By William Henry Smyth
California Memorial Stadium
“In memoiy of Californians who
gave their lives in the World War”• • •
• •
• •
• •
• • •
I •	•	•
• • • • • •
Reprinted from
The Berkeley Gazette
Copyright by W. H. Smyth
1923








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Stadium Site in Strawberry Canyon*
The Story of the Stadium
<7> ' <V, f
By William Henry Smyth
Purpose.
Like every other proposed struc-
ture, the Stadium problem has two
aspects: purpose and construction.
While, broadly considered, these
can not be separated, each aspect
presents its own particular conun-
drums.
It would, for example, make some
difference whether the proposed mil-
lion-dollar-structure. were intended
as an arena in which to settle eco-
nomic disputes between Unions and
Employers by trained teams of
bomb-throwers with high-explosive
hand grenades; or for the settle-
ment of religious questions between
Churches and Cults by similar or
other equally conclusive methods; or
to settle inter-collegiate rivalries
and bets by gladiatorial combat be-
tween trained teams of college
athletes. All such purposes, whila
estimable in themselves, might raise
serious question regarding the legal-
ity of using Educational, State prop-
erty for these spectacular uses.
But assuming that pay-as-you-
renter gladiatorial combat exhibitions
(in the form of “Football Games”)
come within the scope and province
of an up-to-date Educational Insti-
tution, supported by general taxa-
tion, and that the Regents are act-
ing within their legal rights in select-
and appropriating the Canyon site,
we may pass it by aslsettled that:
the primary purpose of the Stadium
is to provide a safe and suitable
arena for the yearly Football spec-
tacle—with its concomitant mass of
hair-trigger tense and explosively
excitable spectators.
Location.
incident to both purpose and con-
struction, the site of the structure is
the first pertinent consideration. And
this matter brings its own problems
and conditions, as was demonstrated
by the selection of a site adjacent to
the southwest corner of the Campus.
In this instance the conditions ap-
pear to have been so adverse as to
have caused its abandonment. And
so far as the public has been ad-
vised, its discard was due, not to its
inappropriateness, but solely on a
question of cost. •
This difficulty was presumably
met by the selection of the Canyon
site, which change, incidentally,
transferred the cost of the necessary
land from the subscribers to the
Stadium fund, its beneficiaries, and
dumped this cost onto the broad but
tired and galled shoulders of the
State’s Tax Payers. (Who, by-the-
way, had purchased this particular
Canyon location for, and as peculiar-
ly adapted to, reservoir uses.)
Responsibility.
The wise selection of a Stadium
site involves a multiple stranded
problem of interweaving but diverg-
ing interests and responsibilities.
There is the interest which every
citizen of the State must have in a
monumental and costly structure ap-
pertaining to the University, in
which, of course, all good citizens
feel a lively and responsible interest.
Then there is the interest of the Uni-
versity itself, with its large body of
officers, students, and alumnae, all
of whom undoubtedly feel a sense
of responsibility that the outcome of
the enterprise shall reflect nothing
but credit upon our great Educa-
tional Institution. Greater than
these, if possible, is the interest of
the Citizens of Berkeley, in the midst
of whose beautiful city the Univer-
53 I 0232
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
sity is located, every member of
which community must and does feel
stirred to the depths at the pos-
sibility of sacrificing one of Nature’s
priceles gems to the purposes of
commercialized “sport,” and who, in
addition, must bear the responsibility
for the safety of the visiting thou-
sands who will attend the games.
Then of these Berkeley residents are
those most intimately and personally
interested, the residents of the
neighborhood adjacent to the pro-
posed location of the Stadium. Now
come the sixty or seventy thousand
spectators who have paid their
money and travelled far to see the
Great Game, and hence their inter-
est primarily centers in the gladia-
torial teams—not, however, to the
exclusion of all interest in their own
own personal safety or the safety of
their ten to twenty million dollars’
worth of automobiles densely parked
within a short distance of the arena.
And last come the Regents who are
interested in and will be deemed re-
sponsible for the outcome in all its
phases and whether of glorious suc-
cess or of tragic disaster—flowing
from the selection of the Canyon
site.
The Stadium enterprise thus con-
sidered presents three phases of
substantially equal importance: (a)
purpose-(b) construction-(c) human
interests—none of which may be
slighted with impunity.
Let us then look at the proposal
from these three viewpoints.
Phase (a).
The PURPOSE may well occupy
much more exhaustive considera-
tion than can here appropriately be
given to this phase of the enter-
prise.
It may properly be questioned
whether, per se, it is a worthy onef
whether it is worth the initial outlay
of a million dollars and a yearly ex-
penditure of something approximat-
ing the same sum; whether any such
commercialization of “sport” on this
gigantic scale is worthy the coun-
tenance, support, and cooperation of
a State Institution like the Univer-
sity of California.
It may well be seriously questioned
whether—assuming it a complete
“success”—the cost in the sacrifice
of the Canyon’s natural beauty is not
too high a price to pay for this very
dubious “success.”
It may be questioned, indeed,
whether any public pay-as-you-enter
physical contest spectacle is a proper
or appropriate activity for a State
University.
I’m no mollycoddle—not by a long
shot—I heartily approve of athletics
and all forms of sport, including box-
ing with and without gloves. A black
eye, a bloody nose or a knockout
shock me not a whit; but most
heartily do I reprobate everything
tending to1 commercialization of
athletics.
One of my most cherish souvenirs
is an age-faded photograph of an
English football team, whose colors,
by-the-way, were Blue and Gold.
Yes, and each one of that team
was a game flghterla good sport—a
gentleman: an all-’round good fellow
.who would deem it beneath his dig-
nity to play in a game at which an
admission fee was charged—that sort
of thing he’d leave to the “cads.”
Phase (b).
CONSTRUCTION:	The seating
problem, per se, may be passed with
only casual consideration, for, re-
gardless of where the Stadium may
be located, there is nothing novel or
difficult, from an engineering view-
point, to provide an arena whether of
the colosseum or of the dirt-bowl
form—both types have been success-
fully built, many times in the past.
Indeed, the dirt-bowl form takes us
back into the prehistoric ages.
But, hidden and grinning behind
this simple little job of providingTHE STORY OF THE STADIUM
3
convenient and appropriate seats for
the spectators, there’s a tricksy little
Joker and dealer in nuts-to-crack
who won’t let the “construction
phase” of the problem slide by quite
so smoothly.
As in the case of the classic receipe
for Rabbit Stew—in order to have
seaters seated in the bowl, you must
first get your seaters safely to their
seats—et cet-e-ra.
And that is some problem—under
present conditions, and conditions
present.
Yes, indeed, that’s a nut to crack
that’ll test the teeth of the “Com-
mittee in Charge”—or I’m a Dutch-
man.
Eliminate the automobile, and the
problem is simplified down to that
solved long ago by the Stadium
builders of antiquity.
But even so, the proper and ap-
J	propriate site for a Stadium to seat
fifty or a hundred thousand people is
an open plain, approachable from all
points of the compass. And, what is
even more important,—in case of
emergency,—vacatable suddenly, ex-
plosion-like, in all directions.
So far - as I am aware, all such
stadium structures in the past were
located in open plains to meet these
obvious necessities. How much more
imperative, then, it is that the mod-
ern Stadium be located at the focus
of many* radiating roadways, to ac-
commodate, with a minimum of dan-
ger, the tens of thousands of care-
less youngsters, half of whom will
approach in high-power motor ve-
hicles; machines that occupy from
. twenty to thirty times more ground
space than the human occupants, if
on foot?
It needs neither contour map nor
technical knowledge, but only an
ordinary street map and ordinary
common sense to realize the diffi-
culties incident to the problem of
getting sixty thousand spectators
and ten thousand automobiles to and
from a Stadium located in Straw-
berry Canyon.
From the street map it - will be
seen that the only streets available
from the South at the area of con-
centration and congestion—are Pros-
pect street and Piedmont avenue;
from the West, Bancroft way; and
from .the North, some roadway
through the University grounds. All
other streets may be eliminated on
the score of being mere feeders to
those main focusing roadways men-
tioned. And the combined effective
availability of these three approaches
is practically not equal to a single
avenue of 150 feet effective width.
Remember, too, that, of this seeth-
ing multitude of excited youngsters,
and high-power machines; ninety
per cent will surge into the conges-
tion area—within one hour!
Parking.
Under modern conditions, “Park-
ing” of the spectators’ automobiles
is an inseparable element in the
“Construction” phase of the Stadium
problem. Hence it is up to the Uni-
versity to provide this accommoda-
tion.
An average auto measures, say, 6
feet by 12 feetland occupies, roughly,
80 square feet of ground space, and
approximately double® or say, 150
square feet, for parking space and
lateral approach.
Now multiply 150 by 10,000 and it
means a needed parking space of
about 1,500,000 square feet—some-
thing over 30 acres. Yes, and it’s the
same superficial area whether it is
strung along twenty or thirty miles
of roadway or aggregated in open
areas for mass parking, or a com-
bination of both.
Here then, we have as one of the
elements of the Stadium problem
eight or ten thousand automobiles
representing ten to twenty million
dollars in a restricted area. Then
there’s another little matter to be4
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
reckoned with—each of these autos
carry from ten to fifteen gallons of
gasoline, or an aggregate, for the
bunch, say, one hundred to one hun-
dred and fifty thousand gallons of
gasoline!
Um-m that suggests conditions
favorable to quite a holocaust—a
bonfire, that, for cost and scenic
effect, would outshine any Bourdon
pyrotechnic effort in the old days
When the Campus was n,ot so littered
With buildings. Yes, indeed, there
are materials and conditions here
favorable to a spectacle more in-
teresting and exciting than even the
“Game” itself, no matter how closely
contested.
It is to be hoped that those hav-
ing the Stadium planning in hand
will take this aspect of the prob-
lem into very serious consideration
and especially from the viewpoint of
possible panic and other disasters
that might result from even one
auto taking fire.
Phase (c).
The HUMAN INTEREST phase
has already been touched on in the
opening paragraphs, and it is hardly
needful to enlarge on this aspect.
Each one can readily imagine how
such an enterprise, with all its ac-
commpaniments, would effect him
did it come to him in his home sur-
roundings in the manner in which
the present one was forced upon the
attention of the residents in that
ideally beautiful home district east
of College avenue. But, back and
beyond this personal feeling was the
even more profoundly disturbing
sense of impending danger to one of
Nature’s uniquely charming gifts to
Berkeley; the realization that wan-
ton and irreparable vandalism was
about to be committed, with seem-
ing disregard of everything hut—
money.
Everyone, of course, realizes that
sometimes it is regretfully necessary
to sacrifice Nature’s beauties to
urgent human needs, but the only
obvious urge in the present case was
that of questionable financial expedi-
ency.
An artificial structure, whether of
masonry or of dirt, can be raised—
and could be razed if later deemed to
have been ill-advised—at the cost of
a few months’ time and effort, but
the unique natural beauties and
artistic charms of Strawberry Can-
yon are the ages-old product of
Nature’s slow-moving and inimitable
craftsmanship which, once foolishly
and recklessly destroyed—are gone
beyond reparation.
An Experiment»
The foregoing considerations raise
the question whether the Regents of
the University are not embarked on
or contemplating a |fradical” experi-
ment involving an inherent element
of failure and disaster, in departing
from the experience, of ages, by
locating the Stadium in a bottle-
necked canyon, approachable only
through the apex of a very limited
angle. And aprdachable on foot and
by vehicle, in this restricted area
only by roadways which reduce this
dangerously limited approach to a
fraction of its angular capacity.
We no longer accredit God-given
infallibility to human Powers or
Potentates, and “the Public be
damned” has ceased to be good form,
Whether as a manner of speech, a
mode of action, or an attitude of
disrespect,—even when indulged in
by the representaties and regents of
the tax paying public.
Pernwald, Berkeley, California.
September 16, 1922.I
The Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
PROSAIC FACTS AND FIGURES.
Levelling of the earth for the stadium proper and the preparation of
the surrounding territory for beautification inyolyes the removal of 280,-
000 cubic, yards of dirt from the hills on the northeast to fill the canyon
below. This work will be done in its initial stage by steam shovel and
teams, but the great bulk of the dirt will, be sluiced and conveyed
hydraulically.
The reinforced concrete aqueduct for the normal flow and storm-
waters of Strawberry creek will extend several hundred feet eastward
and westward of the- stadium with a total length of 1450 feet and a
cross-section of four feet square. This conduit will also serve to drain
the playing field by means of a network of tile drains under the surface
of the held.
Access to the stadium will be provided by a number of beautiful wind-
ing roads. Stadium Avenue will follow the present road south of the
Greek Theater, and will lead to a Rimway drive around the upper
end of the stadium, a position which gives a full view of Berkeley and
the Bay. The Rimway is expected to be one of the show drives of the
Bay Region.
Tunnel Court, at the north entrance of the stadium, will be at the
junction of Stadium and Piedmont Avenues. The other entrance, Pros-
pect Court, will be the junction of Bancroft Way, Prospect, and the
south end of The Rimway.
Four walks will lead from Piedmont Avenue to Piedmont Plaza, a wide
walk running around the base of the stadium on the west, and ending,
on the north in Tunnel Court, and on the south in Prospect Court.
The Bailers.
That James and I had objected
strenuously to Strawberry Canyon
being torn up by^ the roots for a
Stadium site, when JtmgpE was a
chance that our united protest
might save its natural beauties—
we now decided was no valid reason
rwe shoi^d not talreia lively interest
in the million dollar constructive
operations so close to our door.
In this reasonable frame of mind,
we have daily zig-zagged andp^r-
cuited the site from the day, now
several months ago, that Ipiitial
steps were taken for the future
Stadium.
Long before the plans were drawn,
preliminary work was under'way in
the Canyon, in which preliminaries,
andBLch in accordance with his
own natural bent, James and I were
interested participants. While he
^^ffipied himself in investigating
quail coveys and cotton tails so soon
to be dispossessed, I watched the
gardeners as, preparatory to re-
moval, they deftly balled the rich
black ^B1 and sacked H around the
roots of the thousands of young
trees in the beautiful arboretum that
occupied the tringular basin at the
canyon entrance.
The Gimletcrs.
At this time, holes had been dug
here and there and drifted into the
side hills to determiiHthe character
of foundation that the underlying
strata would furnish, and probably
also to learn the nature of the
materials that would be encountered
in excavating, in order to provide
the appropriate means and methods
for moving* tlii^ huge amounts to be
shifted to form the bowl.
It was during this stage of the
proceedings, we noticed a couple of
workers with a giant gimlet boring
hole after hole eight to ten feet apart6
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
across the swale between Prespect
Street and Canyon Road, which de-
pression will later be filled to form
Prospect Court.
We watched the work of these
quaint screw drivers as they drove
their cork-screw-like implement ten,
fifteen and twenty feet deep into the
varying- sub-strata of the miniature
valley across which they worked
their way. Day by day we watched
these workers with personal interest
because of a curious sort of indirect
proprietorship in this particular
swale, harking back to years ago to
the time when U. C. Recorder Sut-
ton’s house was being built, which,
as you know stands just across the
road from the apex of the swale.
A Black V.
In preparing for the Sutton house,
a generous cellar excavation was
made, and the excavators were
dumping the excavated material
onto some low-lying lots between
Prospect Street and Hillside Avenue.
The character of this material at
once arrested my attention, for it
was the blackest and richest of loam
soil, and there seemed to be an end-
less supply.
My curiosity was aroused as to
the source of this unsought but
desirable gift of several hundred
wagon loads of excellent garden
soil, and this curiosity prompted me
one day to follow up the soil trail.
This led me, of course, to the
Sutton cellar excavation, and there
I found not only the answer to my
immediate quest, but also suggestive
indications extending my interest
from present black loam and future
gardens, backward into neighbor-
hood geography of some hundreds of
years ago and geologic happenings
of the remote past. And these indi-
cations suggested certain conclu-
sions which now, after this lapse of
years, I hoped the activities of the
Stadium gimleters would confirm.
What I saw in the cellar excava-
tion was a yards-wide Y well de-
fined on the southern side of the
excavation and contrasting with the
surrounding disintegrated yellow
rock material with which we Hill-
siders are so familiar.
And here was the interesting fact:
the V-shaped slash was filled with
the black loam that had aroused my
curiosity.
Questions and Conclusions.
Naturally, one could not avoid
asking himself:
Why the V slash?
And, whence the rich black loam?
It required very simple investiga-
tion to discover rather surprising
evidence that, the loam filled slash
extended southerly along the base of
the steep escarpment that consti-
tutes the westerly side of Panoramic
Way from its junction with Canyon
Road to Fernwald Gulch, and forms
the stubbed toe of the ridge between
this little sister gorge and Straw-
berry Canyon.
Thus, it seemed evident that, at
some period in the past, the stream
channel of Fernwald Gulch skirted
the steep hillside and debouched into
Strawberry Canyon and formed the
swale where, a little while ago, we
left the gimleters gimletting.
Now you understand the reason
for my seemingly discursive wander-
ings from these hole borers and why
I was so interested in their informa-
tive bornings, also the nature of my
indirect proprietory interest in that
Stadium site swale.
Mar© Questions.
When I told Mr. Ormsby, the
courteous and efficient resident en-
gineer of the Stadium commission,
of my early investigations and
guesses, he was quite interested in
my theory of the diverted course of
Fernwald stream channel, for, as he
remarked it would fully explainTHE STORY OF THE STADIUM
7

