This building was once thought to be Berkeley’s oldest remaining structure, built by Captain William J. Bowen on the sparsely populated Contra Costa Road (now San Pablo Avenue), where it served as an inn, saloon, grocery store, and stagecoach stop. Oceanview, Berkeley’s first community, grew up between Bowen’s Inn and a small shipping wharf built by Captain James Jacobs at the foot of what is now Delaware Street.

Since the plaque was installed in 2000, new information established that this building was constructed not in the mid-1850s but in the mid-1870s, and that it began its life as Captain James S. Higgins’ temperance grocery store and post office. In 1893, Samuel Heywood, later mayor of Berkeley, moved the building to the corner of Delaware and Fifth streets where he operated the grocery store with his son. Around 1920, the building was moved to this site, later serving as the home of the Liberty Hill Baptist Church before becoming a private residence.