UC Berkeley to raze historic Anna Head School buildings for student housing

The inner courtyard of the former Anna Head School, pictured in 2021, with roofs covered with white tarp for rain protection. Study Hall is on the left, and Channing Hall on the right. Both buildings, along with The Gables, badly damaged in a 2022 fire, are slated for demolition. File photo: Kate Darby Rauch

Time is up for a weathered cluster of brown-shingle historic buildings in Berkeley’s Southside neighborhood, once home of the Anna Head School for Girls, established in 1892, 14 years after the city was established.

UC Berkeley recently confirmed plans to raze the three remaining original Anna Head buildings at Bowditch Street near People’s Park to make way for student housing, saying it’s too costly to save them. Three others, renovated by UC Berkeley around a dozen years ago, won’t be affected.

The university, which intends to house at least 1,000 students at the site, acquired the former private school campus in the 1950s by eminent domain.

The decision is especially heartbreaking to a steadfast group working for years to preserve the buildings as integral to the Anna Head campus. 

“It was crushing to hear they’re going to tear the buildings down,” said Paul Chapman, a historian and founder of Saving Anna Head School. For 25 years, Chapman led Head Royce School, which merged with Anna Head in 1979 at an Oakland campus.

“I’m very disappointed with the UC decision,” Chapman said. His group, which included architects and builders, people with close ties to Anna Head and UC Berkeley, spent five years strategizing ways to save the historic buildings alongside new student housing, meeting periodically with key university staff. 

“We were plain from the start; we were also pragmatic from the start. We’re strong supporters of UC’s desire to add student housing,” Chapman said.

The entire school complex, built in Victorian-era Queen Anne style architecture, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and a city of Berkeley historic landmark. UC Berkeley land is exempt from the city landmarking commission’s requirements. And being listed on the National Register is honorary and doesn’t protect sites or govern their use.

Study Hall, 1917-20. Channing Hall, 1892. The Gables, 1895-1923.Archival photos of the three buildings UC Berkeley plans to knock down. Credit Head-Royce School

While the group’s dream was to preserve all the Anna Head buildings, they ultimately focused their recent efforts on saving just Channing Hall, constructed in 1892 as a student living space and classrooms. 

It’s believed to be Berkeley’s first brown-shingle building, an enduring style in the city for decades. “Channing is architecturally an extremely significant building,” Chapman said. 

Prioritizing Chapman was influenced in part by the Gables building being hard hit by a 2022 fire, making restoration even more expensive. 

A 2022 fire caused extensive damage to The Gables, at the time used as UC Berkeley office space. Credit: Citizen reporter

But in the end, the university determined the costs of renovating or relocating Anna Head buildings are “prohibitive,” Cal spokesperson Dan Mogulof said. 

The estimated price tag for renovating Channing Hall alone would be at least $30 million, he said.

“These are costs that cannot be absorbed into the student housing project planned for part of the site, and these are buildings that even in the event they were renovated, the university does not need and would not use,” Mogulof said. 

Over the past couple of years, the university hired two architectural consultants to study options for combining new housing with historical preservation, Hanbury Design, which looked at all three buildings, and KeiranTimberlake, which focused just on Channing Hall, Mogulof said, paying “less than” $100,000 each. 

“The outcome was the same,” he said. Too expensive. Saving Channing alone was an “insurmountable obstacle,” he said.

At one point moving Channing to the Head Royce campus in Oakland was discussed, Mogulof said. (Chapman said the preservation group found this unfeasible on many levels, including the cost.)

But the main reason for Cal’s decision, Mogulof said, was the “urgent need for additional student housing.” 

To accommodate growing Cal student enrollment and help address housing shortages that have led to sky-high rents, UC Berkeley set a target in 2017 of adding 9,000 new student beds, a doubling of what then existed. Since then, it’s completed projects with more than 2,400 beds, according to the university’s housing website. And it has several large projects in the pipeline, including 1,113 beds planned for the People’s Park project, across Haste Street from the Anna Head campus. 

Planning for the Anna Head site is just beginning, Mogulof said. The required environmental impact review (EIR) for demolition has started, he said.

“We will begin the process of selecting an architectural firm to design the new student housing in the coming months. Part of this next work will be preparing financial and development pro formas, which will inform the population, bed count, and amenities (such as a dining commons) of the new housing.”

Anna Head’s history dates back to 1890s

The Miss Head’s School for Girls swimming pool. Founder Anna Head believed in the value of physical exercise as part of a school curriculum. Credit: Head-Royce School

Opened in 1892,  “Miss Head’s School for Girls,” was the vision of the young educator Anna Head, one of UC Berkeley’s first woman graduates.

