Berkeley, a Look Back: Christmas events, shopping well underway in 1925

"A "mammoth public holiday celebration" was planned for the Greek Theatre on Dec. 20, 1925. Firemen at Berkeley's Durant Avenue station had built a sleigh for Santa to arrive in, and a fire captain had taken a "special municipal truck" to an area near Cloverdale to cut down a 40-foot tree for the event. "Another (tree) of the same type will be illuminated with incandescent globes in front of the City Hall," the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported."

"The Greek Theatre event included community singing and hundreds of local school children in costumes performing a Christmas pageant. Santa Claus would also "personally greet" any Berkeley children who came to the event after he arrived in a parade up Telegraph Avenue. Santa's sleigh was supposedly pulled by reindeer in the procession, but I'm not certain from the news articles if they were actual reindeer or some other more commonplace ruminant, perhaps with faux antlers added."

"New building: On Dec. 19, 1925, the new Mercantile Trust bank opened at the northeast corner of College and Ashby avenues (today it's a Wells Fargo Bank branch). "Striking in its combination of the utility and the aesthetic, the spacious banking room evoked many expressions of admiration from the visitors (during an open house)," the Gazette reported. "Modified Spanish might be taken as the term best fitted to describe the building.""

Berkeley prepared major public Christmas festivities in December 1925, centering on a mammoth holiday celebration at the Greek Theatre on Dec. 20. Firefighters built a sleigh for Santa and cut a 40-foot tree near Cloverdale, while another tree was to be illuminated in front of City Hall. The Greek Theatre program featured community singing, hundreds of costumed schoolchildren performing a pageant, and a Santa parade up Telegraph Avenue. On Dec. 19 the Mercantile Trust bank opened at College and Ashby with a modified Spanish design, a spacious banking room, stuffed animal heads on the walls, and solid red Missouri granite pillars.

Read at The Mercury News