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A Berkeley bond issue passed in 1915 to enable the construction of the Willard School completed the following year. Berkeley architect Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr., became City Architect in 1913, and because of the levy's passage, became busy commissioning designers for four new elementary schools and a junior high school. The respected San Francisco architects Lewis Hobart and Charles H. Cheney received this commission. The school was named for the educator/temperance advocate and feminist Francis Willard (1838-1898), who gained fame as an orator and a pivotal figure in the influential Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). This group played a significant roll in the imposition of Prohibition in 1919.

Tel: 510.644.6330 (2011).

Late in 1928, Berkeley architect Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr., designed plans for a two-story addition to the Francis Willard School to cost approximately $580,000. At about this time, the campus contained four buildings and 32 teaching spaces serving a student body of 844. (This was nearly the height of enrollment; the student body numbered 873 in 1970.) The San Francisco firm, Blanchard, Maher and Paulus, Architects, finished a boys' gymnasium and an industrial arts building in 1952. Architects Johnson, Poole and Storm designed the school's administration building and cafeteria/auditorium building in 1964. The school district leveled the original 1916 building in 1977. and hired Collin, Byrens, Gerson and Overstreet Architects to created a new classroom facility and a new girls' gymnasium. Alterations to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 were undertaken in 1989-1990. Four years later, Highetto/Goldin Architects oversaw the remodeling of the gymnasium, an effort completed the start of school in 1997.

Demolished; the original 1916 wing of the Willard School was torn down in 1977.

PCAD id: 16809