!
1
f
8 '>
what had been a puzzlement as to
the why of the deep black loam
which the borers had found extend-
ing across the path of their borings.
While these early investigations
had satisfactorily shown the source
of that good garden soil with which
the cellar excavators were so kindly
levelling up the low-lying lots, the
answer raised a string of more
puzzling questions:
Why did that torrential stream
change its course?
Why, in the name of common
sense, did it quit its straight west-
ward shoot down the steep hillside
slope to the Bay?
Why should it turn squarely
northward across a ridge to Straw-
berry Canyon?
The thing seemed ridiculous and
entirely out of keeping with ths
natural action of any well conducted
torrential stream.
Angular Vagaries.
In this absurd condition the mat-
ter remained for quite a long while,
and I had practically ceased to
bother about the dubious and seem-
ingly improper past of my now well
conducted stream. Then one day I
came across a geologic map of our
hillside region, and there was dis-
closed not only the answer to all the
questions, but an entire acquittal of
Pernwald stream from any wrong-
doing or even unreasonable action
in the past. And the answer was
even more interesting that the
questions it answered.
The map showed that Fernwald
Gulch marks a geologic earth crack
or fault, and another fault at right
angles crosses this one and extends
across the mouth of Strawberry
Canyon and thence through the
Greek Theater northward through
the University Campus, and south-
wardly through my front garden.
These East-West and North-South
earth cracks provided the original
stream course, indeed, gave birth to
Fernwald Gulch torrential stream.
The stream did not make its own
bed, as is the customary habit of
streams, so it cannot rightfully be
held responsible for its queer angu-
lar vagaries.
A Recent Catastrophe.
Thus it seems reasonable to sup-
post that for ages and ages the
Winter storm waters followed the
»course provided by the Fernwald
fault, turning sharply northward
into the cross-fault under where
Recorder Sutton’s house now stands,
and so into what will be the football
field of the Stadium.
Thus the loam which was carted
out of that cellar excavation and the
depth of the loam across the course
of which the gimleters gimleted
would be reasonably accounted for.
And the carters were merely return-
ing to the bank of Fernwald Creek
some of the loam wealth loaned a
million or so years ago.
But this is not the whole of the
story of the black V, for quite a
while ago, though only yesterday
geologically, the Fernwald storm
waters quit their northward course
and their self-imposed task of filling
Strawberry Canyon entrance basin
with the black loam that made this
basin so desirable for an arboretum;
that tree-shaded and charm-filled
arboretum in which I wandered
while James investigated quail
coveys and cotton tails, and where
today, after the rains, is bare acres
of knee-deep yellow lob-lolly.
It would seem that at some com-
paratively recent time, ' between
where now stand the upper resi-
dences of Dr. Buckham, and the
lower residences of Professors Max-
well and Le Conte where thè old
stream bed ran, the fault scarp
slumped a miniature avalanche, and
filled the stream channel. This
slump completely dammed the stream

m

m hh mTHE STORY OF THE STADIUM
and turned it into its present west-
erly course and formed the S-shape
bend which it now describes in the
northwest corner of Fernwald.
When?
And, here comes another interest-
ing consideration:	If these sur-
mises are well founded, regarding
the old and new courses of these
storm waters, it would seem that the
date of the change in direction
might be arrived at within a com-
paratively close approximation.
Doubtless, many of you have ad-
mired the charming picture made by
the great oaks that border and the
rough stone bridge that spans the
course of these storm waters in their
present channel where they cross
Hillside Avenue.
It seems highly probable, that the
turning westward of the waters
brought about conditions favorable
for these oaks, so that the age of
these oaks would give a good idea
of the time that has elapsed since
the slump of the escarpment dammed
the channel and turned its waters
westward.
The Stadium Site.
You can now realize how many-
sided has been the interest which
James and I have found in our daily
walks in and around the Strawberry
* Canyon location of the Stadium, as
from day to day and day by day the
work has progressed from the time
two or three months ago, when we
investigated the avi-fauna and
watched the gimleters gimletting
and the gardeners balling up the
young trees in what is now in its
present state a huge bare unlovely
gash in the earth, looking not unlike
a section of the Panama Canal in its
Fernwald, Berkeley, California.
February 3, 1923.


<
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x
V i r
—-,
—
'.■JO..._____________________________________________________________________________I___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
¿a_____The Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
FACTS AND FIGURES.
The Stadium will he an oval-shaped structure formed by modifying a
natural basin at the entrance of Strawberry Canyon. Its length will be
760 feet and its width 568 feet, with a level oval bottom 459 feet by 267
feet at a depth below its rim of 63 feet; with a capacity of 75,000 persons.
The longer axis, beginning where Canyon Road enters the canyon,
extends in a northwesterly direction on a line which, if continued, would
pass through the Greek Theater. From this point of beginning, a great
earth fill will form the easterly side and also will close the northerly end
of the bowl with material excavated from the northern slopes of the
canyon; and this fill will be topped by a broad drive—The Rimway—
connecting Canyon Road with a driveway—Rimway Approach—circling
through the grove in front of the Greek Theater.
The westerly side and southerly end of the bowl will be formed by a
long natural mound, to be pierced by entrance tunnels. Upon this natural
mound, which has an altitude of 425 feet above the Bay level, will be
erected the reinforced concrete, Coliseum-like, front elevation that will
characterize the Stadium as seen from the Bay regions to the north,
south, and west.
BOWLS ANCIENT AND MODERN.
•
The dimensions and approximate capacity of the most notable of old-
v	time bowls are as follows :—The Coliseum, 615 by 510 feet—90,000;
Yerona, 513 by 510 feet—22,000; Pozzuoli, 480 by 382 feet—25,000 Arles,
459 by 338 feet—25,000; Nimes, 437 by 332 feet—20,000; Pompeii, 426 by 375
feet—15,000.
The same dimensions of some U. ^University bowls are:—Stanford,
840 by 620 feet—60,000; Harvard, 576 by 420 feet—25,000; Syracuse, 670 by
475 feet—40,000; Yale, 950 by 750 feet—61,000; Princeton, 650 by 520 feet—
41,000; Ohio, 762 by 589 feet^-60,00.
f
Triumphal Procession.
When the girgleters had gimleted
the canyon bottom so full of holes
that it was more like a colander than
a basiMjthey quit; the bailers wlSS
balled the loam and sacked kS
around the roots of the young trees
finished their balling; and then, like
“Great Birnam woods to high Dunsi-
nane hill,” there went up the slope
of the swale and out of the arbj|Sj
return a moving forest on motor
trucks, a triumphal procession cele-.
brating the conquest of the canyon
and of those who would conserve its
natural beauties and aesthetic
charm.
Fire and Axe and Saw.
With the advent of the forest
movers began the real devastation.
Gangs of swampers and clearers
made short work of hazel and elder-
berry, of spirea and wild current, of
fern and braffin, and all the other
wild growths thatH^B-peted arid
beautified the surrounding slopes;
and the flames of their burning rose
heavenward, and the smoke of their
sacrifice drifted slowly and sadly up
the canyon, driving before it the
quail and cottontail, never to return.
Behind the swampers and clearers
followed axemen and sawmen, and
for days and days the ring of the
double-bitted axe and the rythmic
sh-s-s-shHHph-s-s! sh-s-s-sh 4f|
Bh-s-s! of the saw, jazzed and jarred
by the	! B of
huge oaks,	bays&and flowery
buckeyes! tolled and dirge'dP the
tragedy of Strawberry Canyon.•	■ 'v.. >■ -■ - ■	-■	,*^v, -, ■; ■	; o’ _	~ . .,	_ v^r-;-	-j rjSgMippwiwwpwpwBj
^■^^■,-	.-,:.................,.................... .. ,^„,y	-v: ^....;-■' -..T,....■-. '	, ,u .,'.
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
10
A Desertion.
Every day, in every way, things
got so “worser and worser” that
Janies and I could only whine and
groan with the pain of it, and call
grim endurance and old philosophy
to our aid in a counter magic re-
frain—without breaking eggs—we
can’t have omelet—we can’t have
omelet—without breaking eggs!
But it didn’t work very well, for
at the first nearby cric—crack-----
crash!!! James gave one startled
questioning yip?! that a second later
faded into mournful silence at the
front end of a straight streak of
mingled white hair and active dis-
approval, a thousand yards nearer
home.
Poor James—I thought he had
put for the land of Neveragain, and
I had lost a faithful and sympathetic
companion.
Don’t however, blame too severely
his seeming desertion; overlook, I
beg of you, this natural expression
of emotional stress, remembering
that his full name is James nee
Maud.
A Change.
For the next few days axe and
saw were in full swing, and the
beautiful arboretum soon changed
from a green and flowery glen into
a grey and dreary valley of desola-
tion. Acres of tangled tree-trunks
and limbs covered the canyon slopes
like corpses on a battlefield or the
dreadful track of a cyclone.
Up to this time, crude and seem-
ingly witless destruction reigned
supreme, but from then on, slowly,
though increasingly, came evidences
of plan and intelligent purpose
And now began the phase of in-
terest which from that tragic time
onward has grown day by day as
the wonder work progresses.
Fussy little donkey-engines ap-
peared here and there on the side
slopes and long stretches of taut
cables criss-crossed the canyon
trained around anchored pulleys.
Then chu-chu-chu—chu-chu-chu of
escaping steam and clankety-clank
of winding drums, and huge inert
stumps, gnarled tree trunks and
tangled branches began to wriggle
and withingly untangle themselves
and crawd, squirming like saurian
monsters, into mountainous heaps—
their funeral pyres.
More Change.
Thus in a few days the canyon
was cleared, and the constructive
work was launched and fully under
way. Surveyors had earlier marked
many important locations and levels,
but now began more intensive de-
tailed definition, with hundreds of
stakes marking lines and levels and
locations that soon would be founda-
tion .blocks and detail structure of
the Stadium.	•
And then, like the changing scenes
on the movie screen, great gangs of
men soon turned the one-time quiet
and reposeful canyon into a thrill-
ingly busy drama of constructively
well-ordered confusion. A huge
trench day by day deepened and
lengthened longitudinally of the
canyon, following the general direc-
tion of the creek bed but cutting
across its old-time bends.
Here and there around the hill-
sides gangs dug square-sided pits
deep into the yellow sub-strata,
while teams scraped clean of its rich
loam the whole bottom of the basin,
piling the loam in huge mounds of
fertile soil for the beautification and
landscaping of future slopes.
Lumber, Rock, Sand, and Cement.
Meanwhile, truckload after truck-
load. of white lumber began to form
conspicuous piles around the basin,
and a never-ending procession of
trucks brought broken rock, sand,
and sacks of cement—a seemingly
never-ending supply. And so, day
by day, the picture changed from