The private school grew through the years in buildings and students. In 1909 it had around 150 students, including 30 who lived at the school.

When the campus was taken over by UC Berkeley in 1955, Anna Head School moved to Oakland about 10 years later, eventually merging with the Royce School for Boys to become today’s co-ed Head-Royce.

The school originally had six buildings constructed over a 35-year period, from 1892 to 1927. 

The three restored by UC Berkeley in early 2000s included a cottage, home to school principals, and adjoining indoor swimming pool, now serving as a UC student counseling and wellness center, and the original Alumnae Hall, now a meeting hall.

The restored pool-gymnasium and cottage at Anna Head School. Credit: Stephen Schafer 

In addition to Channing Hall, Anna Head’s remaining buildings, all slated for demolition, include the Gables, built between 1895 and 1923; and the Study Hall, built between 1917 and 1920. 

UC Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Societal Issues was housed at the site until the 2022 fire. 

Rough times for aging buildings 

Fires, vandalism, leaks, and even protest occupations, have plagued Anna Head buildings for decades. 

Chapman and other Anna Head fans blame UC for not taking better care of historical landmarks they own. 

If the buildings had been better maintained or protected by fencing or tarping, it may not be as expensive to restore them today, he said. “We know the cost is now significant. Especially due to neglect,” Chapman said. 

“This didn’t just happen,” Chapman said. “It’s because the university stopped fulfilling its obligation to protect the buildings. We asked that the building be tarped; they delayed. We asked that it be fenced, they delayed. I think it’s important that people understand that the university made decisions not to protect — that contributed to the large price tag,” he said.

“From our vantage point, the delay has been unnecessary and unfortunate.”

Cal didn’t reply to Berkeleyside’s questions about this accusation as of publication time.

Word of UC Berkeley’s plan is getting out

“We have sad and infuriating news about the Anna Head School,” started a recent email to members from Anthony Bruce, director of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). 

The email urges people to send UC letters protesting the plan.

In an editorial in the Daily Cal last week, Vincent Luo, a UC Berkeley architecture student and member of the university’s historical preservation club took aim at the destruction of historical buildings to make way for new. Anna Head was one of his examples.

“I appreciate that UC Berkeley is investing large sums from its endowment in these new buildings. But I’m also struck by how, just a few blocks away, there are some older buildings that look like they’ve been deteriorating for a long time,” Luo wrote. “I wonder why the school hasn’t restored some of the older buildings — ones that have historically defined and shaped UC Berkeley’s cultural and intellectual development.”

Cal’s Mogulof said the university will try to honor the site’s history in whatever it builds. 

“We do believe there may be ways to incorporate an homage to Channing Hall in the new building, just as we did with the landmarked gas station [on Oxford Street] in the recently opened Anchor House student housing project,” he said.

Mogulof was referring to a city-landmarked 1930s brick gas station on Oxford Street that was demolished in 2022 to make way for Anchor House.

A replication of the gas station’s arched facade was built in Anchor House’s courtyard using original bricks, he said. 

“There are also historical plaques on the corner where the garage used to be, and inside the courtyard, to inform the public about the former garage and the purpose of the rebuilt facade in the new courtyard of Anchor House.”

One of UC Berkeley’s first women graduates

Born in 1857, Anna Head was a graduate of Oakland High School and UC Berkeley’s class of 1879. She also studied music in Boston and traveled Europe extensively.

Head founded the girl’s school when she was 30. Considered an educational progressive in her time, she sculpted an eclectic curriculum that included English, math, foreign language and history, as well as health and the natural sciences.

“Anna Head’s approach to teaching and building was anything but ordinary. One particularly remarkable aspect of her curriculum was its connection to nature. The campus was built in a rural, sprawling environment to offer students everyday interactions with countryside flora and fauna — unusual for an era when girls most often learned domestic skills and scripture in school,” wrote Laken Brooks in the Natural Trust for Historic Preservation.

Anna Head’s buildings, which blended Queen Anne style with early Arts and Crafts, were “built completely from wood, which creates a sense that the building was carved from a tree or belongs in nature,” Brooks wrote. 

The buildings were designed by architects Soule Edgar Fisher, Anna Head’s cousin, and Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr., Berkeley’s first and only city architect. Ratcliff, Jr. also designed the demolished Oxford Street gas station.

His grandson, Kit Ratcliff, also an architect, is among those working on Anna Head preservation.

Chapman says he’s discouraged but hasn’t completely given up hope. “If the university calls me tomorrow I’d say ‘We’re on.’”