california history - California Historical Society

People’s Park:Birth and SurvivalBy Jon David CashPeople’s Park marked the beginning of something new. For alienated youngpeople, it demonstrated that they could act creatively and together to buildan environment uniquely theirs where they could celebrate the rituals of anew culture. Although they lost the park, most felt that it was only a battlein a war that they would win someday.—Sim Van der Ryn, University of California, 1970 1Prologue: The University,the Community, and Lot 1875-2The University of California’s interest in thelot now famed as People’s Park dates backto 1952, when the Board of Regents deviseda long-range development plan designatingmuch of the south campus area of Berkeleyfor potential university growth. A 1956 revisionof the plan assured that it would be conducted insuch a way as to provide “a well-rounded life forstudents.” According to a 2007 study, universityadministrators embraced a policy of acquiring“large lots of land outside the campus” to develop“high-rise, modernist residential halls, administrativebuildings, and specialized sports fields.” 2Even in the relatively apolitical 1950s, it wasapparent that this area was closely intertwinedwith a developing youth culture. Berkeley’sTelegraph Avenue, consisting primarily of olderhouses often rented as low-income residences bystudents and the bookstores and coffeehousesthey frequented, was of particular significance.Running through the city’s business district andterminating at the campus gates, it had acquiredan anti-authoritarian reputation. As the journalistRobert Scheer noted: “Telegraph Avenue came torival San Francisco’s North Beach as the vital centerof the Beat Generation, with Allen Ginsbergand Gregory Corso denouncing the sterile socialorder and calling for liberation from their forumat Robbie’s Chinese-American restaurant.” 3In 1967, when the mass media coined the term“hippie” and publicized a “summer of love” inthe countercultural haven of San Francisco’sHaight-Ashbury district, thousands of teenagerunaways flooded into the Haight, causing massiveovercrowding. Older nonconformist residentsreacted with a mass exodus, gravitating tothe Telegraph Avenue area, whose environmentrecalled an earlier Haight-Ashbury. There theymingled with anti–Vietnam War activists. Alongthe local shops and stores, hippies and radicalsshared their mutual disdain for a war thatinvolved over a half million servicemen and costover 50,000 American lives. This informal alli-California History • volume 88 number 1 2010