Founder’s Rock sits in an isolated spot in the far northeastern corner of the main campus, surrounded but not shaded by native trees. It is a surprisingly comfortable seat and would be an excellent place to read, write or think if not for the proximity of the intersection of Hearst and Gayley. On its flat northern face is a plaque which reads

Founder’s Rock
April 16, 1860
Inscribed May 9, 1896.

UC Berkeley, California’s first university, is the great flagship of the mighty University of California. The rest of the fleet includes UCSF (1873), UCLA (1919), Davis (1922), UCSB (1944), Riverside (1954), UCSD (1964), Irvine (1965), and UCSC (1965). It started out as a humble teacher’s college, the Contra Costa Academy. In 1855 it changed its name to the College of California and moved to Oakland, the block bounded by 12th Street, 14th Street, Franklin and Harrison, now a city parking lot. The college had chosen a new site, 160 acres north of Oakland, and obtained the required land by 1864, but didn’t have the funds to build a new campus until it combined with the “Agricultural, Mining and Mechanic Arts College” the State Congress authorized in 1866 under the Morill Act. The resulting University of California opened in 1869 but remained at its Oakland site until the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the year of its first graduating class, known as the Twelve Apostles.

Both the new University and the town incorporated nine years later were named after George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, who had visited Rhode Island in 1729 to found a university in Bermuda for colonials and Native Americans. In An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), Berkeley postulated that matter does not exist, an idea Samuel Johnson refuted by kicking a rock. Berkeley’s most famous epigram, “esse est percipi,” “to be is to be perceived,” could be engraved over any of several of Berkeley’s coffee houses. His name was probably chosen, however, for the last verse of “on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America”:

Westward the course of Empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day:
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

which college trustee Frederick Billings apparently thought very moving and apposite.

Our alumni include Ed Meese, Earl Warren, Robert Macnamara, Jerry Brown, Gregory Peck, George Takei, Melvin Belli (who also appeared in Star Trek), Timothy Leary, Rube Goldberg, Steve Wozniak, and Steven Jobs, as well as former presidents of Mexico, Ecuador, and Columbia. Some of our more famous dropouts include William R. Hearst, Jr., Stephen D. Bechtel, Pauline Kael, Jack London and Art Agnos. Olivia de Havilland and Mickey Rooney began their careers here in Max Reinhart’s 1934 production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Faculty Glade. Berkeley’s denizens have also included, according to Cal enthusiast Tom Collins, “an Amazon Rain God and the head of Mongolian Buddhism, as well as the guy who invented fruit cocktail.”

Berkeley has entertained five American presidents — Howard Taft (who spoke in Faculty Glade before setting off for the Phillipines), Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy, who drew his largest live audience ever at the Greek Theater. Jawarlal Nehru, U Thant, and Prince Philip, among others, have visited the campus, and I heard Mary Robinson, the President of Ireland, speak at Zellerbach in 1991. Sarah Bernhardt performed Phaedra at the Greek Theater in 1906, when her theater in San Francisco was destroyed by the earthquake; Pablo Casals taught a graduate seminar here in 1960. A long list of scientific notables have also lectured and taught here; I heard Stephen Hawking lecture while he was attending a conference here in 1992.

During the first commencement exercises in 1873, North and South Halls were still under construction; the sound of hammers punctuated University President Daniel Coit Gilman’s speech. That sound has been heard on campus ever since; people today say that “UC” stands for “under construction.” Walking to Founder’s Rock this morning I had to circle around the center of campus, where the front steps of Doe Library, a meadow and several temporary wooden buildings left over from World War II had been replaced by dirt and construction equipment. Nowhere, not even the Eucalyptus Grove, is quiet — the sound of backup alarms penetrates everywhere.

I received my B.A. here in 1985, and my M.S. in 1987, and already so much has changed. I can’t keep track of the new buildings, and I’m sure I don’t notice all we’ve lost (like Humphrey GoBART or the Onyx Room). In one sense this book was dated before it was begun — in another there maybe no time like now to record the existing campus before too much more disappears.