In a city rife with ordinary houses, the gabled and formerly clapboarded house at 1304 Norvell Street comes across as more ordinary than most. Yet it has been a beloved house, and a house with several tales to tell, as are so many structures in our city, with tales of small-town life, hardworking people, families and friendship.

There’s even a bit of wife swapping in this tale, husband swapping too, though as our storyteller tells it, it seems to have been done with the blessing of the justice of the peace.

Walter Maddox and his wife were the first Black residents of what became El Cerrito. Maddox worked his way up from the ground floor at the Southern Pacific Railroad and became an expert on timetables. In addition to owning his land and home in Stege, Maddox purchased a 20-acre ranch in Orland. In 1894, Maddox also provided financial backing to start the Western Outlook newspaper, “A Journal Dedicated to the Interests of the Negro on the Pacific Coast and the Betterment of his Position.”

In 1918, 50 young women volunteers with Berkeley Dispensary Auxiliary began raising funds to purchase a new Dodge motor car to help nurses and social workers meet the needs of patients suffering from influenza and other health conditions during the flu pandemic. The car was purchased in early 1919 and was welcomed by the health workers who had made 8,429 home visits the year before. In 1932, the Berkeley Dispensary was renamed the Berkeley Clinic and the auxiliary continued its fundraising, primarily through annual rummage sales. The Berkeley Clinic Auxiliary continues to raise money through the sales of donated items at the Turnabout Thrift Store at 10052 San Pablo Ave. in El Cerrito, where the all-volunteer shop moved in 1986.

Although Kyungmi Shin lived in El Cerrito for several years in the 1990s, she spent most of her time in classes at UC Berkeley or in her Point Richmond studio as she worked to earn her master’s of fine arts in 1995. Living in a small duplex near the El Cerrito Plaza BART station was a convenient place to crash, she said. More than 20 years later, she returned to El Cerrito and dug deep into the area’s history and culture after being commissioned to create two large murals for the renovated El Cerrito Del Norte BART Station. The murals, which present two perspectives of the city, were installed and unveiled in 2021

I imagine becoming a seventh-grader was a big step for every sixth-grader in every school that fed into Portola Junior High in September, 1967. For me, it was both exciting and ominous. The prospect of meeting new people by the dozens fascinated the socially curious lad I had become by the age of 12. One of the first extra-curricular activities in which I engaged was a run for president of the seventh grade class. I was beaten handily by Rob Williams, an immensely popular kid from Madera school, up the hill from Del Mar where I had cut my elementary-school teeth. But my appetite for activities and popularity was indelibly whetted, and the nature of my secondary-school journey formed. (December 2022)

Dance found me in kindergarten. It was 1966. The Civil Rights Movement was boiling like a thick, richly seasoned stew pot during a frigidly cold winter. Images of southern tyranny branded minds. The complacency of fair-weather legislators, covetously holding transformative power, frustrated committed and hopeful souls of every race as they pressed for justice individually and collectively. A new consciousness was sprouting. My parents, Lucy and Charles Wilson, intersected with one of those consciously sprouting souls. Rabbi Axelrod, a religious leader devoted to the movement, owned a home in El Cerrito. As he planned to move from the segregated community, he was committed to the radical act of selling his property to an African American family. (July 2023)

When Charlie Murray opened the El Cerrito Plaza barber shop in 1959, it joined a handful of similar shops stretching along San Pablo Avenue and at the eastern end of Fairmount Avenue. And while the shops were ostensibly there just for haircuts, they also served as informal gathering places for the men and boys in the neighborhood. Back then, many guys got their hair cut every two weeks and appointments were largely the province of beauty salons, so traffic was steady. Customers walked into the barber shop, took a seat and waited until the next chair opened up. “There were a lot of barber shops on San Pablo Avenue – one on every block practically,” recalls Phil Playle, who owns Phil’s Barber Shop at the top of Fairmount Avenue. (July 2023)

