The Neighborhood

The Neighborhood

Over the last century, Haviland Hall has enjoyed a good deal of seclusion from the hubbub of the main campus. Immediately to the west is the north fork of Strawberry Creek, lined with redwood trees, and beyond that, the chancellor’s house and the triad of agricultural buildings: Giannini, Wellman, and Hilgard halls. The tranquil grounds do not seem to lend themselves to further development.

To the east, the only significant change has been the construction of the Tien Center for Asian Studies, completed in 2007. The building was named for Chang-Lin Tien, a much-loved chancellor of the campus who served from 1990 to 1997.

One hundred years ago, another building occupied the site where the Tien Center now stands. In 1890, the University of California Botanical Garden was established at about the location of Moffitt Library, extending in a glade up past the entrance of Doe Library. It featured native trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants of California and the Pacific Coast, and soon grew to 600 species.

The heart of the garden was a glass and steel conservatory. Built in 1894 by the firm Lord and Burnham, which also built the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, it was modeled after the London Crystal Palace. Its collection included palm trees, and the wings held a cellar, potting shed, and a boiler room.

With the construction of Haviland Hall in 1924, the botanical garden was relocated and the conservatory torn down. The site of the conservatory eventually became a parking lot. In 2005, in anticipation of the construction of the Tien Center, anthropology students excavated the site. They discovered thermometer fragments, flower pots of various sizes, plant tags, glass droppers, a watch-chain loop, a number of marbles, an antique brass button featuring a bas-relief of Minerva from the Great Seal of California, and a 116-year-old dime, minted just 18 years after the campus opened its doors.

Crowning the hill behind the conservatory was a cluster of buildings of the Students’ Observatory. Built in 1885, it housed a variety of astronomical instruments, including a twenty-inch telescope. In 1887, it also became home to the first seismographic equipment deployed by the University of California, considered the very best available at the time. The instruments were initially installed to help the astronomers readjust their instruments in the event of an earthquake, but soon became tools for research in their own right.

The observatory was renamed the Leuschner Observatory in 1951, in honor of Armin Leuschner, director from 1898 to 1938. In 1965, the observatory was relocated to Lafayette, just east of the Briones Reservoir. All that remains of it now are a plaque and a few traces of concrete.

The name of the hill on which it stood was, of course, Observatory Hill, the name it retains to this day.

Written by Craig Alderson