The WPA Goes to School: Redondo Union High School

Among the thousands of infrastructure projects built by the Depression era U.S. Works Progress Administration (WPA) — roads, bridges, dams, courthouses, libraries, culverts and even museums and theaters — was some uncounted number of school buildings. The Los Angeles area alone must have scores of them still standing. Late in the WPA’s run, 1939, it provided Redondo Union High School (RUHS) with two new buildings to accommodate a growing student body.

By any standard the new Science and Manual Arts buildings weren’t the most elaborate or impressive of the architecture designed for the WPA — rectangular cubes of poured concrete that show the horizontal lines of the concrete forms. One building did get a few fillips of decoration in the form of cast concrete friezes over the doors and windows.

The buildings were designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison, which is still in operation. Allison has a large portfolio of notable structures, including iconic Royce Hall at the University of Southern California and a more grandiose Art Deco predecessor of the RUHS buildings, the downtown headquarters of Southern California Edison (1931), which has been termed an “Art Deco masterpiece.” I’ve been unable to find an attribution for the design of the Redondo Union medallions, which are a combination of work-and-technology themes and perhaps acanthus and/or oak leaves.

The coloration is the result of a relatively recent restoration. I can’t say whether or not the colors of the restoration bear any resemblance to their original state. They’d been painted over with the same dull beige as the buildings for many decades. Click on an image to enlarge:

All those details on the building face in toward the campus. If you pass on the sidewalk, only one portal on the north side has a decorative frieze above the door. It depicts a subject perfectly consonant with the science and technology theme, especially considering that it was installed at the end of the 1930s, when aviation was the technology of the future.

You might think it’s nothing more than a reflection of the era. But notice that the airplane is flying across water. As it happens, that’s not the Pacific Ocean, just half a mile to the west. It represents the Atlantic Ocean, and the image symbolizes a flight piloted by a man who attended Redondo Union, although only for one month. A dozen years before the building went up, in 1927, that former Redondo Sea Hawk flew his Spirit of St. Louis airplane nonstop, solo, across the Atlantic from New York to Paris, making Charles Lindbergh a name any school would gladly lay claim to and memorialize, however brief his stay.

Lindbergh’s accomplishment still stands as a significant one, although RUHS boasts some other famous alumni. For my generation, we might think of two closer contemporaries who may have walked the halls of those buildings and who did graduate from RUHS: Thomas and Richard Smothers, better known as Tom and Dick, the Smothers Brothers. I don’t think there are any depictions of a guitar and string bass to be found on more recent RUHS buildings, but I haven’t seen the entire campus.

Who’s your old school’s most famous former student? Maybe it’s you! Leave a comment.

Licensable, high resolution versions of some photographs in this post, and select images from other Under Western Skies posts are available on Shutterstock.com. Click on the linked photos, or CLICK HERE to view the Underawesternsky photo portfolio.

© Brad Nixon 2018. My thanks to the director of the RUHS Alumni House museum for generous assistance during my visit.