Cloyne Court Hotel was built as a residential hotel for people associated with the University. It was named in honor of Bishop Berkeley of Cloyne, Ireland.

Designed by John Galen Howard, the building is a good example of the First San Francisco Bay Tradition. It was Howard's first large scale shingled building and is one of the few surviving large shingled residential buildings in the Bay Area and the largest in Berkeley.

The building originally contained thirty-two suites that were not connected by common hallways but by private stairways to the first floor public areas. The wings of the house do not connect on the second and third floors.

Before 1923, the First Bay Tradition dominated the built environment in this neighborhood. In 1923, a fire destroyed five hundred buildings. Only fifty buildings, including the Cloyne Court Hotel survived.

In 1946, Cloyne Court was sold to the University Students' Cooperative Association. It operated as an all-male house until 1972 when it became co-ed.

When we photographed Cloyne Court in 2015, it was managed by the Berkeley Student Cooperative as housing for 140 Cal students.