I’m interested in local history. Because the book on the subject I’m now reading mentioned Breed Street School as one of the older sites, I looked it up on the LAUSD website, and sure enough, it’s still there, and it was established in 1881.
Googling further, it turns out that the Superintendent of the system, Zacarias, attended that school himself, for which reason it was mentioned in an L.A. Times article. Here it was stated that the school was built in 1881, although I suspect what really happened was that a spokesperson for the school said it was estabilshed that year, which the reporter than misconstrued.
Generally with regard to L.A.'s schools, it’s said that the 1933 and 1971 earthquakes pretty much wiped out all the old buildings. And a few schools have moved miles from their original sites; for instance Polytechnic High from downtown to Sun Valley. Contradicting these general developments, there still remain a few pre-1933 structures, at least, which leads me to think: if a high school built in 1924, like the one I attended, is still in operation with its original main building, are there any schools that are substantially older? Is there an elementary school building somewhere in L.A. that goes back past 1900? FTR the oldest site is San Pedro Street School, which has been in continuous operation since 1866, but the structures are completely bland and modern.
BTW it’s damn hard to find this sort of information. Even the schools that have websites are rarely interested in advertising how ancient they are.
In a related vein: Here in L.A. I’ve noticed that, around older schools, it’s not uncommon to find a block or two of very tiny houses. Were these places originally owned by the City or by LAUSD for the purpose of being rented out to teachers?
As you know, what you’re looking for is hard to find because school histories usually aren’t about a particular building, but the name. And the sites where present-day, operating but “really old” schools are often served other purposes before being public schools. It could be, though, that some structures on current school grounds go far back, but “official histories” aren’t concerned with that, and informal histories wouldn’t know about it anyway.
I guess the best way to get your answer is to actually go to the actual sites of the earliest establish schools and look at the physical plant yourself. Sometimes just the appearance of a building reveals a different purpose. But I doubt any building built in 1881 could satisfy modern school building code for housing actual students.
As for the teacher housing, that’s probably just a coincidence. There would be no reason as far as I can tell for a school built in 1881–especially an elementary school in Los Angeles–to include housing for teachers (unless it were a private school that the public school district bought). This might have happened with schools in older, heavily urbanized cities, but I doubt it in L.A.
You’ve probably seen this picture of the first building of Belmont as a public school (1921), but at the site before was one of those places for single women to live that “protected” them from the “iniquities” of city life in those times. They say that building burned down, though. Maybe parts of it are still left, but I can’t see any part of the present-day Belmont that could be that old. Breed is probably the oldest you’ll get. I wouldn’t bother to look for anything older.
I know you’re looking for earlier, but Venice High School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice_High_School_(Los_Angeles)was builtin 1935 and has an interesting history. I attended there for a year or so, right after it was used in the movie Grease. I’m sorry to read the Myrna Loy statue is gone.
It was built in 1931 and is located between a residential neighborhood and the Pacific Palisades business district. A bell, dating from 1898, is housed in a bell tower at one end of the main school building which boasts Spanish-style architecture. And the cool thing - students in room 11 (which was my 6th grade classroom) get to ring that bell every day to announce the end of the school day.
They thought they were going to have to tear the school down after the 1971 Sylmar quake, but enough locals stepped in and helped with the costs of reinforcement and rebuilding that the fear was not realized. Good thing too. It’s a beautiful old building.
Is 78 years old enough for you?
ETA: Angel of Doubt: a Gondolier? Howdy from a crosstown Dolphin!
I think that 1933 quake really did a number on a lot of LA school buildings. I went to Venice my last two years of high school and was told that the prior school buildings were made of brick and were pretty much destroyed in it.
I think the current buildings could survive something on the order of a nuclear strike. The only damage to it from the Northridge quake (that was the January of my senior year) that I remember them finding was some paint cracks. That place is solid.
Brockton Avenue Elementary was founded around 1918 and this building looks like it could be original. For some reason the double staircase looks very old fashioned; some schools had separate boy/girl entry stairs in early days.
I can’t get a very good picture due to its being shrouded with trees, but here’s my elementary school West Hollywood Elementary. Fowards towards your left is the famous 9000 Building from which Jim Morrison used to hang by his fingernails. Now if we all turn around to the right, you’ll see the spot where we buried a time capsule in 1969. As far as I know it has been completely forgotten by everyone else and was never exhumed.
And here’s one of those tiny houses I was talking about, just south of the lower playground.
Those don’t look to me like original buildings from 90 years ago, but I’m no expert in architectural history. They seem more like buildings from the 30s or 40s or 50s. Can’t you just go up and look at the corner stone to get the date? Next time I’m around there with a free moment I can take a look.
As for the little houses, that was just the style as Hollywood was booming, in the same way that bungalows (and later dingbats) were. A lot of single, family-less people were drawn to L.A. from around the country, and there was a sudden market for such residences, which were quickly filling the empty spaces that not too long before were citrus farms.
Schools, especially grade schools, can be tricky. An adult nosing around on the weekend is often ordered to leave, in terms that make it clear it’s not considered worth the trouble to distinguish innocent seekers of cornerstones and paedophiliac predators. In any event, more often than not, there is no special cornerstone that advertises the building’s origin (which itself is probably evidence that it is a rebuild).
I would say the house is a little older than that. For one thing it’s too small to be a tract house, even in the 1940s or 50s, and for another thing, small tract houses of the time didn’t usually have the pretty architectural details like the panes of glass along side the door, clapboard siding, or big front windows. Usually they were stucco surfaced instead, and had small windows that you opened with a crank. Based on the book I’m reading, Los Angeles, written in 1935 by Harry Carr, I suspect this one may well go back to the 1900s or 1910s. Carr makes the point that “Mission” or “Mediterranean” style architecture didn’t come in until automobiles made it possible for people to drive out and see the Missions. Before that, the early immigrants to L.A. built and lived in houses much like the ones they had left in small towns of the Midwest. I’d be surprised if this wasn’t an example of that. If the District perceived the need to put a school here in 1910, there must have been some people living in the area already.
Well, they’re old in this context. Every old city had to start somewhere, and in terms of cityscape, I consider L.A. to be in a situation similar to that of NYC a century ago. There’s a respectable inventory of buildings standing from early in the previous century. A rapid transit system exists in nascent form, and is bound to be expanded since we voted in the transit tax last November. And a certain subset of the people are beginning to welcome urban density as a fertile ground for culture and diversion, rather than something to run away from. Gentrificationist developers seem more inclined to make over derelict hotels than to raze them. An earlier generation of critics would have gleefully dropped an atom bomb on the faux-chateaux apartment blocks of Wilshire Boulevard, now these places are eagerly proffered to young professionals, highlighting the fact that they are close to the subway. We’ve learned to cherish them, so to speak, and there is less drive now to raze and rebuild entire districts wholesale than there has been at any time in our history.
As for my OP, I was thinking of the fact that we do have perhaps five or six high schools still standing that were built before 1933. Since there were many, many more grade schools, I’d expect there to be a few of them that are even older.
Again, not LA, but Torrance High School was built in 1917 according to theirsite. It’s also in a lot of movies and TV (it was Beverly Hills 90210, actually).