Starting from a makeshift stage in a high school gym and a derelict movie house in the 1950s, El Cerrito’s home-grown live theater community has not only staged hundreds of dramas, comedies and musicals, but also helped similar communities grow around the Bay Area and across the country. From writing practical lesson books for drama teachers and students to training actors and directors to providing stage props to other theaters, the programs at Contra Costa Civic Theatre and El Cerrito High School share the spotlight. The programs trace their roots back to two families, both of which remain active in the community. (January 2023)

The Contra Costa Civic Theatre enters its 65th year in 2024 facing a number of changes, including drawing post-pandemic audiences in a time when other theaters are closing, new regulations for staff and the need to ensure financial stability. But there are constants to make the journey easier. Descendents of CCCT founders Louis and Bettianne Flynn are deeply involved, the theater has a stable home at the corner of Pomona Street and Moeser Lane and a highly regarded program for young people continues to thrive. (June 2024)

During his 15 years teaching drama and stagecraft at El Cerrito, followed by 30 more years as a professor of theater arts at San Francisco State University, Sam “Dr. Sam” Elkind directed thousands of students as they learned the ropes of acting, directing and producing live shows. But he also influenced an untold number of other students and teachers through the instructional books he wrote. Although now out of print, copies of some of the books can still be found for sale online. (January 2024)

Seen from below in the 1920s, the largely tree-less and sparsely populated hills of El Cerrito and Kensington beckoned -- so much empty land, such spectacular views. By the start of the decade building commenced, the sedate, Tudor-styled Berkeley Country Club in the northern El Cerrito Hills, fine mansions and small subdivisions in unincorporated Kensington and the El Cerrito hills. But how about something grander? Something like the Taj Mahal – only a Taj Mahal topped with neon and incandescent lights? By 1927, Arthur Francois Edwards was completing the concrete foundation for a “massive above ground temple of entombment,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (January 2024)

During the 1930s and 1940s, as Sunset Mausoleum grew and faced economic challenges associated with the Great Depression and World War II, the mausoleum’s future owner, Arthur Edwards Jr. was distinguishing himself in military school, on stage and in the law.
Edwards, 17, a “brilliant young junior cadet at the San Diego Army and Navy Academy,” was one of four cadets chosen to represent the school in “a drama tournament put on by Pasadena Community Playhouse,” the Chronicle reported in 1934. Edwards later attended Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, passed the bar in 1938, served in the military during World War II, and was soon enjoying a legal career in the city and as a performer, both onstage and in real life. (June 2024)

For nearly four years after World War II, El Cerrito was home to an eight-man jazz band credited by many with helping drive the revival of traditional New Orleans-style jazz on the West Coast. From 1947 until the dawning of Jan. 1, 1951, Lu Watters and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band, or YBJB, held sway in Hambone Kelly’s, a nightclub that was often packed to its 500-plus capacity. The band took over the vacant Hollywood Club at 204 San Pablo Ave., which sat in a stretch of nightclubs, casinos and restaurants.

Helen Hamilton Holloway recalls being among the first Black students
Today’s El Cerrito High School has a notably diverse student body, with just over 70 percent of the students falling into categories other than “white,” according to the California Department of Education. Back when the school opened in 1941 it was almost entirely white, not just the student body but teachers, aides and, bus drivers. Helen Hamilton Holloway, who is 96, remembers what schooling was like at El Cerrito High, where she was among the first Black students to integrate the school. She and her younger brother Willie may have been the very first. (October 2023)

In spring of 1975, El Cerrito High School senior Rose Aguilar was looking forward to receiving her diploma and her letters for competing in interscholastic sports. The diploma wasn’t a problem, but when she didn’t get her letters for playing varsity softball, tennis and JV basketball over four years, she asked where they were and was told that while boys received them, girls didn’t. That was about to change. (April 2024)

Just a few steps from the main office in the main building of El Cerrito High School stands a dedicated museum space featuring artifacts from the school’s existence from its opening on January 6, 1941, until the summer of 2005, when the old structures were demolished to make way for the today’s modern campus. The roots of the project go back to 2003 when Lu Tipping, mother of three ECHS graduates, was a member of the West Contra Costa Unified School District committee reviewing which schools needed to be upgraded for seismic safety and which ones needed to be demolished and rebuilt. El Cerrito High fell into the second group. (October 2023)