Soda Works Building
Berkeley, Alameda County, California
Marker Inscription
CITY OF BERKELEY LANDMARK designated in 2004. Soda Works Building. E.A. Spalding, Contractor, 1888. Robert Agers constructed this building to manufacture “the very best soda water” for customers throughout California. The recessed storefronts, second-floor oriel windows, and high false front are largely unchanged from a 1904 expansion. The building evokes Berkeley’s early small-town character when Telegraph Avenue was lined with wood frame houses and small shops. In 1969, during the People’s Park protests, Alameda County sheriff’s deputies fired at spectators, mortally wounding James Rector on the roof of this building. Berkeley Historical Plaque Project 2005
Erected by Berkeley Historical Plaque Project
The Story
Built in 1888 by Robert Agers to manufacture soda water for customers across California, this false-front building recalls the era when Telegraph Avenue was a dusty street of wood-frame houses and small shops. Its recessed storefronts and second-floor oriel windows survive largely as they looked after a 1904 expansion. In 1969, during the tumultuous People's Park protests, Alameda County deputies fired on spectators here, mortally wounding James Rector on the building's roof.
Why it matters
One modest building links two Americas — the small-town commercial world of the Gilded Age and the era-defining campus and free-speech upheavals of the 1960s that turned Berkeley into a national symbol.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When this modest false-front building went up in 1888, Berkeley was still finding itself. Telegraph Avenue was not yet the crowded, countercultural artery it would become — it was a dusty street lined with wood-frame houses and small shops, where a growing town on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay was stitching together the ordinary businesses that make a place feel permanent.
This was the tail end of the Gilded Age, a period when American towns everywhere were industrializing in small, local ways. You didn't need a factory district to make things; a determined proprietor with a contractor and a good idea could put up a building and start manufacturing. Bottled soda water was exactly that kind of enterprise — a modern convenience, produced locally, sold regionally.
The building's very shape tells you the era. The high false front, the recessed storefronts, the second-floor oriel windows that survive largely as they looked after a 1904 expansion — these are the marks of a confident young commercial street, dressing up plain wooden buildings to look grander than they were.
People & events
Robert Agers built this place in 1888 to manufacture what he advertised as the very best soda water, selling to customers across California. It's a small, human story of ambition: a builder, a contractor named E.A. Spalding, and a bet that a growing state would want a cold, fizzing drink.
But the marker carries a second, far darker chapter, and the two could hardly be more different. In 1969, during the upheaval known as the People's Park protests, this quiet corner of old Berkeley became a place of violence. Alameda County sheriff's deputies fired at spectators, and a young man named James Rector was mortally wounded on the roof of this building.
That one sentence holds an enormous amount of grief and controversy. The People's Park conflict pitted students, activists, and residents against authorities over a patch of university-owned land, and it escalated into one of the most bitter confrontations of the era. Rector, by the accounts memorialized here, was a spectator — which is part of why his death became a lasting symbol of how far the situation had spiraled.
Its place in the American story
One building, two Americas. That is what makes this corner extraordinary. The soda works belongs to the small-town, entrepreneurial world of the late nineteenth century — the era when local manufacturing and neighborly commerce built the fabric of American towns.
The 1969 tragedy belongs to a completely different national story: the campus upheavals and free-speech struggles of the 1960s, when Berkeley became a byword for protest and confrontation across the country. The People's Park conflict was watched nationwide, and it hardened the divisions of a turbulent decade.
To stand here is to see how a single, unremarkable structure can absorb the history that happens around it. The building didn't change its purpose or its walls to become significant; history simply arrived at its doorstep — and its roof — twice, in two utterly different centuries of the American experience.
If you visit
Look up. The rewards of this building are in the details that time left mostly alone: the high false front rising above the roofline, the second-floor oriel windows bumping out over the sidewalk, and the recessed storefronts that pull you in from the street. It's a small survivor of Berkeley's earliest commercial character, and once you know what you're looking at, it stands out from its busier neighbors.
Then let the marker do its quiet, difficult work. This is the same roofline where James Rector was fatally shot in 1969. It's worth pausing to hold both stories at once — the cheerful soda-water enterprise and the day of violence — without letting either erase the other.
On a walk along Telegraph Avenue, this makes a natural stop for anyone interested in how a single street can carry a whole century of change. Give yourself a minute on the sidewalk to take in the facade, and consider how ordinary a place can look while holding history this heavy.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Robert Agers
- · James Rector
Related events
- · People's Park protests
Themes & tags
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