I
N
fl r
wm
■HI
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
11
i
?
H i

r
one of heart-rending destruction to
one of constructive promise.
And now the carpenters are busy
with power- and hand-saws, with
hammer and hatchet, building the
quaint-looking concrete forms, and
strange-looking structures, struc-
tures that require close and intelli-
gent scrutiny to indicate to the un-
trained eye that their seemingly
grotesque shapes define future foun-
dations, columns, tunnel walls, and
constructive details; to realize that
these queer- and rough-looking
structures represent imagination,
visualization!! constructive foresight
—form and space prophecy.
Here and there platforms now dot
the basin rim, carrying concrete-
mixing tumbling barrels, from the
spout of each of which movable
chutes convey streams of fluid con-
crete to fill these temporary form
structures with an everlasting mono-
lithic subterranean skeleton of the
future Stadium.
Reinforcement.
•
Interspersed with the endless pro-
cession of concrete materials are
great truckloads of long reinforce-
ment iron rods and other truckloads
of similar rods bent into queer
shapes, each shape having its pre-
arranged destination in the great
structure now taking recognizable
indications of form.
Along the line of the great drain-
age tunnel destined to carry the
normal flow and the storm waters of
Strawberry Creek water shed, the
white wooden concrete-form clearly
defines the course of the aqueduct,
and between the temporary wooden
walls of topEbottom, and sides is a
network of longitudinal and circum-
ferential reinforcing:	iron, which,
when the concrete sets, *will consti-
tute a jointless tube from the be-
ginning to the end of its 1500 feet,
apparently strong enough to with-
stand anything ëhort of the com-
plete destruction of old Mother
Earth herselfB
And a similar network is mean-
while developing within the crazy-
looking but meaningful structure
that later will mould the under-
ground foundation and tunnel under
the southern slope of the Stadium
giving entrance to the playing field
from Prospect Court.
Concrete Moulds.
No part of the operations, so far,
is more interesting or more educa-
tive than this seemingly confused
mass of temporary structure, at the
turn of Canyon Road.
The temptation is strong to linger
on this modern development of an
ancient building material, our re-
inforced concrete construction. But,
interesting as it is, I must hurry
along, for there are several hundred
workers in the canyon, with a
month’s start, and only one of me,
and I want to catch up.
The Giant Fist.
Along with the donkey-engines
that snaked the tangle of logs and
stumps into heaped-up gigantean
pyres, there came crawling ponder-
ously along on its caterpillar truck
base, the most interesting of out-
door mechanisms—the Steam Shovel.
I could watch this wonder of
human ingenuity hour after hour
with unflagging interest. No other
machine seems so completely to
realize perfectly controlled limitless
power — ferocious brute strength
and human intelligence combined.
To watch its great scoop-ended
beam, like a giant’s limb, claw at the
base of the canyon bank and irresis-
tibly rend and tear loose a huge
fistful of earth and rock, and, with
the precision of perfect co-ordina-
tion, deposit its tons of spoil into
strings of distributing wagons, is, to
me, one of the most absorbing sights.
It seems, at once, to content the
whole of my make-up—to gratify
12
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
the ferocious primordial brute, sat-
isfy the old-time destructive savage,
and at the same time to gladden the
heart of the modern constructive
mechanic and conventionalized citi-
zen.
The Dam.
From the steam shovel the plod-
ding dump wagons have already
carried away a great section of the
hillside and built up a ridge across
the canyon to temporarily dam the
waters of the creek that will sluice
the mountains of material into a
huge mound encircling the eastern
side of the Stadium and form The
Rimway.
A Wondrous Procession.
On the western sideSwhere Nature
has already provided an ages-firmed
bowl rim and solid foundation for
the coliseum half of the Stadium,
caterpillars, ploughs, and scrapers
have already gashed out two of the
entrance tunnels through the great
natural mound that closes the can-
yon mouth.
From the mound, the Piedmont
avenue residences are on the move,
seeking other sites, a wondrous pro-
cession; and among them the
Palmer, the Stringham, the Blake
homes—those old-time land-marks
and objects of local pride—that for
two generations, from this command-
ing elevation, have overlooked and
watched the growth of Berkeley;
and tractors and trucks chase each
other, in and around those beautiful
gardens that later will again bloom
into the equally beautiful foreground
of the Stadium.
The Social Center.
The ever-growing interest that
James and I experience in watching
the practical working out of the
story of the Stadium is evidently
shared by a host of others, for
Strawberry Canyon has now become
Berkeley’s Social Center concourse
and promenade. Prospect pvenue
has become a busy thoroughfare not
alone of work-a-day wagons and
trucks, but of a holiday procession
of Flivver, Touring Car and Limou-
sine, a foreglimpse of that no dis-
tant time when Rotten Row, Bois de
Boulogne, and Central Park will
have an equally famous and more
beautiful Far West rival in The
Rimway.
Fernwald, Berkeley, California.
February 10, 1923.
IfiPWiPi1

The Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
THE SERPENT AND THE EGG.
AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES:	One of these on the hanks of Brush
Creek, Adams County, Ohio, is in the form of a serpent, over 1,000 feet
in length, extended in graceful curves. The neck of the figure is
stretched out and slightly curved, and its mouth is opened wide, as if in
the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval figure, which rests between the
distended jaws. This oval is formed by an embankment perfectly
regular in outline, its transverse and conjugate diamenters being 103 and
39 feet, respectively. The combined figure has been regarded by some as
a representation of the oriental cosmological idea of the serpent and the
egg.j^The American Cyclopedia.)
When the Stadium is completed, an aeroplane photograph of serpen-
tine Strawberry Canyon (with its triangular “mouth opened wide, as if
in the act of swallowing or ejecting an oval figure”) would show an in-
teresting reproduction, on a large scale, of the ancient “cosmological idea
of the serpent and the egg” effigy in Ohio.
OTIS PATENT STEAM EXCAVATOR
WILLIAM SMITH OTIS, the inventor of the steam shovel, or the
American steam excavator (as styled in the patent), was born in Pelham,
Mass., September 29, 1813. The first steam excavator was used by Mr.
Otis on a contract on the B. & 0. R. R. somewhere in Maryland and the
second on the Boston & Albany R. R. in 1837-’38-’39. Mr. Otis was the
first person to hang a shovel on a revolving crane, and it was the pro-
genitor of a large class of dredges used in excavating hard material.
—(History of Pelham, Mass.)
The Steam Shovel is peculiarly interesting as being one of the very
limited class of “pioneer inventions,” and in addition to this distinction,
it is one of the still more limited group of inventions that has under-
gone no substantial change from its inventor’s original design.
Dirt and Dams.
Our giant-fisted mountain mover—
the Steam SlSMsKvith a twin
brotP^r, (S&iniies**tp claw at the
canyon bank, and ^^Rther these
mechanistic mons^^H haveclawed
loose and loadeMinto dump-wagons
Krenty-fiiH hundred MKgSi-sl ofBiate-
rial out of the mouht|||^ftide. But
great as is the gash and clawers
have clawed into CaSlOrizzly’s flanks,
H is BP! than aB| hundredth part of
what is yet to be ripped outJta*
But insignificant as the ^amount
moved is, in <|PHai*ison to the total
to be moved, it has	-raised a
20-foot high, wide-based embank-
ment dam, several hundred g^^B
long,' across the g£®ggon in the neigh-
borhood of the creek-conduit en-
trance, and anotjj^r still greater
ex^^BknHs^ of double that height
Km^^phe^^HerHid of the conduit
whicHwill Mon cl^^tthe canyon at
this ^^Bffind form the^^BBIf what
will latei^Hferunnel Court.
And, by the wl^Hou^^R'-fisted
and industriou^ friend broke one of
his greatvc^^H or teeth, whichever
Bu prefer to consider the massi'H
steel SMSes that serrate the cutting
edge of	on the end of his
digging beam.
So it hap^^fd that I was an in-
terested spectator of a large-scale
dental or manicuring operation on
Lincoln’s Oirthday.
A Digression.
My lawyer friend used to twit me
with being afflicted withH form of
mania to whicMSts discoverer has14
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
applied a long and scareful Latin
name.
Probably you have never heard of
it, but it is a craze that causes its
victims to be always in a state of
surprise; wonderment not alone at
matters considered by the normal to
be wonderful, but also to be ex-
clamatory at happenings and things
which (to the average others not
afflicted with the long and fear-
somely named mania) are casual,
unexciting commonplaces.
Well, I do not wholly resent the
implication of being thus “afflicted,”
for it permits me to experience
many thrills that others miss. It
permits me to see, in the seeming
commonplace, marvels to which the
others are blind, and to enjoy emo-
tional experiences to which they are
callously inert.
Giant Dentistry.
Thus it came about that I watched
■—thrilling and marveling—while the
dentists or manicures, dentalized or
manicured my giant friend on Lin-
coln’s Birthday, preparatory to re-
suming his mountain-clawing duties
on the morrow, in full and fine
fettle.
This broken tooth or claw is a bar
of steel (one of several) some three
or four feet in length and about
three by four inches, in sections
that extend a foot or so beyond the
lip of the bucket to a chisel or
wedge-shaped end that had been
broken square off, and called for
the surgical operation that I wit-
nessed with such interest.
The remaining, still attached, part
of the broken member was riveted
with half a dozen big rivets, possibly
an inch in diameter, extending
through the bucket side deeply
countersunk into their surrounding
metal. Thus to chisel out these
countersunk rivet heads in order to
remove the long and useless tooth-
stump would have been an arduous
and tedious undertaking, besides
marring and distorting the sur-
rounding metal, making added diffi-
culty in replacing the brooken tooth.
But, by the operation I witnessed,
all the rivets were removed, cleanly
and easily, and without any mar-
ring, in five or ten minutes, and a
new tooth replaced in little more
than the same length of time.
With the aid of an oxygen blow-
pipe flame, the rivet heads were
successively liquified in an incredi-
bly short time, the headless shanks
driven out and a new tooth riveted
in less time, probably, than I have
taken to tell of it, and certainly with
less fuss made about it.
Indeed, the very matter-of-factness
with which these operators went
about their giant dentistry, and the
casualness with which they per-
formed their flaming surgery, en-
hanced to me the marvel of this
mere incident in. their day’s work.
The quiet, fussless efficiency of these
chemico-mechanical workers, that
might to those super-sane “others”
seem commonplace and uninterest-
ing, was to me, its sole spectator, a
gratifying experience and a source
of pleasant wonderment.
Dynamite.
Another incidental episode was the
effective and spectacular disposal of
a great pile of seemingly indestructi-
ble tree-stumps.
During the day I had noticed gim-
leters preparing for the elimination
by boring auger holes here and there
deep into the gnarly heart of each
knotty and ponderous chunk. Then
the chief operator, with the seeming
carelessness of long experience,
casually dropped into each bore a
cylindrical stick of dynamite, han-
dling, ramming and tamping this
dynamic chemical with apparently
contemptuous disregard of its fear-
some potentialities, and so charged
log after log in his momentous prep-
arations. One by one all the holes
were thus loaded and electrically
I X
I
I
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y
..--___________—-----__________
-THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
15
wired together, and the initial stage
of the elimination completed. And
when this preparatory job was done,
that great pile of logs looked just as
leadenly logy and as placidly inno-
cent of danger or catastrophe as in
the morning before the job was
begun.
But, bye an’ bye, when the can-
yon was cleared of workers and
spectators, that casual handler of
those fearsomely dynamic cylinders
casually walked to a commonplace
little box and casually touched an
energizing little button, and—that
logy pile of ponderous stumps, with
one convulsive spasm and a vol-
cano-like explosion, leaped skyward
in a huge mushroom-shaped black
cloud of dirt and smoke with a
flaming stalk, and rained earthward
rent into fragments—a scattered
pile of kindling wood!
With such like incidents, and
others no less thrilling but more
constructive, the Stadium grows day
by day, showing each day in many
various ways and marvels of modern
constructive science.
Shifting of Interest.
Interest has somewhat shifted
from Prospect Plaza to Tunnel
Court end, for here has grown a still
more imposing concrete-form struc-
ture. This great and elaborate ag-
gretion of woodwork, imposing as it
is, with its rows of thirty to forty
feet long hollow wooden columns and
hollow wooden cross-ties (all to be
later filled with reinforced concrete)
constitutes only the skeleton sub-
terranean foundation of the tunnel
and superstructure. When the con-
crete is poured, up to the present top
level, it will be only the floor level
of the tunnel and playing field. All
of this and its superposed tunnel is
to be buried under the earth fill that
will obliterate the deep canyon at
this point and between it and the
great embankment, which is gradu-
ally extending its length across
toward Piedmont avenue, transform
this long earth gash into the level
concourse of Tunnel Court.
More Tunnels.
A third great slash through the
natural mound is rapidly deepening
for another of the concrete tunnel
entrances from Piedmont Plaza.
To me, the process of cutting these
gashes is not the least of the many
matters of interest with which this
monumental undertaking is prolific.
First come the beautiful Percheron
draft horses, three to a team for the
massive single plow, ripping up the
compacted earth; and leading a pro-
cession of scrapers each drawn by
two or four horses, scraping, gather-
ing up and transporting the plowed-
up material. And so the initial
channel deepens till the ages-com-
pacted yellow rocky material is;
reached, material too hard for even
the triple strength of the elephant-
draft horses.
Tracklayer Tractor.
Then calmly and majestically rolls
up one of the sixty horsepower
Caterpillar Tractors which, with
obviously effortless ease, moves
through the cut, dragging earth-
ripping triple plowshares twelve,
fifteen, yes, eighteen inches deep, in
that compact near-rock ground; fol-
owed by the horse-scrapers scoop-
ing up a ton or so each at each trip.
And thus visibly the twelve- or
fifteen-foot wide gash deepens hour
by hour to its twenty-five or thirty
feet finished depth and its hundred
or more feet of length. And, con-
currently, the almost vertical sides
of the tunnel cut are trimmed
smooth, straight, and true to the
engineer’s survey lines by the pick
and shovel brigade, under the watch-
ful eye of the gang boss, my Italian
friend Orestes — who traces his
family line back to Biblical! nota-
bilities.
When, turning from Steam Shovel16
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
to Gas Tractor, I watch Caterpillar
performing its astounding stunts of
strength and ponderous agility.
Giant-fist has to suffer rivalry in my
admiration; and looking from one to
the other, I realize the distracted
lover’s dilemma:	How happy could
I be with either—were t’other dear
Charmer away.
“Yeslj indeed! She’s a dandy,
when she’s feeling good”—her Chauf-
feur corroborated my expressions of
esteem.
Hydraulics.
Ponderous, high pressure, cen-
trifugal pumps with their driving
dynamos and connections are already
installed that will be able to deliver
a ripping, sluicing and transporting
stream, under a pressure of four
hundred feet head. These machines
will soon take up their appointed
task of dislodging and hydraulically
transporting the quarter of a million
cubic yards of material from Old
Grizzly’s flanks, where it is not de-
sired, to where it is wanted, to fill
and to form the sixty-foot high en-
closing slopes of the Big Bowl.
The Bowl!
perhaps the most interesting part
of the operation at the present stage,
to the casual observer, is the slowly
rising semi-circular slope at the
Prospect Court end. For this is be-
ginning to show unmistakably the
form and actual slope of the Bowl.
From this indication, with the aid of
a little imagination, the ultimate
lines of the Stadium can be visiual-
ized.
With this mental picture, the huge
amount yet to be moved by the
pumping and sluicing operations
may be partly realized. And some
notion may be formed regarding the
nature of the task ahead of the
builders in the construction of this
great and monumental work which,
when completed and beautified, will
be one of the accomplishments of
this greatest of ail Ages in which it
is our transceftdent privilege to live,
and even in this great constructive
age will be one of the Wonders of
the World .
Fernwald, Berkeley, California.
February 24, 1£23.The Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
PORTLAND CEMENT
[By Lester T. Sunderland.]
Portland ^ Cement, as perfected today, is composed of lime, sillica and
alumnia mixed in analytically fixed proportions, fused to clinker with in-
tense heat, and ground to a texture finer than flour; . . It first
became known as a trade article under the name “Portland Cement” in
1824, when Joseph Aspdin, a bricklayer of Leeds, England, was granted
Patents by the British Government for its manufacture. Aspdin made
cement by burning* a formulated mixture of clay and lime and grinding*
the resultant clinker; the finished product resembled in color a building*
stone extensively quarried on the Isle of Portland—hence the name
. . . . Nearly sixty years before his (Aspdin) patent was granted
John Smeaton, an Englishman, perfected a cement which would harden
under water and with it constructed a stone lig*hthouse at Eddystone, on
the English Channel; this structure, after withstanding the winds and
waves for 128 years, and while still in good condition, was by the British
Admiralty razed to make way for a larger lighthouse.
Smeaton’s discovery of a successful hydraulic cement signalized the
first scientific assemblage of the raveled threads of a lost art, the secret
of the vanished civilization which built the Carthaginian aqueduct, the
magnificent Roman military roads and other famous structural works
of ancient times.—(Fifty years of Portland Cement.)
HYDRAULIC DREDGING
[By W. H. Smyth.]
(Read before the Technical Society of the Pacific Coast October 1, 1897.)
In 1858, at Shawls Flat, Toulumne county, California, a series of ex-
periments were made by a young engineer (Alphonso B. Bowers, pioneer
inventor and patentee of the Hydraulic Dredge), to determine the capa-
city of flowing water to transport sand and earthy material in open
conduits, and its**availability in the construction of dams in mountain-
ous districts. Ten years later the necessity of levees for low-loying lands
along the Sacramento river became a subject of pressing and daily
consideration. Recalling his early investigations he gave the subject
much thought, and soon afterward took up the experiments again, “to
see whether it was feasible to take material from the Sacramento river!
and, with a low head of water, put it on the banks for the purpose of
building levees” . . the capacity of the device to produce levees of ex-
cellent contour (was) fully demonstrated. This was in 1863. « . .
—(Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies, Oct. 1897.)
Cement Concrete.
The subterranean concrete struc-
ture of the Stadium is well on the
way to completion; and much of
the molding woodwork is stripped,
disclosing the smooth-surfaced con-
Some notion may nowp®ormed
ofËÜ!e Sreat wooden moulds which,
to casual inspection, seem so un-
sightly, crude and grotesque; some
idea of the intricacy of these great
sprawling boxes that formed the re-
Hptacle for the hundreds of tons
of fluid concrete. It can now be
appreciated what foresight, imagina-
tion, and knowledge, was needed to
construct these great moulds that
Hcurately define the finished struc-
tures, and what constructive in-
genuity is required to provide for
the tremendous crushing weight and
bursting strains on the seemingly
flimsy woodeM moulds holding the
frluid concrete,—to ensure that these
rending strains* shall not burst, dis-18
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
tort, or even bend the forms during
the time necessary for the concrete
to set.
Bird-Man View.
How many of those who daily
visit the Strawberry Canyon mould-
ing works, I wonder, realize that all
of the great concrete structures,
columns and tunnels which they
now see, are only preparatory pro-
visions which will be completely
buried and be as non-apparent in
the finished bowl as if non-existent.
But such realization is necessary
to get any intelligent idea, at the
present stage, regarding the magni-
tude of the finished playfield.
If, in imagination from a bird-
man viewpoint, or actually from the
canyon sides at a sufficient height,
you look down upon all the present
structures and, pile imaginary solid
earth in an oval ring over all the
now visible concrete work and con-
crete-mould forms—you would then
have only the foundation upon
which the Stadium will later be
erected. And even this mental pic-
ture will fall far short of giving an
adequate notion, unless it be fully
appreciated that this huge visualized
earthwork ring, with its buried con-
crete tunnels, columns and founda-
tions, represents 'a small fraction of
the earthwork and a very much
smaller fraction of the cement work.
To the mental picture I have sug-
gested there must be added the great
semi-encircling architectural front
elevation coliseum wall,! of such
height as to raise the rim of the
bowl approximately 7 0 feet above
the playing field.
So strain your imagination once
more. Carry this 70 feet high
imagined bowl-rim as an egg-shaped
annulus .800 feet long and 600 feet
wide, and then having visualized
this great oval 70 feet high in the
air, complete your mental picture
by filling in beow this 800 by 600
feet oval ring with a gently sloping
pile of solid earth, half encircled
with an artistically designed con-
crete wall, and then—if your visual-
izing ability has been equal to the
task—you will have only an inade-
quate mental picture of the finished
bowl.
Try this visualizing experiment.
It will be interesting to compare
your present mental picture with
the actually—a year or so hence—
when you stand on the same spot
and look down upon the ’ finished
Stadium.
Retrospect.
One of the many interesting phases
of my frequent visits to the great
Strawberry Canyon earth-moulding
works is to wander over various
places that six months ago were my
favorite halting sport. *At such
places I still make my customary
halts, close my eyes and surround
myself, in imagination, with the
picture of the canyon as it then
was, and, when this scene has form-
ed itself in all its picturesque detail
—suddenly open my eyes to my
present surroundings.
If you have never played this
game, either in the Stadium site or
elsewhere, you have missed sensa-
tions comparable to any movie
thrills.^
One of my dress-circle seats is
located about the middle of what
will later be the playing field. This
position lends itself peculiarly to
my thrilling retrospective game, for
its level has been practically un-
changed, having neither been filled
in nor dug out.
Come for a moment to this spot
and enjoy with me a choice picture
from by collection. . .
A few yards away is the old
wooden bridge spanning the creek
out from the arboretum, almost hid-
den in a tangle of undergrowth
which, with the great bay trees,
border the stream banks. On the
bridge rail sits a cook quail, saucily
w >>yTHE STORY OF THE STADIUM
19
nodding his black feather crest at
us, and to his Cockship, James and
I seem to offer as much of inter-
est and speculation as he furnishes
us. The rest of his thirty or forty
Jock and Biddy Quail companions
are fussily trotting hither and
thither, unto and off the bridge,
busy about lawful concerns, quite
regardless that it is their occu-
pancy of the bridge that delays
our walk to the shade of the great
twin oaks beyond the creek.
James has, however, his own
canine notions regarding the rela-
tive importance of theirs and our
concerns, and with a few sharp re-
marks on relativity, effects a judi-
cial compromise by which the Jock
and Biddy bunch take the brush
and water course and we accept a
right of way across the bridge. So,
very soon, from the restful shade
>	and comfortable back-rest of those
great trees we look back and add
to our art-gallery another priceless
picture.
Just beyond the open sunlit fore-
ground of green, flecked with
splashes of golden sun-loving Cali-
fornia poppies, is the bridge with its
rustic barred gate framed by spread-
ing oaks and towering bays. Strag-
gling down the canyon till lost in
the undergrowth is the grey and
lichen painted wooden fence, lace-
hung and embroidered with trailing
wild rose, and here and there hid-
den in clumps of blackberry and
wild currant. Yes, and here come
the fussy Jock and Biddy Quails,
hither and thither, incessantly gos-
siping their twee-twee-twee—tut-
tut-tut; still busy about their own
concerns, in and out of the wheel
ruts that carelessly curve across
the foreground to the road above.
And, back again to the rail, his
Cockship, nodding his feathered
Y	crest, sits on the look-out.
Truly, no canvas ever equalled
this picture that comes to me at
will when I shut my eyes and turn
toward the giant-fisted mountain
mover steam shovel still indus-
triously clawing at the canyon bank,
Never mind what the picture
painted by old Giant Fist now dis-
closes to physical sight; but let us,
instead, content and console our-
selves with our retrospective and
our prophetic scenes, when land-
scape gardeners have painted other
pictures, possibly as soul satisfying
as those which the Stadium builders
have wiped from Nature5’s canvas.
Thus from the scenes of the past
we return to today and the day’s
doings in Strawberry Canyon.
Hydraulicking.
My friend the Hydraulicker had
promised that on Monday morning
last he would be ripping up and
sluicing down the hillside into the
canyon.
So,- having given him some hours
of leeway, I was awaiting develop-
ments, reading a current magazine
while comfortably seated on the
hydraulic nozzle, when—without
warning—there came through my
settee a shuddersome spasm, a kick
and a snort and a sneezing cough
with a belching gob of water, fol-
lowed by a perfect influenza of giant
coughs and spasmodic gulps, as
though that inert iron pipe had been
suddenly galvanized into a gigantean
python—injudiciously sniffing snuff!
It is needless to say, I moved,
with grace and alacrity—certainly
the latter.
From that time on the hydrau-
licking and cluicing has proceeded
with day by day increasing inten-
sity. Up to the time of writing that
rending stream has played on the
canyon side about forty hours and
has ripped out a great cavity and
sluiced its spoil into the gorge that,
when filled, will be the level con-
course of Tunnel Court.
Owing to the limited water supply
in Strawberry Creek due to our20
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
long-continued fine weather the
sluicing has been working under
adverse conditions. The water being
used over and over the stream is-
suing from the nozzel, during the
first few days was less like water
than like a gruel or yellow paint,
which naturally reduced the effi-
ciency of pump, pipe nozzle and
spoil carrying capacity.
The electricity driven centrifugal
pump, located near the College ave-
nue bridge was installed merely as
a returning pump to lift the escap-
ing tail water back to the inter-
mediate pump below the playing
field level. It is now being used,
however, to sluice down material
for a dam across the canyon adja-
cent to the northern entrance tun-
nel.
By the time you read this, that
dam will doubtless be completed and
with an ample supply of water (now
being piped) the real and effective
cluicing operations will be under
way with the powerful pumps lo-
cated on the higher level east of the
playing field.
Impressive as is the hydraulicking
now in operation, it is only a mild
forecast and indication of what has
yet to come when all four great
pumps get fully into action with an
ample water supply and practically
unlimited power.
Educational.
There is so much of concentrated
educational, dramatic and human in-
terest in every stage and phase of
the Stadium construction, and so
many of the mechanic arts, con-
structive processes and physical
sciences are involved and being
practically and specularly exempli-
fied, that, were I the Big Boss of
the Bay region schools—low, higher
and highest—I’d be tempted to
empty the stuffy classrooms, chuck
the books, and adjourn the classes
to the al fresco slopes of Straw-
berry Canyon.
Now! I’m climbing my educa-
tional hobby—and no spaci left for
a run .	.	. So, I’ll only say, if
you fail to frequently visit the
Stadium site—or fail to bring your
eyes with you, when you do come—
you are missing a real educational
experience, the dramatic thrill of a
“world wonder” constructive enter-
prise in process, and, the rational
interest an all-’round unique op-
portunity.
Fernwald, Berkeley, California.
March 24, 1923.The Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
Up to the first of May the total excavated material piled around the
playing' field of the stadium is about 140,000 cubic yards, of which 51,000
yards were dug1 by steam shovel and moved by horse-wagon and scrapers,
the big remainder having been transported hydraulically.
Assuming that the water carried 10 per cent of solid material, nearly
500.000.	000 gallons have passed through the four-and-a-half-inch nozzles
under an average pressure of 100 pounds per square inch. So about
2.000.	000 tons of water have been pumped under conditions representing
a 200-foot lift and fall — to put pep, ginger, and kick into the liquid
battering-rams and git-up-’n’-git into the transporting water-wagons.
Two carloads, or about 24,000 pounds, of black powder, and 200 cases,
or about 10,000 pounds, of dynamite have been touched off subterraneously
to shake up and shatter the shale preparatory to its shooting the chutes
down the flumes that straddle across the canyon on the east and the
west of the stadium site like a couple of skyscraper-centipedalian-daddy-
longlegs.
About 84,600 cubic feet of concrete with 828,000 pounds of reinforcing
square-section bar iron have been buried in the form, of foundations, sub-
terranean tunnel for the flow of the storm-waters of Strawberry Creek
under the bowl, and other tunnels for the more tumultuous flow of tens
of thousands of hilariously rip-roaring Rah!Rah!ers into and out of the
Stadium.
AWARD STADIUM CONTRACT
BERKELEY, May 2.—Contract for the completion of the stadium in
Strawberry Canyon was let to the Clinton Construction Company of
Oakland for the consideration of $511,740 by the stadium committee of the
University Board of Regents at its meeting yesterday in San Francisco.
The Clinton Company will send in its crew of workmen to erect the
forms for the concrete on the west side of the bowl within the next two
weeks, according to arrangements with Bates & Borland, excavation
contractors, who have obligingly given permission to the second con-
tractors to start work immediately before the first contract is fulfilled.
The early commencement of the superstructure would indicate that the
stadium will be completed the first of September instead of late in October,
as originally planned.
Encouraging progress which points to the completion of the excavation
and underground concrete work by June 10 is being made by the con-
tractors working under group one contract.
Three huge streams of water are being forced against the side of
Charter Hill tearing out vast holes in the bank which will form the
eastern rim of the bowl.
Final plans for the seating arrangement, which have been recently
comnleted, provide for a capacity of 72,627 persons.
TheHalifornia rooting section will be on the same side as in the old
California Field, namely, the east. Stanford will have a slightly smaller
section at the west.—Gazette News Item.
An Interesting Phase.
Work	subterran^^®con-
tract has now reached a^fcspecHly
injjgijgtihg stage, if, indeed, any
stag'e can he considered Hare so
than another, in an undertaking
every stage of which overflows with
interest to	alert-minded on-
looker.
The reason wh^fche present de-
velopment appears more than usi^^H
noteworthy is that the hydraulicking
has reached a poigH where the form
of the Hwl is clearly to be seen.
Hrhe Prospect Court and the Tun-
^^E^ourt struMi^^g that a week or
two ago wer^^^^HTauously aerial,
high up on concr^® legs, are now22
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
almost hidden and subterranean.
The tall columns along the south-
western, or Piedmont Avenue side,
that so recently were silhouetted
against the sky, as a triple row of
monoliths, have all disappeared un-
der the huge earth-mound.
Great Oval Embankment.
As one walks on the great oval
embankment of solidly compacted
clay from the now covered site of
the old Blake residence around to
where the hydraulic giant is still
smashing the canyon side with its
battcring-ram stream, it is hard to
realize that the broad highway he
traverses was non-existent only a
few weeks ago — high up in the
empty air!
The dams and mounds that loomed
so large in the first few weeks have
now sunk into insignificance as
mere foundation toes for the huge
embankments which the hydraulic
streams have piled up and over
those preliminary ridges.
At the northwestern end, too, the
great stilt-carried tunnel structure
that loomed so high above the bed
of the gorge a little while ago, is
fast disappearing under the many
thousands of tons of fill, so it is
difficult to visualize the earth gash
that recently existed where today
one walks practically on the level
from northern canyon wall to the
Piedmont side, among the rows of
fifty- to seventy-foot columns that
have shrunk so greatly in height,
where they have not been entirely
covered and lost to view.
So, I say that the present stage is
especially interesting because it now
requires but little imagination to
form some notion of the shape and
size of the finished bowl.
Some Thrills.
A day or two ago I was interested
to note from conversation with a
couple of sedate aind mild-mannered
Professor friends that, watching the
great streams issuing from the giant
nozzles, emotionally affected them
pretty much as it does me; and that
they, too, experienced thrills that
never pall.
Every moment of the time is filled
with tense interest; the caving of
the fifty- or sixty-foot “face” under
the pounding undercut impact of the
irresistible liquid battering-ram; the
tumbling and tossing downward-
rush of the ponderous rocks; the
turbulent muddy rage of the ground-
sluice water rolling its rock masses
half buried in sizable avalanches of
smaller rocks and fluid mud; and
the smashing concentration of these
tumultuous torrential streams merg-
ing to the flaring entrance of the
flume down which rocks and gravel
and compacting clay impetuously
race, roaring and pounding to their
destination in the canyon bed.
Oh, yes, it’s some thriller!
Intelligent Control.
Doubtless many others experience
the same feelings watching the de-
structive and constructive operations
of the giant streams; but, how many
of these, I wonder, realize how much
of skill, knowledge, and experience
is involved and at work in the
seemingly simple manipulation of
the monitor.
From casual remarks, I am satis-
fied that few of the daily visitors
appreciate that the monitor-man
who, hour after hour, patiently
directs the great stream, does so
with intelligent and experience
guided intent, or how constant must
be his watchful care. Without this
vigilance he would have his flume
or his great conveyor pipe choked
half the time, with all the loss that
this would entail. And the “ground-
sluice”, too, from the working “face”
to the flume entrance, or the con-
veyor pipe, as the case may be, it
also calls for constant watchfulness.
If this flattens out or steepens, fills,
or cuts, the amount of materialTHE STORY OF THE STADIUM
23
carried by the sluicing water will
vary in direct relation to its grade,
contour and cross-section, vary so
materially, indeed, as to make the
difference between ineconomical
small amount to equally ineconomical
overloading, and hence choking of
the carrying conduit, whether flume
or pipe.
So, what to the unobservant seems
merely erratic movements of the
monitor hither and thither on the
crumbling ¡¿‘face” is, on the contrary,
definitely purposeful, and like the
aesthetic art of the dancing master
in the opera — “Every little move-
ment has a meaning all its own.”
The Fractious Flume.
And the flume, crude as it seems,
is as fractious and dainty as a con-
valescent patient, and, like one, must
be humored unremittingly and fed
with almost equal care and scientific
precision.
When, after thorough considera-
tion of all the conditions of the con-
fronting problem (whether it be res-
ervoir-dam or football stadium in
a bottle-necked canyon), the form,
length, curvature, cross-spction, and
grade of the flume has been decided
upon preliminary to its erection, a
basis of action and a controlling
factor has been established to which
the hydraulic monitor-man must
conform within narrow limits. And
these limits determine thé commer-
cial outcome in dollars and cents.
Distribution.
If you have been at all observant,
you must have noticed how keenly
the monitor-man watches his ground-
sluice, conveyor (whether flume or
pipe), and the actions of the half-
dozen “shear-board” men who direct
the distribution of the sluiced mate-
rial as it tumbles tumultuously from
the flume or torrentially traverses
the artificial delta that rapidly
changes the shore line of the tem-
porary lake in the canyon bottom.
Nor is intelligence required only
at the fast-receding “face”; the dis-
tribution of the material must be
carefully directed at the end of its
riotous journey from face1» to fill, in
order to produce the greatest amount
of effective distribution with the
least amount of expensive human
energy and still more expensive
flume construction.
Shattering the Shale.
Preliminary to ripping and sluicing
the canyon walls, these must be pre-
pared and the material brought into
condition suitable to be excavated by
the hydraulic stream and trans-
portable by flume or pipe. Thus,
ahead of the hydraulicking goes the
blasting crew. These quiet-man-
nered and unobtrusive workers,
hour after hour, all day long, drive
vertical holes in bunched here and
there twenty to thirty feet deep into
the rock of the canyon side. Up
and down — up and down — hour
after hour till one’s back aches
sympathetically, watching these
sturdy workers lift and drive, lift
and drive, their long chisel-pointed
bars deep into the underlying strata,
by sheer raw muscular effort.
Then comes the dynamite to ex-
pand and cavitate the bottom of the
twenty- or thirty-foot holes for the
reception of canister after canister
of black powder; then the electric
wiring and the dry dirt tamping fill,
the connecting of the wires to the
battery box; and finally, the touch
of the fateful button or the sliding
of the handle, and — the earth re-
sponds with a shivering shudder, a
mounding heave of an acre or so,
and a dull roar that reverberates up
and down the canyon®
And not a little intelligence and
practical experience is needed in
this preparatory work, for black
powder and dynamite are expensive
commodities, every pound of which
must produce its maxium effect in
shattering the shale of which the
*0i • iig.in«^*p«H
24	THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
Berkeley canyon banks and hillsides
are composed.
The Shattered Shale.
To me, o#ie of the interesting fea-
tures of this preliminary is in noting
the conflict between what seems to
be and what really is the result of
the blasters’ work.
Looking at the fifty- or sixty-foot
face, at the base of which the giant
stream is battering, it appears to be
a solid cliff of undisturbed rock
strata — solid and impregnable. And
then to see this seemingly solid rock
tumble and crumble under the im-
pact of the stream is a constant
source of surprise; to watch that
rock face disintegrate into angular
boulders, rocks, stones, gravel and
sand, none too big to be easily
handled by the torrential currents
of the ground sluice waters. And
then, finally the surprise is com-
plete to note the outflow of this dis-
integrated shale as it is distributed
in the fill, a mixture of material so
favorably proportioned as to chunks,
stones, gravel, sand and clay slimes
that it forms a composition ideal for
its present purpose — a solid and
unshrinking circumferential foun-
dation for the great bowl.
Will Loom Monumental.
So, in every phase of the earth-
moulding process in Strawberry
Canyon, human skill, knowledge and
experience are at work, the outcome
of which will be the huge bowl and
Coliseum that, in the near future,
perched 500 feet high on the hillside,
will loom monumentally over Berke-
ley as seen from every part of our
beautiful Bay and from the wide
angle foreground of all the Bay
region.
Fernwald, Berkeley, California.
May 5, 1922.
I
Ì)
?
\
Y
Hpepp
|PPPPThe Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
INVENTOR OF REINFORCED CONCRETE NOW A PAUPER.
(Literary Digest for June 16, 1923)
The huge athletic stadiums here and abroad, and the dizzily high sky-
scrapers of New York and other American cities, and, in fact, practically
all large-scale building1 work of the twentieth century, may be said to
depend in greater or less degree upon reinforced concrete. It is difficult
to conceive what the prevailing1 type of architecture of the present would
have been, had not Joseph Tall, a precocious London schoolboy of fourteen,
taken out the first patent for reinforcing1 concrete fifty-seven years ago.
We learn from a Coggeshall, Essex, correspondent of the London Daily
News, that the lad “became rapidly famous” and “made a fortune.” Hav-
ing achieved success somewhat in the manner of Henry Ford and Thomas
A. Edison, Tall might have crowned his triumph by successfully launching
a huge corporation to develop his mechanical ingenuity.
However, the tale of this London youth is far different from those
with which we in America have become familiar. Today, instead of
being among the financial or industrial giants of the world, he is little
more than a pauper, the only means of subsistence for him and his aged*
wife being an old-age pension.
Burial in a potters’ field is his chief fear, wre are informed.
The Daily News article remarks that “when the vast concrete ring
around the Cup Tie ground at Wembley — one of the biggest concrete
ring buildings in the world — is vibrating beneath 120,000 pairs of feet,
an old man in this village (Coggershall) will be thinking sad thoughts about
it. In giving the biography of Tall, the writer says that Tall “took out
his first patent in this or any country for a method of reinforcing con-
crete in order to render it suitable for building,” and that “the records
at the Patent Office show that during the subsequent decade he added a
score more patents covering the whole field of concrete construction.” . .
Then we read on:
He struck me as the sort of a man who would know, by instinct, as it
were, all about machinery and materials, and nothing at all about finance.
It is a common failing with inventors.
A few years before the great war of 1914 the same Joseph Tall was
tramping England in search of work. For five nights he slept out with
the human wreckage on the Thames Embankment.
Recently Joseph Tall pawned the last of his treasures — for eight
shillings. It was the medal for concrete building construction awarded
him half a century ago at a London inventions exhibition.
That is why Joseph Tall will take a pathetic interest in the opening
of the Wembley Stadium.
Some More Figures.
During the two months that have
elapsed since my previous chapter
in The Story of the Stadium, much
water has metaphorically and sta-
diumatically flowed under the bridge
— for owr half a billion gallons of
actual water has passed through the
centrifugal pumps and hydraulic
nozzles under an avera^Sj pressure
of one hundred pounds, battering at
the rocky canyon flanks of Charter
Hill, with the result of dislodging
and transporting 110,000 cubic yards
of spoil on the eastern, and 35,000
Mib^ftrards on the western rim of
the stadium bowl.
In addition to this water-moved
fill-material, 45,000 cubic yards have
been excavated by the three steam
shovels (two of which, by the
way, are “gas’* driven), and trans-
ported by power-trucks, horse-wag-
ons, and scrapers; making a total of
255,000 cubidawards of shale and dis-
integrated rock moved and formed
26
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
into the curving slopes of the bowl
to date, leaving an estimated amount
of 30,000 cubic yards yet to be
moved.
And Facts
In this period and with this ma-
terial the eastern slope of the “dirt
bowl” has been raised to within 20
feet of its final sixty-odd-feet of
height above the playing field level,
and 467 feet of elevation above Bay
level—the level of The Rimway.
On the western side the trans-
ported material has now covered the
six concrete entrance tunnels to a
depth of 20 feet, and on this side
the “dirt bowl” is finished and
* smoothed down to its beautiful cur-
valinear slopes, so satisfying to the
eye and “as pretty as a cotton
hat.”
Meanwhile the deep creek-bed, that
aforetime zigged and zagged its
meandering way across the main axis
of the playing field site, has been
filled practically up to its finished
level, and the final form of the
Stadium, in its majestic oval sim-
plicity, is now plain to view.
All that remains to be accom-
plished of the first (or subterra-
nean contract, practically amounts
to the finishing touches to bring up
the north-eastern side to the
smoothed and sand-paper polish that
characterizes the bowl rim on the
southern and western slopes.
The Coliseum.
Overlapping this Bates and Bor-
land “subterranean” earth-mound-
ing contract, and beginning on May
18, the second stage of the Stadium
building under the Clinton Con-
struction Company contract, the
Coliseum construction has made a
truly spectacular running start; and
during this period up to the present
there has been produced an amaz-
ing transformation on the western
side.
In the six weeks that have
elapsed molding forms for two sec-
tions of the five which will con-
stitute the Coliseum front have been
erected, and into these impressively
huge wooden molds have been
poured 25,000 cubic feet of cement
concrete reinforced with 135,000
pounds^ of square- and round-sec-
tion iron.
Embarrassment of Interest.
Truly, it is difficult to say which
is the more interesting, the rough
hewing of the canyon and its moun-
tainous sides by the battering hy-
draulic streams and steam shovels,
transforming its natural rugged-
ness into the artificial curvalinear
lines of beauty and symmetry, or
the more humanly constructive ar-
chitectural processes that are now
in progress, and which in the next
few months will eventuate in the
1460 feet of length by 75 feet of
width and 67 feet of height of the
concrete Coliseum front elevation.
Both processes represent the latest
developments of modern construc-
tive science in their respective de-
partments.
In this regard the Berkeley Me-
morial Stadium is unique as an
impressive monument to Human
Progress and Man’s application of
the forces of Nature—his acquired
knowledge of Nature’s Laws and
their applicability to furthering the
accomplishment of human purposes
and whims.
It is not improbable also, that, in
the respects indicated the Berkeley
Memorial Stadium will remain
unique for all time, for it is to the
last degree improbable that another
such structure will ever be built in
just such a peculiar situation which
called for and permitted the em-
ployment of these diverse processes
and the instrumentalities available
in the Strawberry Canyon site of
the Coliseum.
7
v
t
y


THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
27
The Buried Monoliths.
The triple rows of 239 monolithic
columns that a few short months
ago curved around the western side
of the Stadium site from Canyon
Road across the canyon to Charter
Hill silhouetted against the sunset
sky line like a modernized Stone-
henge have all disappeared—buried
under the finished western curved
mound of the bowl.
Looking at the smooth and grace-
fully curving slopes it has already
become difficult to visualize this
great triple colonade that towered
20 to 75 feet above us as we walked
among these monoliths, or to remem-
ber that they are now below our feet
as we saunter along the third of a
mile level crest on the western rim.
I recall this almost forgotten col-
onade nowB because they are still
there and serve as the foundation
piers of the structure so rapidly as-
suming its Coliseum form. These
hundreds of square pillars, 20 feet
by 24 feet apart, are now encircled
at another 24 feet outside the outer-
most row by a continuous concrete
foundation wall that extends prac-
tically from end to end of the 1460
feet of frontage and defines the
curvature of and will later support
the 67 foot high reinforced con-
crete semi-eliptical Coliseum.
Just a Peep.
As I have mentioned|ltwo sections
of this great wall, almost to its final
height, have already been poured.
Indeed, some of the molding struc-
ture has been removed presenting
to view a good indication of the
impressively simple , and artistic
architectural design. So, in the
thus-far completed sections we can
even now discern the architectural
appearance of the finished structure
that will surmount the “dirt bowl”
on its eastern rim.
On the top of the subterranean
foundation colonades have been
poured great beams of reinforced
concrete joining these columns and
the exterior wall with a skeleton
platform extending from end to end
of the coliseum structure, and above
which will be the continuous prom-
enade or circulating covered walk-
way from one end entrance tunnel
to the other.
Above this great skeleton plat-
form the subterranean columns are
being extended to support the con-
crete continuation of the “dirt bowl”
rim to its final height as defined by
the top of the frontage of the
coliseum.
In addition to the already poured
portion of the front wall and skele-
ton platform with its forest of col-
umns, many of the molding forms
of the sloping concrete beams that
will support the upper tiers of seats
are in place ready for the reinforce-
ment and fluid concrete.
Thus, with these aids and fore
glimpses and a little imagination
we |fcan visualize the great archi-
tectural memorial monument that is
so rapidly taking on its finished
form.
The Materials.
There are so many interesting
features in the details of the rein-
forced concrete construction, that I
find myself almost at a loss to know
just where to begin,Tor how to make
these modern constructive scientific
miracles as clear and as interesting
to the lay reader as warranted by
their intrinsic interest.
The first preliminary to an intelli-
gent understanding of the various
devices and constructive methods in-
volved in our modern reinforced
concrete is to get a clear notion of
the nature and qualities of the ma-
terials themselves and how they
meet the conditions of their em-
ployment. For the present purpose
it is not required to go into any
extended or technical discussion of' __________________________________

