A Century of Progress: the Bay Area Discovers the Modern Muse 1890-1990

This will be a talk titled A Century of Progress: the Bay Area Discovers the Modern Muse 1890-1990 by Alan Hess, an expert on Berkeley modern architecture in the 20th century. This will be held in the YWCA (Berkeley) Auditorium, 2600 Bancroft Way.

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA) is offering this lecture where you will learn about Berkeley's architectural modernism in the middle of the last century. This lecture will be interesting to anyone, but also meaningful to those attending the BAHA House Tour on September 28th. See (add the Eventbrite link) for a description of that tour.

This event will start with a short reception where we will be serving hors d'oeuvres by our caterer and two special white wines, one from California and the other from New Zealand. Our members recently have given high marks for all three. The reception will be followed by a short introduction from the YWCA about their mid-century building, designed by Joseph Esherick (1914-1998) with slides followed by the main lecture by Alan Hess also with slides.

About the author: Architect and historian Alan Hess is the author of twenty-two books on mid-20th-century Modern architecture and urbanism, including monographs on architects Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and John Lautner; as well as architectural histories of Las Vegas and Palm Springs. He is active in the preservation of post-World War II architecture and serves on the California State Historical Resources Commission and the boards of Preserve Orange County and Palm Springs Modernism Week. He is the former architecture critic for the San Jose Mercury News.Hess was a National Arts Journalism Program Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism, and recipient of grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Clarence Stein Foundation. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning.

The price for the reception and lecture is: $25 per person and $15 for students. Please pay through Eventbrite. You can also pay by check made payable to BAHA and mailed to P.O. Box 1137 Berkeley, CA 94701. Paypal is available as well.

If you go to the join-as-a-member page of our website (berkeleyheritage.com), you will see instructions for using Paypal. There will be available at the door wine tickets for $7.00 per glass.Parking on the street is available but limited and you may want to carpool or use a service such as Uber.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

2600 Bancroft Way, 2600 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, United States