Love those mosaic murals? Repairs begin on 1904 UC Berkeley building

Erik Sandell, an architectural conservator, begins work to restore the massive, Byzantine-style mosaic murals on the Old Art Gallery building on campus. He is with Architectural Resources Group (ARG), the firm managing the project. (UC Berkeley photo by Sofia Liashcheva) You've likely seen it on walks across the UC Berkeley campus - the little one-story red brick building northeast of Sproul Hall and near Strawberry Creek. It's hard not to admire the colorful, Byzantine-style mosaic tile murals on its east façade that depict people playing music, dancing, painting and sculpting. But after more than 50 years as a storage space, the decaying and largely unused 1904 structure known as the Old Art Gallery will be readied starting today for a notable new role - as Switch Station #8, the future home of electrical equipment that will route energy throughout campus. When complete, the Romanesque Revival-style building designed by John Galen Howard, who became the UC's supervising architect in 1901, will return to its original function as a power house. This time, however, it will serve as part of the Clean Energy Campus, a system designed to transition Berkeley to 100% clean energy by 2030.