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The Massachusetts-born lawyer, George Wahington Minns (1813-1895), founded Minns' Evening Normal School, California's first teacher's college, in San Francisco, CA, in 1857. At the same time as the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, the California Legislature took over the Minns Normal School for use as the first California State Normal School. The Normal School was transplanted to a site on Washington Square Park in San Jose, CA, in 1871. The first structure housing the California State Normal School in San Jose, CA, was gutted by a blaze, 02/10/1880; the second school building, possessing a similar portico and central bell tower as the first, was finished by 05/1881.

This first building at the California State Normal School in San Jose, CA, dated soon after 1871.

PCAD id: 5629