

Our Lady of the Angels of Assisi ChapelIt’s ironic, of course, that a man who preached the spiritual value of poverty, and tried to convince the Pope that members of his order should not own property or have possessions (he lost that fight), is honored in his home town with rich churches and commercial tours.  The man and his places draw millions annually.  I am confident most of them are pilgrims more than tourists.  Let's hope they go home more willing to identify with the poor and ready to shed some possession.  I can only hope it’s like Luther’s comment about the Bible, when he said scripture is like the baby in the manger, there’s lots of straw there, but keep looking – the holy one can be found in its midst.  There's lots of glitz and postcards in Assisi, but Francis and Clare still attract followers and still change lives.

As an armchair pilgrim I am finding myself intrigued by one particular building in Assisi, a huge Baroque sanctuary, St. Mary of the Angels.  Ordered built by the Pope three centuries after Francis’ death, because of the huge crowds of pilgrims, the ornate church holds within it two smaller, tiny really, buildings where Francis did spend much time, the Porziuncola, a small chapel, where Francis first heard God's call and where Clare took her vows, and the Capella del Transito, the shack that was his community's infirmary, where Francis died in 1226, age 44.  These two buildings, originally hovels, are now cleaned up and frescoed and sheltered by this massive church.

Capella del TransitoMore irony about Francis and buildings.  His first sense of call came when he was sitting in the then crumbling Porziuncola and heard God say, “Francis, repair my church.”  With his own hands he literally repaired the already ancient chapel.  But he later realized God had called him to broader repair, of souls, and the wider church.  He did that too, and still does, if the first Pope to take his name, Pope Francis, is any indication.  The man who preached about Sister Water inspired a pope who sees the whole planet as sacred home, not just designated religious buildings.

And there’s irony too in how the tiny first aid shack is now so much fancier than he ever saw it.  Francis really didn’t want to spend his last hours in there anyway; he insisted as he died that he be stripped naked and laid outside on the bare dirt to connect most directly with Mother Earth during his “transito.” There was his death house, outdoors.

In both cases the man free of possessions really did free himself of these buildings, or move beyond them.  He could not be “housed,” “domesticated.”  But we still try.

I think Keith gave me this book because he knew that his own call to follow Francis was not an academic one, but a change of heart, a calling experienced not a set of ideas studied.  And he probably heard my question as a seeker’s, not a scholar’s. 

Thanks, Keith.

Copyright © Deborah Streeter

Shopping for Building Materials

Some random thoughts and stories about shopping for lumber.

Buying lumber is not that different from buying music. 

You can shop at the big anonymous self-service store with lots of choice (Home Depot/ITunes).   Or you can go to the locally-owned more personal store (Hayward Lumber, Do Re Mi Music.)

I buy lumber both ways.  Also music. 

When we need 2x4s or sheets of plywood or treated 4x4s for posts in the ground, I go to either Home Depot in Seaside or Hayward Lumber in Pacific Grove.  It depends on what I need and how I want to get it. 

At Home Depot it can be a little cheaper, but it’s a giant store among other giants stores, and the quality varies from day to day. I park in the giant lot, and find a big cart to load the lumber on, navigate it to the right aisles, pick out the boards myself from the big stacks, eyeball each 2x4 to make sure it’s straight and not too murchy, load them on the cart, each board with its own bar code stapled on the end, navigate the big aisles with the heavy cart, wait in line with lots of contractors, load it in my car myself, return the cart. 

Or I go to Hayward Lumber, old time locally owned yard in a neighborhood right next to Asilomar Beach, maybe stop at the beach on my way home.  A little pricier, but better quality stuff.  I park right in front, go into the office and place my order and pay first.  Then I drive with the purchase order into the yard where the yard guys are mostly loading up huge orders for contractors, hundreds of 2x4s.  You can’t pick out your own boards, so I try to talk the yard guys into picking out good boards for me. I casually refer to what we are building (this is going to be for a new deck in Palo – oh you live in Palo, do you know….)  Or I try to act cool and knowledgeable and drop a few insider terms (“We’re using these for joists for our new addition”) so they will be impressed that a woman knows this stuff.  They usually do pick out nice boards for me, probably out of pity.  Then they load it in the car, no one can load their own car (insurance?).   I keep the slip to show it to the old guy who sits at the exit to prove I paid.