"ww,,J
■I k

28	THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
these matters, but only to touch
very lightly and generally on one or
two salient characteristics.
It should be realized that cement
concrete will support great weight
without crushing, but not stand
much pulling without rupture, in
other words, it resists compression
but succumbs to tensile strains.
Concrete, one might say is just the
apposite to string or rope, which
will sustain a heavy weight hang-
ing thereto but will not support its
own weight standing on end.
An iron bar or wire is more
like the rope or string in that it
wTill sustain great weight hanging
to its lower end but will support
a relatively insignificant load with-
out bending if the weight, instead
of being hung to the lower end of
the vertical bar is attempted to
be supported on its upper end.
Thus cement concrete and bar
iron mutually complement each
other, each possessing in high de-
gree certain desirable qualities and
capabilities lacking in the other.
So in the judicious combination of
these elements there is produced a
composite building material, par ex-
cellence—reinforced concrete.
In the next chapter of The Story
of the Stadium I will endeavor to
indicate how skillfully, ingeniously,
and scientifically these oppositely
acting complementary characteris-
tics of concrete and iron are being
combined and utilized in the struc-
ture of the Stadium.
Fernwald, Berkeley, California.
July 7, 1923.
\
-....
mm
■itéMBt ÉitiiifitfyûÉÉfÊliËÉÉ
«t»The Story of the
Stadium
(Continued)
CONCRETE IN THE MAKING.
By George S. Eaton
(Scientific American—August)
Mountains of rock, in effe(Hmust be powdered yearly in the Portland
cement plants of the country before the carefully proportioned raw mix
can be put through the flaming kilns where it is burned into klinker.
The huge rotary kilns found today in the cement plants of the coun-
try make the most unusual furnaces. If one of the largest could be set
on end it would be as tall as a 20-story building. It is more than big
enough for a touring car to pass through. It is heavier than four stan-
dard pullman cars. Several of these steel monsters slowly revolving side
by side in a great kiln room, with 30-foot tongues of flame roaring within
them and white hot balls of klinker dropping from their mouths, create
an impression of power and relentless purpose that is unforgetable. .
By the time the temperature reaches 1650 degrees Fahrenheit, a third of
the original weight of the mixture has gone up the stack as carbon
dioxide aloneHlf pure limestone were being used without the clayey
elements added, the loss from this source would be 44 per cent.
^How the material begins to get really hot, with good cause. Near the
loweg^ml of the kiln the flames attain a temperature of from 2500 to
3000 degrees Fahrenheit—a heat great enough to melt the steel shell of
the kiln if it were not for the protection of the fire-brick lining. . . .
Among the many unusual pieces of apparatus relied upon In testing
cement, none is of greater interest than the 200-mesh sieve. One of the
requirements is that not less than 78 per cent of the finished cement
must shake through this sieve. Yet the sieve itself will hold water!
Bronze wire cloth that is woven more finely than silk is the screening
agency. A silk handkerchief has only 110 threads to the linear inch—
silk dress goods seldom more than 187. Yet this metal cloth contains
200 wires each way to the inch, and the number may vary only within
very narrow limits, as the standard specification for cement govern this
point as well as the cement itself. In a single square foot of such testing
sieve the wire weavers must put a mile of wire. . . Each square inch
of the bronze cloth contains 40,000 holes. . .
m-QTE.; J I regret	does i||$feermit me to quotHthis very
interesting article at greater length. I sHmgly recommend ymt to read
it for yoffigseif.
Earth Sculptors.
Dismantling and removal of the
Hntrifugal pumps and dynamos,
and the ^dynamiting of their con-
crS^Wemporary foundations a week
or^> ago, marked the end of what
the most spectacular En-
stmqmre undertaking in the history
of Berkeley. The great fill and
mound that forms the dval howl of
thH Stadium is, beyond doubt, the
town’s mo^i monumental and per-
mfflent product of* human effort.
Wondrous indeed will	the
events in Human History which will
transpire during the ages thaj will
el^^H^efore^^B last discernable
Bstage disappears of the work doiH
by tH h^lpwEro nozzles and flumes
under the direcpon of	un-
assuming Men and <Hclopel|nHHfch
sculptors — the Hydraulic Gang.
Duriffl| the month of JulyHhere
has Ben moved and^^^^^^■7,000
cubic yards of hydraulic fill, and
32,000 ^^^Bards by power shovels
Hid trucks. This has	up
raie^^^Hl to about HSffloO cubic
RP^^^nd completed the ma of the
one-fflië* earth gash ¡HU is now thev • •...........-
ijwuiy-w-L'r'i <
_______
----------------------------------------------------------- ■—--■■■'
■——
I
;
i
30
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
level concourse of Tunnel Plaza and
the practically finished grade of The
Rimway.
The old-time stream bed of Straw-
berry Creek that half a year ago
zig-zagged its meandering course
across the Stadium site is now the
level playing field practically ready
for its finishing touches.
Stone Moulders.
Of the concrete moulding forms,
with their network of iron rein-
forcement, 3 of the 5 sections have
been built, including the forms for the
boundary wall of the playing field
on the western side. And, many of
these moulds have already been
filled with concrete. Within the last
day or two, over 10,000 square feet
of the “seat slab” have been laid and
several of the concrete radial stair-
ways finished. All of which means
that, during this time, 56,000 cubic
feet of concrete work had been
poured into the moulds with its em-
bedded reinforcement. And approxi-
mately 336,000 pounds of reinforce-
ment iron cage-work has been
formed and put in place ready for
the pouring of its moulded artificial
stone.
Pencil and Paper.
Before taking up the details of
the Coliseum construction, it would
be well to get a fairly clear mental
picture of the internal makeup as
well as the external form of this
great architectural undertaking. 1
mean, of course, the great concrete
front of the Stadium Bowl.
To facilitate this visualization, I
strongly suggest that you take a
sheet of paper and a pencil, and — if
you are not good at guessing inches
or drawing straight lines — have a
rule handy.
Assuming that you are sufficiently
interested to have adopted this sug-
gestion — make a vertical line on the
right-hand side of your paper, about
7 inches long, and from the bottom
of this line another at right angles
to it; that is, a horizontal line,
about 15 inches long. At about mid-
way of the first line draw another
at right angles, to the left, 7%
inches long. This last will, of course,
be parallel to and half as long as the
15-inch line. Now draw a line from
the upper end of the first line to the
left-hand end of the 7%-inch line
and continue this sloping line till it
meets the end of the 15-inch line.
Just one more (line, and we are
through with the important boun-
dary lines of a cross-section of the
eastern side of the bowl.
This last important line you will
draw from the left-hand end of the
7%-inch to the bottom of the first
line drawn.
Angles and Triangles.
,The lines you have drawn should
have produced a right-angle tri-
angle with a base 15 inches long and
7 inches high, and this triangle is
divided into two triangles, one of
which has a base of 15 inches long
and is half the height of the whole
right-angle triangle.
Now if you take your pencil and
dot all over that wide-based 3%-inch
high triangle (within its boundary
lines), you will have indicated a
cross-section of the dirt mound that
forms half the height of the western
rim of the Stadium Bowl.
The undotted part of the right-
angle triangle will represent the
outline of a cross-section of the
concrete Coliseum structure; the
long side of the right-angle triangle
represents the sloping side of the
bowl on which the seats will be
arranged in curving tier upon tier.
To indicate this, make a series of
saw-teeth, about four to the inch, on
the long, sloping line, and these saw-
teeth will represent the rows of
seats, of which tfiere will be 72.

