FoundSF

"I was there..."

by Lee Felsenstein

Jungle gym dating from the late 1960s when neighbors originally established the park.

Photo: Mercury Wood Rose, via wikimedia commons

Another outcome of the People’s Park affair was important for me. A group of architects and architectural students formed to create an ad-hoc group they named “People’s Architecture,” for developing a plan for a new, ecologically-sound community of Berkeley. Published as a centerfold in the December 5, 1969 issue of the Berkeley Tribe, it was visionary and incomplete, but it provided some important ideas.

One idea that struck me was the concept of “life houses”—houses whose inhabitants would designate a front room as an information and organization center for the local neighborhood. I saw the concept as nodes on a network, with information shared among them. Each node would have bulletin boards, copiers or duplicators, meeting space and whatever other amenities might foster gathering (coffee and tea would help). Exactly how information was to be shared I did not know—I thought that telephone might be the best technology. The idea remained part of my armamentarium and soon proved important.

The Berkeley Architecture plan was based on land that had been cleared for the right of way for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District subway—the tunnels were already beneath it. This land became known as “People’s Park Annex” during the clashes, and local residents took up the cause, planting and maintaining an ad hoc park. I moved a block away in 1974 and served on the committee that secured park status for the land. On Earth Day in 1970 I planted a sapling on that land which is now a large conifer.

People's Park Annex, June 9, 1969.

Photo: Berkeley Gazette

Additional civic action later extended the green space to the “Berkeley Greenway,” including land under the BART tracks after they emerged as an elevated railway at the Berkeley border. It survived as a community-run park for several years.

Some local residents took on the task of organizing the necessary maintenance—as a member of the park organizing committee I laid out plans for a baseball diamond on a drawing. The plans were implemented when the City took over in 1977 and it became "Ohlone Park." The diamond has been well used.

The Radical Beginnings of Ohlone Park

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Excerpted with permission from:

Me and My Big Ideas: Counterculture, Social Media, and the Future

by Lee Felsenstein

published by FelsenSigns