When I leave Home Depot I’m a little wiped out, like I have survived an ordeal.  I drive away from Hayward Lumber a little hopeful and inspired and proud of myself.  And with a little less money.  It’s a trade off. 

This is not too different from buying a CD.  I can peruse the endless selections on line, and have it arrive right now, or tomorrow in the mail.  Or I can go by Do Re Mi Music in Carmel, owned by two aging hippies who also sell guitars and DVDs of obscure musicals movies and are a font of music and movie trivia.  And perhaps a dying breed.  Another reason I like to support them. 

Lots of my neighbors order everything from Amazon.  I know because we all share a community locked package box at the mailboxes on the paved road, and I see their giant boxes in there. Living on the remote Big Sur coast complicates delivery of products and services.  Nothing can be dropped at our doorstep.  From the mail boxes and community box we all drive home on bad dirt roads.  We have mediocre internet.  Package delivery and streaming are a little iffy.  Another reason to patronize the locals.

But I don’t think Amazon sells lumber.  I’ve never seen boards in or beside the community box and there are lots of builders in my canyon.  Only a matter of time, I expect.

A few years ago when we replaced our roof I put so many charges for plywood and 2x4s and insulation on my credit card that some builder’s magazine solicited my subscription with a flattering come-on about how such a great builder like myself would enjoy learning from other master builders. 

I was so amused at the idea of me as a great builder that I ordered the magazine at the intro rate for a year.  But it was sort of like soft porn – beautiful pictures of something I could never get that left me feeling a little inadequate.  I let it expire. 

We recently rebuilt an old woodshed into a workshop and we vowed to use only materials we had around, buy nothing new.  No trips to Home Depot or Hayward Lumber.  Which was hard.  We realized, sort of like the (also fading) pleasure of going to bookstores, the shopping itself is pleasurable, especially talking with the workers.  We missed that.

But we did have fun building just with scraps and creativity. Admittedly it was nothing that would appear in the master builder magazine.  Which was fine with us. 

There’s a time for buying and a time for building.  And you actually can do one without the other.  Both are fun, but require different skills.  If I had to choose one, I’d go for building. 

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter

Things That Go Bump in the Night

"From ghoulies and ghosties/And long-legged beaties/And things that go bump in the night,!/Good Lord, deliver us!" Old Scottish prayer.

Houses make noise.  The most common and annoying noises, according to website “This Old House,” (from the popular show of the same name) are: gurgling radiators, rattling pipes, noisy hinges, squeaky stairs, and noisy furnaces.  All problems easily solved, if you follow their handy advice. 

Noises during the night can be especially troubling.  Even if we know it’s just the gurgling radiator or the rattling pipes, it sounds extra scary in the dark.  “Noise,” by definition, unlike “sound,” is annoying; the dictionary defines noise as “a sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant or that causes disturbance.”  Synonyms are din, hubbub, clamor, racket, uproar, tumult, commotion, and pandemonium.  Even the derivation of noise is unpleasant – it’s related to “nausea.”

But I like house noises, even nighttime house noises.  And I live in a hand built house in the woods, so there are lots of noises and it’s really dark when they wake me up.  But I am rarely scared by them. 

