Berkeley, Her Land and Her Gift of Early Neighborhoods. To understand Berkeley and its neighborhoods, we must start by seeing the natural landscape before development. Richard Schwartz, a local author and historian, who wrote Berkeley 1900 and Earthquake Exodus 1906, will give an illustrated talk on what the land of Berkeley looked like before its neighborhoods appeared, the flowering of neighborhoods that arose from this remote place, and the context of culture within which they sprang up until the post-1906 period.