Summary: After growing up and attending college in Oregon, Donn and Arlene Black moved to California, where Donn started his law career. In 1967 they moved from Oakland to Lafayette. He became Lafayette’s first mayor when the city incorporated the following year. In this interview Donn describes how he and a small group of other […]
Oral History: Dr. Clifford Feiler – November 17th, 1979
Summary: Dr. Clifford Feiler, physician and civic leader, came to Lafayette in 1939. He talks about the small village where there were no banks and no bus service and where he was the only medical doctor. Oral History: Angela Broadhead: This is an interview with Dr. Clifford Feiler on November 17, 1979 for the Lafayette […]
Oral History: Andrew H. Young – November 11th, 1981
This speech by Andrew H. Young was delivered at the Town Hall building in Lafayette on November 11, 1981. Addressing a combined meeting of the Friends of the Lafayette Library and the Lafayette Historical Society, he presents a summary of his book, The Developers of Lafayette.
Oral History: Jack Marchant – November 30th, 1984
Summary: Jack Marchant and his brother Paul began building houses together in Kensington and North Berkeley at the end of World War II. They moved to Lafayette to continue this work in 1950. When Lafayette was incorporated in 1968, Jack was a member of the first City Council. The demand for new homes was very […]
Oral History: Barbara Franke Boyle – March 4th, 2011
Barbara Franke Boyle came to Lafayette from Oakland in 1937, when she was 10. Her family had been using the ranch in the Happy Valley area as a summer place only prior to the that. They raised pears, and Barbara’s father operated the Walnut Creek Cannery. In the years that Barbara was going to grammar […]
Oral History: Gloria Duffy – April 2006
Summary: Gloria Duffy had an illustrious career. She was a pioneer of Bay Area radio, involved in the arts, and was part of a flourishing real estate business in Lafayette from the 1950s to the 1970s. Oral History: Interviewer: This is the interview of Gloria Duffy, broadcasting in real estate, lady of Lafayette, given in […]
Oral History: Patricia Boyer – April 2006
Patti grew up in the Lafayette Horse Show. Her father, George Brooks, was the horse show announcer for many years. Patti won a trophy in the 1939 horse show riding her paint horse Pagero. After growing up in Richmond, Patti moved permanently to Lafayette 1957. Her recollections of early Lafayette are significant in the development […]
Oral History: Russell & Joan Bruzzone – October 2006
Summary: Joan and Russell Bruzzone remember Lafayette in the 1950s. They discuss their ongoing residential and commercial real estate activities which created housing for hundreds of Lafayette families and gave the town its major commercial shopping center. To create the Plaza Shopping Center in the 1960s the Bruzzones removed 200,000 cubic feet of dirt from […]
From The Archives: Jennie Bickerstaff (Oral History)
We are starting to open up our archives of oral histories and videos beginning with a talk given by Jennie (Mrs. William) Bickerstaff Rosenberg at a meeting of The Contra Costa Historical Society held in Lafayette on the evening of May 23, 1956. Mrs. Rosenberg was 85 years old at the time. The link will […]
An Oldtimer’s Reflections of Lafayette (Oliver Hamlin)
I was asked by the Lafayette Historical Society to jot down some of my memories of the Hamlin property in Lafayette. My first remembrance of my life in Lafayette started in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s when I was growing up in Piedmont. Those were the days before the Caldecot tunnel was opened. You […]
