Founders Hall Mural

Hanging out on the balcony, 1960s

Keenan, Larry, Jr., (photographer)

Guild Hall was one of the first buildings constructed on the Oakland campus by the college’s founder, Frederick Meyer, and faculty and students in the late 1920s. Guild Hall caught fire in the late 1970s and was then demolished. The Shaklee Building is currently located in this spot.

At work in the painting studio, 1968

Viola Frey demonstrates pot throwing, 1970

Cheney, Eric W. (Photographer)

Legendary sculptor and Professor Emerita of Ceramics Viola Frey attended the college from 1953 to 1955 as an undergraduate student. She returned in 1964 to teach and was central to the school’s Ceramics program for over 30 years. She retired in 1999.

On the roof with a guitar, 1965

Keenan, Larry, Jr., (photographer)

Florence Heuser and Carolyn Blorp prep their costumes for the Surreal Ball, 1963

Nevis, Betty Jane (photographer)

Robert Harper, looking on, was the college’s head librarian from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Painting Riyo Sato in the Nahl Memorial Garden, 1937

Riyo Sato graduated from the college in 1937. Alexander Nepote, far right, was a student when this photo was taken and returned to the college after WWII as a professor and then dean of faculty. The Japanese-inspired Nahl Memorial Garden was created in 1935 to honor one of CCA’s founders, Perham W. Nahl, who was an authority on Japanese painting.

Sculpture class in Berkeley, pre-1926

CCA’s original location in the early 1900s was the top floor of The Studio Building in Berkeley. In 1922, the Treadwell Estate was acquired and transformed into a campus by founder Frederick Meyer, faculty, and students over the next several years. Classes were all located on this new Oakland campus by 1926.

Graduate students, 1965

Dhaemers, Margaret Penrose (Photographer)

Graduate studies at CCA began with the Master of Fine Arts program, which was established in 1940.

Taking a break in the painting studio, 1967

Earle Bond and Fred Robler at the Bal Masque Futura, 1936

Costume parties, such as this one with a futuristic theme, have been central to student life through the years.

On the scaffolding in Richard Cory’s building class, 1975

Cory, Richard L. (photographer)

Richard Cory’s Crafts Building course grew out of others taught by Hugh Wiley and Arthur Boericke in the Environmental Studies program.

Sculpting in clay, 1970s

Belany, Ralph (photographer)

Blowing bubbles at graduation, 1992

Painting at the marina, 1950

Riding club members at the Sequoia Riding Club in Oakland, 1933

Various student activity clubs (and even fraternities and sororities!) are part of CCA’s history. The Sequoia Riding Club was located at 2923 Mountain Blvd. in the East Oakland Hills near what is now Joaquin Miller Park.

Perham Nahl, Xavier Martinez, Dr. William S. Porter, and CCA founder Frederick Meyer, 1927

At the 1927 commencement ceremony, from left to right: Founding faculty Perham Nahl and Xavier Martinez; Dr. William S. Porter, an art patron, trustee, and honorary degree recipient; and Frederick H. Meyer, founder and director of the school.

Babs Meyer in front of a portrait of herself as a girl

Cheney, Eric W. (photographer)

Laetitia (Babs) Meyer was the daughter of CCA founders Frederick Meyer and Laetitia Summerville Meyer. As a child, Babs often sat for students in drawing and painting classes..

Susan Jackson performs in alum William Clark’s body sculpture at his IPW exhibit, 1974

Betty Jane Nevis Photography (photographer)

The second Isabelle Percy West Gallery, named for founding faculty and painter Isabelle West, was completed in 1968 as part of the Oakland campus’s Founders complex and has been the site of exhibitions for the last five decades.

In the glass blowing studio, 1968

Eric W. Cheney (photographer)

This image pre-dates the 1979 completion of the Raleigh and Claire Shaklee Building and is likely at the off-campus foundry in Berkeley used by students at the time.

Painting outside, 1963

Bravo, Mike (photographer)

This photo documents the Lytton contest in June and July of 1963.

At the William Clark show, 1974

Betty Jane Nevis Photography (photographer)

Dancers Marta Morgan and Janet Sue Jacobsen perform in alum William Clark’s body sculpture exhibit at Isabelle Percy West Gallery.

Working in the garden, 1943

McDonough, Thomas (photographer)

Barbara Hoel, Julia Isackson, Alice Soll, Marion Kent, Phylura Gibbs, and Barbara Calkins during Garden Clean-up Day. This photo appeared in the Oakland Tribune with the caption, “With Tony the gardener off to war, the girls of the California College of Arts and Crafts took matters into their own hands devoting their talents to the chrysanthemum bed.”

In John Britton’s sculpture class, 1963

Mel Brenner, Bob Raible, and Jean Goldenberger in the school play, 1947

Costume design, set design, and acting have all been part of the college’s curriculum, and for many years annual theater productions were presented in Guild Hall.

Kenneth Romero and Marena Galvan with Marena’s painting at the Native American Students Exhibition, 1978

Betty Jane Nevis Photography (Photographer)

In Robert Barnhuetter’s silkscreen class, early 1960s

Dhaemers, Margaret Penrose (photographer)

Walking up the road from Broadway, 1926

Students walk toward Treadwell Mansion (currently Macky Hall), which housed classrooms as well as the living quarters of school founder Frederick Meyer and his family. Reproductions of this image first appear in the 1926–1927 California School of Arts and Crafts catalog with the caption , “Main Road Leading from Broadway to the School.” The image was used in school catalogs throughout the 1930s.

The Founders Hall Mural was created, in the new Founders Hall student housing at the center of CCA’s San Francisco campus, to celebrate the activities of CCA students through the many eras of the college’s history.

Gallery