By Don Pelton

We recently spent a couple of night’s in architect Julia Morgan’s Berkeley City Club (sometimes called the “Little Castle”) in order to attend a conference there.

It’s a gorgeous place, first opened in 1929 as the “Berkeley Women’s City Club.” (Read more about how this building is part of the “women’s club movement” in the US, here and here).

We were puzzled to notice that every room in this historic building, just one block from the UC campus, is provisioned with earplugs on every nightstand.

Late in the evening of our second night there — the night before the “Big Game” between Stanford and UC — we understood why. A huge boisterous pre-game rally sounded like it was just next door. The rally ended with fireworks that lit up the sky (see my belated photo of the afterglow to the right).

Here are a few images from our stay:

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