More Marks.
Now mark off the 7 ^-inch line
into three equal parts and draw,
from the line end and also through

A
m
	

THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
31
these marks, lines at right angles,
from the base line up to the seat
slope line. If you have done this,
you have drawn three equidistant
vertical lines that are parallel to the
first line you drew and extend from
the 15-inch base line up to the slop-
ing line of the seats.
One step further and we are ready
to construct in imagination the
whole of the 1400 feet of the Coli-
seum front.
Concrete Skeleton.
If your pencil is a soft one, make
the first line you drew into a heavy
black line, say, as thick as a dollar,
and do the same for the 7 ^-inch
line that you drew at right angles
to it. Repeat this thickening on the
upper length of the seat slope line
from where it joins the 7%-inch line
up to the top where it joins the ver-
tical line already blackened, and do
the same thickening and blackening
on the three vertical lines from end
to end.
You have thus roughly indicated
the skeleton section of the concrete
structure.
The first line you drew, and which
you have blackened and thickened,
represents the concrete wall or
Coliseum front elevation. The thick
sloping line indicates a section of
the concrete “seat slab” or curved
surface on which will be arranged
the long rows of seats.
The remaining thick lines indicate
columns that support the sloping
“concrete slab”, and the horizontal
thickened line represents radial re-
inforced concrete tie-beams that
connect the columns and front wall.
You will notice that three of the
thick vertical lines pass downward
into the dotted area indicating the
dirt mound; that part of these lines
represents “the triple rows of 339
monolithic columns which a few
short months ago curved around the
western side of the Stadium site
from Canyon Road to Charter Hill”,
the subterranean foundation columns
now out of sight and forever
buried.
Cardboard Model.
' Had you made this diagram on
cardboard, you could easily there-
with construct a fair representation
model of the finished Coliseum. To
make such a model out of cardboard
and paper, it would be only neces-
sary to cut out of cardboard 59
duplicate triangles like the diagram
and arrange these on a table about
2V2 inches apart in a semi-oval of
80 inches in major axis and 60
inches in minor diameter and then
paste a 7-inch strip of paper around
the outer side of the oval formed of
the 59 triangles, and paste another
strip of paper on the sloping edges
of the triangles for the curved seat
slab, and you have a fair, if rough,
model of the western side of the
Coliseum, a model requiring very
little touching up with water-color
paint to be quite presentable.
Of course the other half of the
semi-oval to form the complete Bowl,
is the huge dirt fill and mound that
crosses the canyon on the east side,
from Canyon Road to Charter Hill.
Some Figures.
At this point a few more accurate
figures will not come amiss. So let
us begin at the roadway level of
Piedmont Plaza, which, you’ll re-
member, is the broad walk that will
extend around the base of the Sta-
dium from Prospect Street Plaza to
Tunnel Court on the north. The
elevation of Piedmont Plaza above
Bay level is 404 feet, the same ele-
vation as the surface of the playing
field of the Stadium. The top of the
Coliseum wall is 471 feet elevation,
or 67 feet high above the Plaza.
From the face of the front wall to
the low boundary wall surrounding
the playing field is 150 feet, thus
half of the rows of seats will be on32
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
the dirt mound and the upper half
on the concrete seat slab, as indi-
cated by the saw-teeth on the dia-
gram, and the seats extend to within
a few feet of the top of the front
wall.
The reinforced concrete radial
beams represented by the 7%-inch
heavy line on the diagram are spaced
24 feet apart at the front wall and,
being disposed radially to the cur-
vature of the oval, are about 17 feet
apart at their inner end, where they
rest upon the subterranean columns
at the apex of the dirt mound.
At the front wall end these beams
are, of course, tied to the front wall
monolithically and also by the re-
inforcing iron. At their other end
these beams are securely tied by a
partially buried beam that follows
the curving apex of the dirt mound,
and corresponding parallel beams
tie the radial beams to each other at
the points where these radial beams
rest upon and monithically and re-
inforcedly unite with the vertical
columns indicated on the diagram by
the vertical black and heavy lines.
More Triangles.
Thus you see that, broadly con-
sidered, the concrete Coliseum side
of the Stadium consists of a huge
curved skeleton beam forming (in
section) an isoseles triangle with its
apex on the apex of the dirt mound
and its base the vertical front wall.
The 1460 feet of skeleton beam (in
five sections) rests upon the triple
rows of 339 subterranean foundation
columns and the great oval curving
foundation of the front wall, in-
ternally tied, radially and longitu-
dinally into a monolithic skeleton,
as I have already indicated and as
illustrated in your diagram.
All this, which may seem hard to
follow and keep in mind, will be
very simple and understandably easy
to visualize — if you have made the
diagram. Yes, and I believe you
should be impressed with the beau-
tiful essential simplicity of what,
when finished, will be a magnificent
and wonderful architectural monu-
ment.
Fernwald, Berkeley, California.
August 4, 1923.The Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
THE WEMBLEY PARK STADIUM
By P. J. Risdon,
(Scientific American October 1928)
The Wembley Park Stadium . . has recently been completed In
London at a cost of $1,500,000. The arena and ampitheater . . . occupy
a total area of 12 acres. The seating1 accommodation provides for 24,586
spectators under cover and a further 9799 in the open, the total seating
and standing capacity being 125,201. . .
The outer wall of the stadium, half a mile around, is carried on 89
arches, each 45 feet high and 50 feet span. .	. It was decided to deal
with the stadium at Wembley in much the same way as that at Stock-
holm, had been treated., . . To this end, a drainage) fall was allowed for
from the center of the arena to the outside edge . . . of at least
six inches, . . . On the clay foundation, various grades of cinders
and clinkers ash were laid to a depth of ten inches, and over this
again five inches of specially prepared soil was spread to form a natural
bed of turf. .	. Turf was cut in dominoes 18 inches by 12 inches, and
2% inches thick; and these were .	. taken by a small-gage railway
to the stadium. . .
Tests of the stadium were very exhaustive. The first stage, by means
of dead loads, was of a rigorous character. .	. The area of the first
section tested was 86 feet by 35 feet. Five thousand bags of sand, each
weighing one hundred-weight were placed on the seats, giving a total
load of 250 tons. .	. The live load tests were carried out by 1200
selected ex-service men. . .
NOTE:	It will be observed that the Wembley Hartium, called the largest
in the world, and credited with “a capacity ojy^JHOOO people,” has seating
accommodatiH for bu^^»85 ^H^Hhe Berkeley Memorial Stadium will SEAT
E2|627. It is difficult to make a fair cc^fcarison under thesP diverse modes of
measurement.
Retrospect.
Much less than a&ear ago, Jamei
was investigating quail covies and
cottontails in the bramble of wild
rose and bracken, blaclsylrry and
wild current that bordered the deep
creek bed of Strawberry Canyoi|J|
and I wandered through the arbmfe-
tum PpQwards the old wooden bridge,
headed f^‘ my fi|j[vbritHseat' under
the shade of the wiffl spreading
Oaks and towering Bay-trees on the;
other side of the creek. Today we
sit, James and I, on the ^^^^Hte
steps of the Ggeffla Bowl and look
upon “the most overwhelming and
colossal structure I have everl|jH,|S
as, with a gasp of surpgiBJ my
lawyer friend Hfew days ago voiced
his first impression of the Memorial
Stadium.
James Is Reticent
What James things about Hi thesll
hamfreffiings as he sits silently ob-
servant at my side, he hasHpot ySg
confided to me. Hor is this surpriH
ing, for, as I look around I find my-
self uname to formulat^Bmy own
thoughts in an endeavor to realize
that what I ^Kand seem to^know
of the transformation, is not all H
vivid dream (^^Bf which I wilJfsB
wakened presently by a cold noH
nudging my handHtia friendly in-
timation that it is time to turn
homeward.
Not So Easy.
You will remember that six or
eight months ago I suggested a
game of "retrospection; a game of
making mental pictures from various-----------------------■ -
..—--—
	
34	THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
view-points in the (then) wild can-
yon, to be later recalled for compari-
son with the actual scenes from the
same locations when the stadium was
finished.
The proposal seemed almost child-
ish in its simplicity, a pastime any-
one with ordinary imagination could
play at easily, and with a large re-
turn in pleasureable interest com-
pared to the mental effort.
Today, I have to revise all this
for, I find—despite my professionally
trained picture memory—it requires
an almost impossible exertion to
visualize the old scenes and scenery of
the shady ravine and supernose them
on the sun flooded background of
the titanic structure that now con-
fronts and surrounds me.
Either through intent or by a
combination of accidental circum-
stances, the form and location of
the Stadium is such that practically
all the old landmarks are blotted
out; the reference points, by which
one unconsciously fixed the location
of nearby objects, are eclipsed. One
almost loses his sense of direction
and with it all feeling of certainty
that here stood the old wooden
bridge, there the great twin oaks,
yonder were the towering Bay-trees
arching across the narrow gash of
the canyon. They have lost all their
kindred associations and are now
only elusive phantoms, vaguely
somewhere within that ‘overwhelm-
ing and colossal’ bowl. The horizon
has become a huge oval artificial
rim, framing the fathomless sky
without locus or signpost to locate
the scenic details of our old time
woodsey pictures.
In all my experience of retrospec-
tion there is none which presents
the difficulties of recall that are en-
countered in and around the Sta-
dium—not even the growth of Ber-
keley itself, which I have watched in
process from my windows, develop-
ing out of grainfields and hillsides
into a great University town.
Dazzling Metamorphose.
Looking down from our seat, from
which I have mentally wandered in
this effort of recall,, one’s eyes are
fairly dazzling and his mind con-
fused by the most recent and most
dreamlike change in all the kaleido-
scopic development of the Stadium.
Less than two weeks ago trucks
were hauling and piling in rough
heaps, rock, gravel, sand, drain pipes,
and loam . . and now, James and I
gaze and blink, confronted with a
level playing field of growing grass,
a huge green broadcloth, fresh from
nature s dve works and brilliant be-
yond imagination.
This playing field (on which just
two weeks after seeding, the lawn-
mowers are busy as on any well-
kept lawn) is in itself a rather re-
markable piece of work, which like
many other seemingly simple accom-
plishments, does not indicate to
superficial observation, the thought,
skill, and constructive labor that
have gone into its production™
More Than Magic.
You will remember that the old
creek bed — buried fifteen to twenty
feet below — zig-zagged diagonally
across the stadium site.
To carry the normal and storm
waters of the canyon a great con-
crete conduit was constructed which,
cutting across the bends of the creek
channel follows its general direction
beneath the playing field. This con-
duit forms the first step in the prep-
aration of the grass plot that now
gleams so vividly green.
When the bowl bottom had been
filled to a level oval, a large drain
pipe was laid around its periphery,
and other smaller pipes were laid in
parallel arrangement across the
playing field at suitable intervals and
these communicated with the sur-
1
ATHE STORY OF THE STADIUM
35
rounding drains that in turn con-
nected tile whoie drainage system
with the main storm-water conduit.
The drain pipe trenches were filled
with broken rock of an average-size
of somewhat less than your fist.
Then the surface of the playing field
was covered to the depth of four
inches with similar broken rock, and
over this foundation was laid four
inches of pea-sized gravel, and above
the gravel a four-inch layer of sand;
finally on top was spread 12 inches
of rich sandy loam in which the
Australian rye grass seed was sown
a couple of weeks ago, and the seed
covered with a good coating of dust-
fine pulverized sheep-dropping fer-
tilizer.
So you can now see — as James
and I know, who have watched it in
process ¡¡2 that the marvelous meta-
morphose means lots more than
mere magic.
Yesterday and Today.
And so it is in every direction,
what yesterday was a chaos of piled
refuse lumber and materials is today
the smooth and seemingly finished
curvalinear contours stretching sky-
ward.
As the days go by, each with its
more rapid removal of these con-
structive materials, the magnitude of
the Great Bowl seems to expand and
grow upon one with increasing in-
tensity. And this feeling is deepened
by the withdrawal of the great me-
chanical appliances — steam shovels
and tractors, scrapers and horse-
teams — leaving only the human
workers who scattered here and
there as individuals and groups on
the great slopes shrink to the ap-
pearance of busy insects whose per-
spective smallness adds contrasting
hugeness to the colossus they have
built.
Impresive Vistas.
Up to the time of writing, over
seventy-five per cent of the concrete
has been poured, and the last, or
fifth, section of the wooden moulding
framework of the coliseum front is
rapidly nearing completion and
much of this has already been filled
with concrete.
Nearly all of the wooden moulds
have been stripped from the interior
finished parts beneath the seat slab
of the great structure, bringing the
smooth grey concrete to view. So
that what until recently was a con-
fusing maze of timbering false-work
now looms up as impressive vistas
of cloistral colonades and arched
openings cathedral-like and thrilling
as they merge in curving perspective.
Finishing Touches.
The Coliseum front is receiving its
final coat of cement splash-finish.
This gives to the concrete surface
the rough-cast character of tooled
white granite that in the sun light,
against the dark greens and browns
of the mountain background, brings
out with startling brilliance the
nobly simple lines of this stupendous
architectural monument.
On the great encircling earth-fill
mounds and concrete slopes the long
flights of steps are nearing comple-
tion. On the same surfaces strong
wooden sills about eight feet apart
extend from top to bottom of the
seating area,' and to these sills the
seats will be attached.
Between the sill-formed panels on
the earthen slopes, the waterproofing
finish is now rapidly being applied
by a painting process on. a huge
scale. An endless procession of
shoulder-yoke bearers carrying great
buckets of boiling asphalt trudge up
the slopes on to which the hot fluid
is flowed in steaming streams of
viscid blackness. Into the compacted
clay and shale surface the liquified
asphalt is absorbed which on solidi-
fying forms an impervious crust.
Over this when cold and hard a sec-
ond coating of similar material is
flowed, on to which while still steam-.....---—.....— -- -
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
36
mg hot is shoveled pea-sized gravel.
The finished coating thus pro-
duced forms a rough-cast surface
that gives to the great oval the ap-
pearance of a cyclopean stone bowl,
in vivid contrast with the dazzling
emerald green of the playing field
Around and About.
With the interior transformation,
an equally impressive change is pro-
gressing around and about the Sta-
dium; acres of level concourse, of
grass lawns and of garden areas
have been formed on hill and fill and
one-time canyon bed. Wide auto-
roads and pedestrian paths are rap-
idly assuming curves of beauty, here
carved out of the hillside, there tra-
versing fills across depressions,
winding in graceful lines among the
groves of Oaks, Laurels and Euca-
lyptus, connecting, in one long gar
den, the Park .area of Piedmont ave-
nue and Plaza, and the Stadium en-
trance Concourse with the Campus
drive-way in front of the Greek
Theater.
Landscape gardners are busy here,
there and everywhere, on hillside and
roadside with pick and shovel, fork
and hoe planting in seemingly un-
limited thousands, trees and shrubs
and flowering plants. Ragged and
unsightly hillside cuts and bare fills
at which so recently steam shovels
clawed with giant fists* and great
trucks dumped their loads, are now
smoothed and verdant with shrub-
bery and flowering plants all lush
and blooming, looking as though
they were quite at home and beauti-
fully happy to be there.
bearing Completion.
So the great undertaking nears
completion. And, the next few
weeks will show even more striking
and spectacular developments, for it
will mean the still more rapid re-
moval of the obscuring false works
and scaffolding, with coincident
cleaning up of the great piles of dis-
figuring refuse materials. Also it
will mean the speedy laying of
smooth, flower-bordered roadways
and beautifying landscape gardening.
Thus in the very near future the-
wonderful structure will stand out
in all its beauty and simple grandure
in an incomparable setting, both
natural and artificial — a worthy
monument to our noble youths who
made the supreme sacrifice for a
great and worthwhile ideal®
Fernwald, Berkeley, California
October 6, 1923.

