People's Park on National Register of Historic Places
The designation comes more than 50 years after the site became famous for protest gatherings
More than half a century after it burst into the national scene as a hotbed of social dissent punctuated by sometimes violent Vietnam War protests, People's Park has landed on the National Register of Historic Places.
But while the UC Berkeley-owned park is now deemed a historic resource worth preserving, the university isn't changing its $312 million plan to build housing on the hallowed grounds for 1,100 university students and 125 homeless residents.
That's even though the UC Regents triggered People Park's first uprising when they acquired the 2.8-acre site just east of University Avenue in 1967 with plans to build student housing.
People's Park joined the National Register on May 24, seven months after the California State Historical Resources Commission unanimously supported that designation. One commissioner was “stunned” that the UC Regents were the only ones to oppose the honor.
In April 2021, UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor Marc Fisher wrote to the commission that while the university will commemorate the park's history in its development plan, fact is a few trees are the only “physical remnants … dating to the posited period of significance” in 1968-69.
State historian William Burg said that because UC is a public entity, it doesn't have a private property owner's right to prevent the park from being listed as historic.
Several sites in the city already on the National Register — including Panoramic Hill, the Berkeley Women's City Club, Founders' Rock and the Hearst Greek Theatre — are regionally known but not nearly as recognized nationwide as People's Park.
A spokesperson for the National Park Service, which administers the historic places program, did not know why it took so long for People's Park to finally make the list.
While People's Park only joined the national registry this month, though, Berkeley's Landmarks Preservation Commission first recognized its historical significance in 1984.
Harvey Smith, president of People's Park Historic District Advocacy Group, said UC's “planned destruction” of the park through development is “unconscionable” because the property is “irreplaceable open space” that should be preserved.
“The park's importance is beyond a squabble in Berkeley or within California,” Smith said in a statement. “It is a nationally recognized historic site.”
According to the National Register, a site's listing on the register doesn't restrict what an owner can do with it, including destruction, as long federal dollars aren't involved.
UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said there's no doubt People's Park deserves to be nationally recognized, but he noted the university has already addressed its history in an environmental impact report and development plan.
“These are the reasons our plans for the park have always included a first-ofits-kind commemoration of the park's past and its significance for the campus and city communities, and for our country,” Mogulof said in an email.
He said the university's ideas for commemorating People's Park range from a memorial walkway of a May 1969 “Bloody Thursday” protest in which a person was killed to murals and photo displays of events. In addition, 1.7 acres will be kept as open space.
The university plans to build two 12- and six-story dorm buildings there after the city, university and nonprofits relocate dozens of people living there into the nearby Rodeway Inn.