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Building History

William Craine, an English architect who was very active in designing school buildings during the 1860s in San Francisco, designed this first high school for girls in the city. In its day, building a high school for the education of girls was highly progressive, evidence of "advanced enlightenment" by the San Francisco Board of Education. (SeeBiennial Report of the Treasurer of California for the Nineteenth and Twentieth Fiscal Years, July 1, 1867, to June 30, 1869, [Sacramento: D.W. Gelwicks, State Printer, 1869], p. 133.) Girls' High School stood next to a very early brick school house that dated back to 1851. The building contractor for the school was Captain Charles Quinn.

As it was in the process of being built at the time this governmental report was printed, the Biennial Report of the Treasurer of California for the Nineteenth and Twentieth Fiscal Years, July 1, 1867, to June 30, 1869, described the school's expected external appearance in 1871: "It is designed exclusively for girls, and will accommodate six hundred pupils. The building is fifty-six by ninety-two feet, built of wood, on a substantial brick foundation, having two wings, each ten feet, six inches by thirty nine feet six inches, containing the entrance halls, teachers' rooms, and the spacious stairways, which afford means for easy communication with the several apartments of the interior. The exterior of the structure is finished in a neat and substantial but not costly manner, with the leading characteristics of the Ionic order. The roof is surmounted by an appropriate cupola. The entire work is built in a very substantial manner, with unusually heavy timbers, securely united." The same volume discussed the Girls' High School's interior: "The first and second stories are fourteen feet six inches in height, the third being fifteen feet six inches. Means of ingress and egress are ample, convenient and safe, consisting of four doorways, two in front and two in the rear, each seven feet wide. The interior is well lighted and ventilated throughout. Fresh air is introduced through forty ventilating registers near the floors, and is ejected through the base of the cupola on top of the roof." (SeeBiennial Report of the Treasurer of California for the Nineteenth and Twentieth Fiscal Years, July 1, 1867, to June 30, 1869, [Sacramento: D.W. Gelwicks, State Printer, 1869], pp. 133-134.) It is very signficant that the lighting and ventilation was stressed, as these two issues were considered vital to the good health of children, particularly before the age of industrialized medicine.

The Biennial Report also detailed the floor plan of each floor: "The distribution of the first and second stories is uniform, each containing four class rooms, twenty-seven by thirty-four feet; four wardrobe rooms, each six by eighteen feet; two teachers' rooms, ten feet by fourteen feet six inches, with a spacious hall transversely through the centre of the building, and communicating with the halls and stairways at each side. The third story contains an assembly room, fifty-four by fify-five feet, and two class rooms, each twenty-seven by thirty-four feet, so arranged with sliding doors as to form a large assembly room, fifty-four by ninety feet. The wardrobe and teachers' roooms are each supplied with marble-topped washstands and water. Each class room is so constructed that persons can pass from one to the other without the necessity of entering the halls." (SeeBiennial Report of the Treasurer of California for the Nineteenth and Twentieth Fiscal Years, July 1, 1867, to June 30, 1869, [Sacramento: D.W. Gelwicks, State Printer, 1869], pp. 134.)

PCAD id: 20633