Leader: Aaron Goldstein
Start: Southwest corner of Sixth St and Harrison St in Berkeley (near the northern terminus of the 18 bus line and about 1.5 miles from the North Berkeley BART station)
End: Corner of Hopkins St. and Kains Ave in Berkeley - Aaron can lead the group back to the start point after the tour
Distance: about 3 miles
Cost: Free! Tips always appreciated, though always optional.
Accessibility: The walk covers mostly level terrain, but there are several areas of narrow and/or uneven pavement. The tour involves periods standing for 10-20 minutes at each of the five sites. Because the surviving tanks are quite spread out, there are some long stretches of walking at the beginning of the tour. Well-behaved dogs on leash are welcome. Bring a sturdy pair of shoes, a cool hat, and plenty of water.
About this tour:
This walk traces the history of a once-ubiquitous but now largely forgotten piece of the circa-1900 East Bay urban landscape — the tank house. From the 1860s through the 1920s, windmill-topped water towers stood on nearly every city block, pulling up water from wells into elevated redwood tanks, providing pressurized water for domestic use. During their heyday, there were many thousands of these tank houses in the urbanizing East Bay. Only a handful remain of the hundreds of tank houses that once existed in Berkeley. We'll visit five surviving examples in Northwest Berkeley and learn about how people got their water in the pre-EBMUD East Bay.
Come if you are interested in architectural history, vernacular architecture, urban archaeology, construction, ecology, geology, Berkeley and East Bay history, social history — or if you just like walking!
About Aaron:
Aaron Goldstein, a Berkeley architect and architectural historian and San Francisco native, has been tirelessly tracking down and documenting the East Bay's urban tank houses since 2020. He hosts regular walking tours on multiple routes and believes that increasing public appreciation of these neglected structures will improve their chance of being preserved.