A
1
'"f1 ip-■ Um il iiiiii|wifi^puiiiiyipij]y|iThe Story of the Stadium
(Continued)
READY!
Here we are, gentlemen; here’s the whole gang of us,
Pretty near through with the job we are on;
Size up our work—it will give you the hang of us—
North ’long the hillside, south ’cross the canyon.
Yes, our work is our letter of reference;
Just look at the Stadium, consider its lay;
What can we do for you—got any preference,
Wireless to Saturn or bridging the Bay 2
—(With apologies to Berton Braley.)
Finishing Touches.
The STADIUM is so nearly com-
pleted that from now on the work
to be done Will be only finishing
touches on details already well under
way.
Less than three weeks ago the
curving seat slopes of the bowl began
to receive their waterproof coating
of asphalt and gravel; and the
moulding forms of the fifth section
of the Colosseum front, including the
main entrance, was still in process
of construction.
In this short period, the wooden
forms with their reinforcing iron
have been completed, and the con-
crete poured. Thus the interior of
the bowl shows up in all its impres-
sive grandeur of unbroken contours;
so likewise does the Colosseum
frontage, lacking only the removal
of the remaining false-work and
scaffolding to stand out in all its
dazzling whiteness and architectural
stateliness.
Transformations.
At the last writing, great cauldrons
of boiling asphalt with their columns
of pitch black and pungent smoke
characterized the picture of the bowl
interior. Almost immediately, like an
instantaneous transformation scene,
the bowl bottom became changed
into a great lumber-yard filled with
stacked up piles of smooth white
planks, that seem to have ap-
peared by magic, and continue to be
increased by the more prosaic means
of a steady stream of motor-truck
loads.
Piles of kegs of nails and spikes,
long rows of heavy carpenter-
benches at which scores of carpen-
ters kept up an incessant hammer-
ing like the rattle of musketry, ac-
companied by the whir and song of
circular saws, completely changed
the picture and displaced the smoky
asphalt furnaces with their almost
equally black workers. And thus,
with incredible rapidity, the interior
once more has changed from a
cyclopean, smooth-surfaced stone
bowl with panels formed of radial
ribs, into a huge and stately arena
with tier upon tier of seats extending
from playing field up to the sky-
line boundary rim — a transforma-
tion which must have been seen to
be properly appreciated.
Pyrography.
But this is not all; following
closely upon the carpenters came
the seat-numberers who, with several
ingenious little machines, marked
each of the seventy-two thousand
six hundred individual seats with its
own designating number.
This little machine, designed and38
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
Spilt especially for this extensive
job of pyrography, is worthy of more
than passing mention. It is, in ef-
fect, a miniature printing press,
about the size of a typewriter with a
siiBe changeable type, maintained
at burning^^Hiperature by a gas
flame. The g^eous fuel NsMipplied
from a tank of compressed gas P®n-
veyed through a hundred or so feet
of flexible tubing.
^^Blus half a dozen men with se^B
eral of^iese little pyrotechnic print-
ing machines burn into the white
wood of the ^fcats sharply defin^B
figures with astonishing Hapidity —
only a few seconds to each.
Air-Brush Painting.
Nudging the branders along, as
they are urging the carpenters, come
the ,painters with theH big job oi’
painting the acres of s^Bcsl And so,,
qnce more changing the appearance
of the bowl, backre||iin to a stone
color — matching the concrete.
The painting process, like the seat
printing, is effected by an up-to-
date method—air-blast painting by
which the fluid paint is atomized
in^^B hissing grey mist that appl^S
paint coating as fast as a
man walpsj at a normal gait.
Boads and Gardens.
Around the ex^Hior of the Sta-
dium, the curbing, for Be roads and
^^Hsstrian paths, is nearly or quite
commute, defining th9 approaches,
the surrounding drive-^ays and the
la^^^ape - gardening areas. The
macadam for the roads is already
^^Kdng in great q^^Hties and
much of ^ is spread in place on the
roadways. Road jggjrapers, huge
Bower road-rollers, ^^B other road-
makinH mac h i n e r ^Bare rapidly
chang in g the^^Km-roads into
smooth and permanent thorough-
fares, Bne^strian walks and con-
courses. MiHl of the black and
fertile fi-top soil, which months ago
was^^«,ped from the Stadium site
and stored in huge piles in reserve
for the garden areas, has been trans-
ferred raj the future grass plots and
garden spaces, ready for its decora-
tive uses.
A gang of landscape gardeners is
busy on the steep slopes of Charter
from which has been sliced the
qu|S|ter of a million or more cubic
yards of fill and mound material.
These fflsy beautifiers have already
Ifilanted a respectable proportion of
the three thousand and more young
Hne trees, and the holes for the re-
maind^Bare rapidly nearing comple-
tion.
Barbed Wire Fence.
^^^9nning with the Main Entrance,
at Tunnel Mmrt, a five-foot high,
woven-wire ‘Cyclone’ fenoe fs^already
in plase'l running northward up the
slope of the hill and therifje circling
the ex(Hrated, pine-planted area, and
so aro^^HBrnl^orth-eastehrMend of
the Sidium to Canyon Road on the
south.
This most dependable looking fence
with its several strands of barbed
wire on top, givesIBgsurance that no
unauthorized sra^ffir — not even
the Canyon cotton-tails -IBhall view
the ‘Great Game’ without first pro-
curing the colored cardboard evi-’
dence of her, his or its lawfully and
Hmancially M£§|uired riahicMrof en-
trance.
Isn’t it a quaint thought — when
youBme to think of IfBB^ir great
Meat of Learning and High Ideals’,
fehcH? in Hith barbed wire a por-
tion of the domainBMBtributed by
the State (for the purposes of Free
EduBtion), to be used for a pay-as-
you-^^Hr gladiatorial
Quaint ain’t no name for i^|
It’s little won®' that thegSypents,
follc®ng this lead, should acquire
the haTit oMiolding^^B their hands
B>r a fee every time they exhibit
thei^^^^^TOients. By-’n-by t^Rr’ll
want a nickle every timM they
sneeze. . .THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
39
But these reflections are only in
passing, and possibly out of place
in the Story of the Stadium . .
So leaving the implications of the
barbed-wire fence, let’s return to the
more direct subject of our story.
‘Vomitories.’
Beneath the seat slab and from
the Colisseum entrances, the twenty-
nine stairways are in process of
construction, leading from the door-
ways up the internal slopes to the
vomitories (this ugly old word is not
mine) that open through the seat
slab half-way up the western slope
for the ingress and egress of the
spectators. These vomi . . ingresses
and egresses with the six tunnels, on
the level of the playing field, con-
stitute the means by which the Sta-
dium is filled and voided of its
hilarious mass of humanity, on the
western or Colosseum front. On the
eastern side this function is per-
formed by much more simple and
direct constructive means. The
whole semi-circumference, consti-
tuting the eastern rim, is one great
entrance from which the' spectators
descend on the twenty radial stair-
ways which extend unbroken down
from the rim to the playing field.
Finished Structure
The falseworks and scaffolding are
rapidly disappearing from the Colos-
seum frontage. The great bunkers
that held the concrete material, the
skeleton elevator shaft, that recently
reared high above all the construc-
tion work, have been wrecked and
carted away together with the con-
crete mixing and hoisting machin-
ery. So that, the southern end of
the Stadium as viewed from Pros-
pect Street, shows up as a finished
structure, complete even to the
tapering flag-poles surmounted by
and decorated with their glittering
golden spheres Jjl
Stadium Builders
The Story of the Stadium would
be woefully incomplete without some
reference to the personnel—the
Stadium Builders—the Men to whom
we owe the credit of successfully
carrying into effect and realizing in
physical form the dreams of the Sta-
dium projectors.
To do this phase of the subject
anything like justice and give to
the individuals their due mead of
credit would be here a practical im-
possibility. And that it is so, I deep-
ly regret. These fine and earnest
men whom I have met, and whom I
have learned to regard as old friends,
have all been real and necessary
factors in the success of the under-
taking, and it would give me joy to
acredit each with his fair share of
praise.	,
The Stadium Commission
As to the Stadium Commision, 1
need not say anything. It and its
individual members will naturally
and in due course receive full share
of laudation.
The Contractors
The Contracting Companies are
rightfully entitled to unstinted
praise, for they have carried to suc-
cessful acomplishment an unprece-
dented undertaking in record time
and with a truly astonishing lack of
misadventure or accident. It has
been to me a great educational ex-
perience and it has increased my ad-
miration for the genius of organiza-
tion, the forethought and executive
intelligence that is coordinated in
our modern spirit of constructive
cooperation.
Of the two contracts, it seems to
me that of the Bates and Borland
(if any distinction can be made) was
of a character to call for a higher
type of initiative and capability of
meeting raw pioneering problems40
THE STORY OF THE STADIUM
with ingenuity and success. The
Clinton Construction Company’s con-
tract stands out in my mind as a
exemplar of courageous, clean-cut
and effective organization and the
efficient handling of large groups of
workers and quantities of purely
constructive materials.
Each of these companies, in their
executive personnel seems to be pe-
culiarly adapted to the particular
characteristics of their own work,
and I think nothing can be said in
too high praise of the efficiency and
honesty with which these companies
have performed their respective
tasks.
Ormsbee—Albert—Cagle
Out of all the mental pictures of
clean upstanding men that it has
been my privilege to meet in and
around the Stadium undertaking,
three personalities stand out with
sharp distinction, as those to whom
more than any other group is due
the credit of bringing to successful
accomplishment this great commem-
orative memorial.
These three are Dan Ormsbee, the
Resident Engineer, Wesley Albert,
the Hydraulic Expert, and William
Cagle, the Superintendent of the
concrete construction.	*
On the shoulders of this really
remarkable little group, rested the
direct responsibility of translating
pictured plans into physical accom-
plishment, of daily and hourly con-
tending with the natural perversity
of inanimate things and the innate
contrariety of the free-born human
elements, and to so intelligently deal
with and control these diverse and
conflicting factors that through and
out of their complicated inter-action
the one-time dream of others is real-
ized today in the stately structure of
our Memorial Stadium.
Had I received no other benefit
than adding this trio of upstanding
representatives of modern industry
to my list of friends, I would feel
more than amply repaid for writing
the Story of the Stadium.
While glancing over the foregoing
to note whether anything of mo-
ment had been omitted, a cold nose
is gently nudging my wrist, and
an ingratiating syncopated whine
is unmistakably intimating that
the time has come to turn home-
ward, so with uncovered heads
James and I make our bow and
friendly bow-wow to our many busy
friends the workers and the friends
who through our eyes have watched
the transformation of Strawberry
Canyon.
Fernwald, Berkeley,
October 27, 1923.
California. ,

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