Well, the time the giant redwood fell near the house in the middle of the night in a huge rainstorm, that sound was scary.  (I was there and awake, so I still don’t know the answer to the question, if I had been away from the house, would it have made any noise?)  But the tree falling wasn’t a house noise.  That was a nature noise.  I could hear it creaking and groaning in the wind, but I didn’t know which tree it was, how far from the house, how tall.  My husband was awake too.  Not to wake the kids I whispered, “What do we do if the tree falls on the house?”  He calmly explained that he built the house on a rise between two swales, big gullies, and that the redwoods grew down in the swales, because there more water and shelter there, and so they were too far from the house to be dangerous.  And, he said, when trees fall they fall slowly, so we will have warning.  I lay there a little relieved, and I remember actually sort of congratulating myself on dealing with my fear by getting a little more information. Then I heard the noise, the slow eerie creaking of the tree starting to fall. It was terrifying. And it actually was very slow, as Ron had said.  It fell with a huge crash.  But the house was untouched, because the tree was down in the swale.  The next day we went out and saw the giant lying as it had fallen, far from the house, straight up the hill, quiet again.)

Maybe it’s precisely because I hear so many noises in the woods that the house noises don’t scare me.  Just a lot of creaking in the not perfectly square corners, and scratching behind the walls (mice, bats), and odd gurgling in the walls from somewhat amateurish plumbing.  Things are always fine in the morning.

I was reminded of house noises when I read this passage from Sebastian Faulk’s novel, The Girl at the Lion D’Or this week:

In the night Christine could hear the house's creaks and groans: the wooden stairs would ease themselves out against the flanking wall with a mellow timber sigh, or snap with splintery temper in the contractions of the cold.  There was often a remote, irregular banging from the door to the scullery in the south tower which the maid, Marie, after washing the dinner dishes, unfailingly forgot to close before going to bed.  The shutters in the attic could occasionally be heard grating slowly on their thick rusted hinges, and down the long corridors of the first floor the worn planks rumbled and squeaked in a capricious but not discomforting way.  At times like these Christine imagined the whole body of the house and all its contents to be shifting in its sleep, the immobile outer walls and towers not quite able to hold in equal stillness all the disparate inner parts.  It was hardly surprising, when one considered the different portions of the earth and living world that had been plundered to fill the place: unrelated oxides fused to make glass and flattened into windows framed by felled and sliced trees; marble quarried and carved into decorative mantelpieces on which sat lamps compounded of different unwilling metals; powdery plaster fixed by water in a brittle firmness unnatural to both.  It was only to be expected that a little restlessness be shown at night - an aching of elemental parts which stretched to find their former selves.  In this way, Christine thought, the house was like a human brain stilled by a temporary sleep which allowed the brash constituents of its personality the indulgence of a brief and limited self-expression, like a dream.

Faithful readers may remember a column I wrote last year about novels that feature a building as a major character, as important as the people: Rebecca (Manderley,) Notre Dame (the Cathedral,) Bleak House. 

In Faulks’ story it’s an old French manor house in a coastal town.  Its decaying neglect personifies the relationship of Christine and her husband, also shaky.  Besides the routine noises Christine describes in the passage above, she also hears something that sounds like a gunshot.   Later, (spoiler alert!) part of the house collapses, with a big explosive sound.  As does their relationship.  More symbolism; the conflicted husband, trying to restore not just the house but his stature beside his father who built the house, hires a cheap contractor to enlarge his father’s old wine cellar.  Digging around in the dark undermines the foundations.  Not too subtle imagery, but effective.

And particularly effective, and familiar, to me, are the great verbs and nouns Faulks uses in the passage to describe the house noises:

-Rattling, gurgling, squeaking, sighing, grating, banging, rumbling, creaking, groaning.

-Restiveness, aching, sighing, self-expression, stretching.

If (as I firmly believe) our houses are not simply inanimate structures, but organic creations, more like bodies than just lifeless materials, then of course they will make noise.  We all make noise.  And most of our body noises aren’t a racket or a commotion.  We are just gurgling and squeaking. 

Both I and my house experience a fair amount of restiveness and aching, which we express noisily. 

Nighttime noises are often blamed on ghosts.  And on things that go bump in the night.  From which some pray for deliverance.  I just roll over and tell the house (and myself) it’s going to be ok.  And go back to sleep.

Copyright © 2016 Deborah Streeter