1918 Cal yearbook offers snapshot of forgotten campus life

"Keep it off the tin roof", a cryptic, amusing look at U.C. Berkeley campus life, from the Blue and Gold 1918. From the collection of Bob Bragman. "Keep it off the tin roof", a cryptic, amusing look at U.C. Berkeley campus life, from the Blue and Gold 1918. From the collection of Bob Bragman. Photo: Blue And Gold, 1918 Photo: Blue And Gold, 1918 Image 1 of / 105 Caption Close 1918 Cal yearbook offers snapshot of forgotten campus life 1 / 105 Back to Gallery

Digging into my personal archives, I came across a Blue and Gold - a UC Berkeley yearbook dated 1918. It's a beautiful slice of campus life that covers the years 1916 and 1917, published in 1918. It's hard to believe that was more than one hundred years ago.

At that time the university was about 50 years old. There was a total enrollment of 6,601 students in Berkeley and 5,928 in professional schools in San Francisco and what was then the farm school in Davis. The enrollment figures for the fall of 2018 were just a bit higher, with 30,853 undergraduates and 11,666 graduate students, according to the university.

Due to a growing enrollment at the turn of the century, an initiative provided $1.8 million toward the construction of five new buildings, according to my edition of Blue and Gold. The new building, Benjamin Ide Wheeler Hall, cost $700,000 — a grand sum back then. A new wing was added to the library at a cost of $547,000. The new agriculture building cost $375,000 and the chemistry building was erected at a cost of $220,000.

The new construction didn't cover the cost of a much-needed student union, which occupied the old North Hall basement. At the time, the Harmon Gymnasium barely accommodated half the population for campus events. Thirty-six men's fraternities, eleven men's house clubs, seventeen women's fraternities and six women's house clubs helped with the need for social space and dormitory shortage.

The book is a compilation of campus life, which includes academics, sports, theater, military, fraternity and sorority life, as well as music, architecture and everyday social life. The back of the book contained advertisements for local businesses. I've tried to include a representation of this in the gallery above.

Bob Bragman is a producer for SFGATE. His writing reflects his love of the Bay Area, in addition to his passion for vintage pop culture, ephemera and vernacular photographs. To see more of his content, please click here.