The Department's Dream: The Powerhouse
Visitors to the campus might have passed by a small, neglected red-brick building by Strawberry Creek just uphill from Sather Gate. Designated to the Department of Music, this building holds the potential for an acoustically and aesthetically exquisite intimate space for instruction and concerts for our performance program.
This beautiful brick Romanesque structure was one of the earliest Berkeley projects of famed architect John Galen Howard, who designed it in 1904 to be the campus's first powerhouse. Elegant on the outside, gracious on the inside with superb, natural acoustics, and topped by a wonderful skylight, the little building was occupied only by steam generators. When the demand for power grew by the end of the 1920s a new power plant was erected, but the building remained. It would serve the campus as an Art Gallery from 1934 to 1970 when the Berkeley Art Museum was opened. In 1936-37 mosaic-tile murals designed by Florence Swift and Helen Bruton, depicting the fine arts, had been mounted in the exterior west wall, as part of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress. Usable only for storage due to its seismic weakness, the Powerhouse/Old Art Gallery stands waiting for renovation, holding its place on the State Historic Resources Inventory.
Why
does the Department of Music need this building? We have a superb concert
space (Hertz Hall) that does triple duty as lecture classroom and rehearsal
space for large ensembles - the University Chorus, the University Orchestra,
the Wind Ensemble, the African Music Ensemble and for concerts by the
Central Javanese Gamelan. We have a superb new Jean Gray Hargrove Music
Library building. But where does the rest of our performance instruction
take place? In practice rooms, in classrooms designed for lectures,
in hallways - anywhere that will accommodate relatively smaller musical
groups. On the Department's wish list, the Powerhouse/Old Art Gallery
will provide the only rehearsal space and intimate performance space
for recitals and for chamber musics of all sorts (including those of
non-Western musical traditions), and for multi-media contemporary installations.
In addition to rescuing this historic architectural gem from further deterioration, the renovation of the Powerhouse performance space will greatly enhance the musical life of the Department, of the campus and the Berkeley community.