Secret Stairs East Bay

First, there’s the book

Charles Fleming, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California, has written “Secret Stairs East Bay, A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Berkeley and Oakland.” 

Mr Fleming presents 38 walks over more than 200 pages, and we thought it would be fun and good exercise to walk each one, and report on them here.

Information on the book is here. The author also appeared on KQED radio in July, 2011, and you can listen to the interview about public staircases here.

We used one other book; it is cited by Mr Fleming—”41 Berkeley Walking Tours”, by the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association. It’s not the easiest book to follow, but it has information about many houses on the walks in Berkeley. We also consulted “A Map of Berkeley’s Pathways,” also referenced by Mr Fleming. The map is produced by the Berkeley PATH wanderers association.

NB: In the many years since this blog was originally published, AC transit has changed its route and route numbers, so the references to bus routes is no longer accurate.