Summary: Jack Marchant was interviewed by Julie Sullivan in November, 1984. He grew up in Berkeley and went to Cal. In 1933 he became active as a homebuilder in Berkeley and Kensington. After service in World War II and being a teacher for a few years Jack resumed his homebuilding career in Lafayette, where he […]
Oral History: Russell Bruzzone — November 20th, 1984
Summary: Russell Bruzzone was interviewed by Oliver Hamlin on November 20, 1984. Russell’s grandfather, Frank Ghiglione, was a truck farmer who came to Lafayette in 1906. He previously ran vegetable farming operations in San Pablo and in the Rockridge district of Oakland. In this interview Russell looks back over his long career as a homebuilder […]
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: 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 […]
