Claremont Hotel

The Claremont Hotel, perched in the hills just four blocks from our house has a very "California" history. The building dates back to the Gold Rush, when a Kansas farmer traveled west, purchased 13,000 acres and built a home which looked like an English castle for his wife.

The English castle burned down and the property changed hands several times (once to settle a gambling debt) but was eventually purchased by a wealthy miner, who made his fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush, and erected the Claremont Hotel, completed in 1914.

Although a number of grand old hotels were built in Berkeley during this era, only the Claremont survived destruction by fire, and it remains one of the largest wooden buildings left in the East Bay. In the "firestorm" of 1991 in the East Bay Hills, which destroyed 3,000 homes in the hills above the hotel, battalions of firefighters made a stand at this structure because if it had gone up in flames the fire could have burned all the way to the bay.

This hotel is a very picturesque backdrop for many of my activities. It is right across the street from Peet's Coffee, adjacent to the University of California and I exercise and swim on the grounds. At one time there was a turnaround for an electric train to San Francisco. If only it still existed. Now the old turnaround is a parking lot overflowing with cars. How shortsighted that seems in these days of gridlock traffic.

Today I spent a few hours there watching two of my grandchildren play in the pool. It was particularly nice to watch the youngest, a very cautious three year old, progress from refusing to go in the water at all, to playing with his sister and all the other kids, and testing himself as he ventured deeper and deeper.