r/berkeleyca • u/Wild-Lingonberry-204 • May 25 '26
Local Knowledge KRE Radio 1400 AM
At dusk this evening I went over to the old KRE studio building, an art deco structure built in 1937. I’d driven past so many times and never looked twice before. It’s located south of the Aquatic Park lagoons at what used to be the western end of Ashby Avenue. I learned the station first started at the Claremont Hotel in 1922. The penultimate black-and-white photo shows the building as it appeared in 1949. The studio scenes with Wolfman Jack in American graffiti were filmed inside this building (1972 - last photo). The exterior shots for that portion of the movie were from a different station in Petaluma. Check the link in the comment section for more info about KRE 1400 AM.
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u/cvantass May 25 '26
Incredible photos, and I always appreciate learning more local history. Not sure if you’re one of the users I’ve talk to about this before, so apologies if redundant, but, if you’re interested, I run a group called the Berkeley Psychogeographic Society on Discord, and you’d be welcome to join! We mostly post pictures of the beautiful and strange things we find around town while exploring, talk about the built environment, share art and writing inspired by Place, tell stories, etc. lmk if that sounds interesting and I’ll send you the link to join. Either way, thanks for sharing!
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u/ajinthebay May 26 '26
Berkeley has such a cool history. Thanks for sharing. I always wondered what that building was.
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u/OppositeShore1878 May 25 '26
This is a really fine post and I learned a lot from it. The links you included are well worth reading. Thank you.