The idea of creating a new high school in the harbor town of San Pedro began to circulate in earnest in June 1902. Geography was a driving force. Parents in the growing settlement weren’t happy about having to send their high-school age children out of town to further their education.
The idea became a reality when the town’s citizens voted yes on a bond issue on the matter on May 20, 1903, passing it by a vote of 154 for, and 3 against. The bond money covered the establishment of a high school district, and school classes began in the fall of 1903.
It didn’t cover the construction of a new high school building, though. For its first three years, the high school operated on the second floor of 16th Street School. (It was renamed 15th Street School six years later when San Pedro became a part of the Los Angeles Unified School District, which already had a 16th Street School.) Classes took place at the same time as the elementary classes, which made for very crowded conditions.
Almost immediately, the community realized that a permanent school had become a pressing need. Discussion of potential sites began in 1905, after a second bond issue approving $40,000 for land acquisition and building construction had passed by a 414-72 vote in November 1904.
Various city landowners offered proposals, including land grant owner Mrs. Rudecinda F.S. de Dodson, John Gaffey, George Peck and others. Mrs. Dodson’s generous offer of five acres along Gaffey St. between 10th and 16th streets was accepted, and the new school was built there at 1221 S. Gaffey. It opened to students in 1906.
The gleaming white building was a source of great civic pride – for a while. But San Pedro’s rapid industrial development following its selection as the port for the city of Los Angeles, which became official in 1909, led to an ever-larger influx of workers and their families with school-age children.
Overcrowding at the high school had become a serious problem by the early 1930s. The school’s principal, Juliette Pierce, told the San Pedro News Pilot in February 1932 that the school’s enrollment had increased from 107 students in 1916 to 1,259 in 1932.
Sites for a new school were scouted once again. A plot of land in the Vista del Oro section near Averill Park initially was proposed by the Chamber of Commerce, but that never came to pass.
All of this happened before March 10, 1933, the day the magnitude 6.4 Long Beach earthquake shook down buildings all across southwest Los Angeles County. The damage at San Pedro High School was significant.
Early in 1934, the Los Angeles Unified School District authorized $400,000 in funds to repair San Pedro High School. The community responded with a campaign aimed instead at building a new school, which leaders claimed could be done for not much more than that amount.
The organized campaign included a series of 11 separate reasons spelled out in 11 separate editorials on 11 separate days in the San Pedro News Pilot under the same headline, “Why San Pedro Should Have a New High School.”
It worked. On April 9, 1934, the LAUSD re-earmarked the funds as being for new construction, and by May it had purchased land for the new campus from the Dodson estate for approximately $69,000. The 17.5-acre site was located between 14th and 17th streets, just east of Leland Ave. and adjacent to Dana Junior High (later renamed Dana Middle School).
Noted Los Angeles architect Gordon Kaufmann, who had designed the Los Angeles Times building as well as parts of Hoover Dam, was hired to design the new school at 1001 W. 15th St. The construction firm of Easton & Nesser was hired to build the school in 1935. Additional funding for the project came from the federal Public Works Administration (PWA), a New Deal agency.
The first concrete was poured at the site that December, and the new school opened its doors to students on Sept. 9, 1936. Two more Kaufmann-designed buildings, the gymnasium and auditorium, were added shortly afterward, and an additional new classroom building had to be added in 1938 due to overcrowding.
Overcrowding would remain a theme at San Pedro High over the years. Two years after the school celebrated its centennial in 2003, the problem had grown severe enough that discussions about building a new high school had begun.
The Los Angeles school board eventually decided to build a satellite campus on the Fort MacArthur military reservation to relieve the strain.
The school district had acquired the former Army property in 1979 from the federal government. The site had been used as an outdoor education center, a continuation school, an adult education site and for care facilities for rescued marine birds and mammals.
In February 2011, the Los Angeles school board voted unanimously to name the new San Pedro High annex near Fort MacArthur the John M. and Muriel Olguin Campus of San Pedro High School. It opened at 3210 S. Alma St. for the fall term of 2012, with room for about 800 students.
John and Muriel Olguin were San Pedro icons. He founded the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium and the couple was involved in many community groups and events. He died on New Year’s Day of 2011 at the age of 89.
Two buildings on San Pedro High’s main campus are protected historical landmarks: the Administration and Language Arts buildings.
Another revitalization program there, the San Pedro High School Comprehensive Modernization Project, is currently in progress. The multimillion dollar remodeling plan has a 2025 expected completion date.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Los Angeles Unified School District website.
San Pedro: A Pictorial History, by Henry P. Silka, San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1993.
San Pedro High School website.
San Pedro News Pilot archives.
“San Pedro Timeline,” San Pedro High School Class of 1973 website.
Wikipedia.
