High-Peaked Colonial Revival
Part 6: Siblings and neighbors
2326 Webster Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)8 March 2005
Traditionally, when builders put up several High-Peaked Colonial Revival houses in the same vicinity, they scrupled to individualize them to a greater or lesser degree. Three related houses are scattered on the 2300 block of Webster Street. Each one was given its own character, but their cross-bracketed (or pierced, knee-braced) porch posts betray a shared provenance.
2333 Webster Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
2316 Webster Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
While each of the three has a different gable, they all feature a rustic porch that runs the length of the front fa�ade and lends a farmhouse appearance to these suburban dwellings. Atypically for farmhouses, a decorative frieze runs under the porch eaves. In two of the houses, the porch posts and the frieze are identical. What a clever way to knit a neighborhood together visually without condemning it to cookie-cutter repetition.
2333 Webster Street
2326 Webster Street
2316 Webster Street (photos: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
The pair below is almost identical, but they are located on different streets in the same neighborhood. Coming upon one of them after having seen the other is a surprising reward.
 3010 Benvenue Avenue(photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005) |  Detail, 3010 Benvenue Avenue (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005) |  3015 Hillegass Avenue (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005) |
At the northwest corner of Regent and Russell Streets, two half-timbered cottages, built in 1906–1907, are positioned at 90 degrees to each other.
2449 Russell Street (left) & 2840 Regent Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)The gable stucco on the Russell Street house is rough, while on its Regent Street neighbor it is smooth. Russell Street is clad in narrow clapboard on the ground floor; Regent Street is shingled. The gable windows have different shapes, and the half-timbering pattern is varied. Together, the two cottages create a charming mini-enclave that could be taken for an English village street. It’s no surprise, since their first owner and architect was the English-born John Shaw Helyer (1859–1919), best known for his work in Vancouver, British Columbia—most notably the Dominion Trust Building.
2449 Russell Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
2840 Regent Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
The cottages below appear to be twins separated at birth. In fact, one inspired the other. The older house is the painted one, located just south of the Berkeley High School campus amid some wildly flamboyant Victorians. The brown-shingle sits in the sedately genteel Elmwood neighborhood. It was built specifically to look just like the Southside house. According to the Edwards Transcripts of Records for Alameda County, a Building Contract Notice filed on 16 September 1905 announced that on the south side of Webster Street, 475.06 feet east of College Avenue, all work with exception to certain plastering, etc., a 1-1/2-story dwelling for Mrs. S. Crow was to be an exact duplicate of the dwelling of Mrs. Matthews, 1908 Channing Way. The architect and contractor was Thomas M. Grigg, and the construction cost was to be $1,900.
2738 Webster Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
1908 Channing Way (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2009)
2738 Webster Street
(Sanborn maps, 1911)
1908 Channing Way
(Sanborn maps, 1911)
These details from 1911 Sanborn fire insurance maps reveal the houses’ near-identical plans. Both cottages continue to exude country charm by way of their square corner bays, dentils, sawtooth shingle trim, and diamond insets in the window panes.
2738 Webster Street (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
1908 Channing Way (photo: Daniella Thompson, 2005)
