Torrance High School, opened in 1917, served the city’s need for secondary education for almost four decades.
But, by the 1950s, the postwar baby boom made it clear that more high schools were needed. Desperately needed, as double sessions had to be conducted at many schools to handle the overflow of students.
The Torrance Unified School District, formed when the city’s schools broke away from Los Angeles Unified in 1947, spent much of the postwar era working to fill the need.
The district succeeded in passing a succession of bond issues to finance the construction of more than thirty elementary schools and three additional high schools between 1949 and 1962. In the 15 years between the TUSD’s founding and West HIgh’s opening in 1962, the total number of students in the district had increased from 2,000 to nearly 30,000.
It’s just speculation, but perhaps naming all those elementary schools left the TUSD out of ideas when it came to naming its high schools. North High was the first of the new ones, opening in 1955. It was followed by South High in 1957, followed by West in 1962. (One wonders if the district ever considered renaming Torrance High as “East High” to complete the directional quartet.)
In September 1957, the school district included funds to purchase a 40-acre lot in the Victor Tract as part of a $7 million bond measure. (The Victor Tract had been annexed by Torrance in 1956 after a tussle over the land with Redondo Beach.) The lot, bordered by Del Amo Blvd. and Victor, Henrietta and Spencer streets, was mostly vacant except for a few oil wells and the Southwood Little League baseball field.
Architect Roy Donley was hired to design the new high school in May 1958. Donley was responsible for planning a number of Torrance schools, including Hickory and Towers elementary schools and South High.
After working with the district’s planning committee on the specifics, Donley’s West High design was unveiled in October 1959.The innovative “space age” plan (according the the Torrance Herald) featured classroom buildings located around a brick central school library, which was circular in shape.
Construction of the school was divided into three phases over a five-year period; it was built to accommodate 3,000 students when completed.
The Crown Construction Co. was hired to erect the $2.2 million first phase, which included just three buildings: the library, the first of three classroom wings, and a shop building. The shop building would double as a locker room until the school’s gymnasium was built as part of the second phase in 1964.
The classroom wings all had modular construction, allowing them to be converted into small auditoriums. Overall cost for the new school was put at $5 million.
Another novel aspect of the school’s design was its approach to providing food to students. Food was prepared at a central facility, and delivered via mobile carts to three satellite dining areas around the campus.
By April 1961, construction was underway on the new campus, with the cornerstone being laid by the Torrance Masonic Lodge that September. The steel frame for the round library building was finished in early November. Work on the first phase of the campus continued throughout early 1962.
Robert Ford, formerly a junior high principal in Bellflower, was selected to be the school’s first principal. The school’s athletic teams would compete as the Warriors, and brown and gold were selected as its official colors.
Construction was completed in time to welcome the school’s first 1,052 students on Sept. 12, 1962. Students from all four years attended the new school. The teaching staff included 42 instructors, with an additional ten full-time non-teaching employees.
Dedication ceremonies for the new school were held in October, a month after the school opened. The keynote speech was delivered by TUSD Superintendent J.H. Hull. The school’s second and third phases were completed later in the 1960s.
School attendance reached a peak of 2,678 in 1976, and currently hovers around 2,000 students. West has been named a California Distinguished School five times, most recently in 2013. In 1984, it was designated a national Blue Ribbon School in addition to receiving the Excellence in Education award from the U.S. Dept. of Education. The school won the Los Angeles County Academic Decathlon in 2019.
West has won the California state championship in boys cross country twice, in 2017 and 2021. In 2011, the school renamed its football facility Fred Peterson Stadium, in honor of the late longtime football coach who won a CIF football title in 1982, and founded the school’s girls track and field program.
Well-known athletes who graduated from West include former El Camino College and BYU quarterback Steve Sarkisian, who later held the head football coach position at the University of Washington and USC, three-time Olympian volleyball player Paula Weishoff, and former Major League Baseball third baseman Sean Berry.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
The History of Torrance Schools, 1890-2000, by Thomas Rische, TUSD History Project, 2002.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Torrance Press Herald archives.
West High School website.
Note: Shery Continuation High School in Torrance, which opened in 1967, will be profiled in a future post.
