Golden Sheaf Bakery Annex
CITY OF BERKELEY LANDMARK
designated in 1978
GOLDEN SHEAF BAKERY ANNEX
Clinton Day, Architect, 1905
Jim Novosel, Architect, 2000
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places
In 1877, English immigrant John G. Wright founded the Golden Sheaf, Berkeley’s first wholesale/retail
bakery. The original bakery, with a public dining room, stood around the corner on Shattuck Avenue.
Bakers lived in an on-site dormitory and university students boarded in rooms upstairs. The business
grew into the region’s largest bakery, and this annex was constructed to house its fleet of horse-
drawn delivery wagons. Wright helped form a bakers’ union in 1904, and provided a meeting
place here for groups advocating temperance and women’s suffrage. In 1906 the bakery produced
thousands of loaves of bread to feed refuges from the San Francisco Earthquake.
The bakery business was sold to Wonderbread in 1909 and was moved from this site.
In 2000, developer Avi Nevo renovated and restored the building. He then donated
it to the adjacent Berkeley Repertory Theater to house its children’s education
center. The brick facade still features the Golden Sheaf name and symbol
in terra-cotta relief.
Berkeley Historical Plaque Project
2001