McCreary - Greer House - Berkley, CA - Victorian Style Architecture on Waymarking.com

"The house is refered to the house as the McCreary-Greer House, and the McCreary family did occupy it from 1907 to 1981, they were not the first owners. The house’s origins have been shrouded in mystery, and there are conflicting stories about its construction. From existing records it can be concluded that the house was built in 1901, three years earlier than the commonly assumed date of 1904. However, the house may have been designed as early as 1896 by an architect named Cornelius S. McNally, and it was built by either Ada and Abner Lowell or Marie and Frederick Bateman (of the Bateman Tract). The owner of the land between c. 1895 and 1901 was Abner Lowell; the Batemans were listed as owners by 1902. Donald Lawton, who lived nearby as a boy, remembers the basement being unfinished for quite some time (a favorite story: Donald Lawton paddling a raft from room to room when the basement had filled with water from the winter rains). The Lowells may have built the house, with or without McNally’s 1896 plans, before selling it to the Batemans. Or the Batemans may have built the house using the existing foundation, with McNally’s plans, or plans of their own architect. We may never know.

Intermediate owners before the McCrearys purchased it in 1907 were Josephine and Burrell White, who may have been 1906 Earthquake refugees. J. Edward McCreary was in the oil business in Hanford and was typical of the prosperous businessmen and San Francisco commuters in the neighborhood who valued proximity to transportation and the University. The Lawtons lived a block west at 2211 Durant Avenue; Donald’s father was in real estate on Center Street. Across the street was Frank A. Naylor, officer of numerous Berkeley banks and realty firms; at Ellsworth Street were the Welkers, who had an “orchard” around the corner on Bancroft Avenue. Where St. Mark’s church parking lot is now was what Lawton remembers as the home of the Dean Witter family, a huge verandah-encircled house built in 1895 for the family of Frederick H. Clark, another Berkeley banker/realtor. A little later, police chief August Vollmer lived at 2303 and would take Lawton and the other boys swimming at the Berkeley Pier; up the block around the City Club site, one particularly favored boy had his own roller coaster (“scenic railway”), inspired by the one at Idora Park; the firehouse at Shattuck and Durant Avenues was a favorite attraction; and the loft of the McCreary carriage house was a place to go eat a whole carton of ice cream undisturbed."

Public/Private: Public Year Built: 1900s Web Address: [Web Link] Tours Available?: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   01/03/2008 ucdvicky visited it

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