Los Angeles High School

other high schools in Los Angeles

Early buildings commissioned to house the Los Angeles High School were among the architectural jewels of the city, and were strategically placed at the summit of a hill, the easier to be pointed to with pride. One of the school's long standing mottos is "Always a hill, always a tower, always a timepiece." Construction on Los Angeles' first public high school, (the private Loyola High School is older) began on July 19, 1872, at the former site of Central School on what was then known as Poundcake Hill, at the southeast corner of Fort Street (later Broadway), which the front of the school faced, and Temple Street, with the back of the school to New High Street (later Spring Street). The approximate coordinates are As it was on the hill, a few hundred feet from the streets below, steep wooden stairways led up to the schoolyard. The two story wooden structure was so big and grand, the finest school south of San Francisco at that time, with classic lines and a tower with a clock in it, that people traveled from miles around to see it. The teachers liked the wide corridors, walnut banisters, generous windows and the transoms over the doors. The first principal was Rev. Dr. William T. Lucky (1821–1876) and the first graduating class, in 1875, consisted of seven students. Hickam managed to get the schoolhouse halfway up Temple Street when he ran out of money and left it right in the middle of the street. between Sand Street and Bellevue Avenue (later Sunset Boulevard, now Cesar Chavez Avenue), at coordinates , which was a short distance from the older wooden one then facing Sand Street below. That same year, the Los Angeles City High School District was formed. It served students of LAHS while the Los Angeles City School District and various other elementary school districts served elementary and junior high school students. This second location atop a hill was completed in 1891 and LAHS moved in. It was an enormous building for its time. LAHS was the only high school in Los Angeles until 1905. The second high school, on Fort Moore Hill, eventually became a school for problem students, a lot of them truancy cases. By September 1948, when preparing for the school to be razed for the construction of the Hollywood Freeway, plans were made to transfer the students to Belmont High School, in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles. As Belmont students and parents protested the transfers, an alternative plan provided that 12 persons be assigned to the senior and junior high schools in the six attendance areas to carry out the program. Also located on what remains of the hill is the Fort Moore Pioneer Memorial, which was opened to the public in 1957.

In 1917, the school moved to its current location on Olympic Boulevard, and Rimpau, with 1,937 students. An edifice was erected that became an international cultural landmark for the famed school. To insure a permanently beautiful vista for their contemplation, and to honor classmates who had fallen in World War I, the students purchased the land across the street for the creation of a tree filled memorial park. Actual student government was instituted at LAHS in the early 1900s, eliminating one of the main reasons for Star and Crescent's existence. Meanwhile, as the size of the student body increased over years, the lower grades were successively dropped from Star and Crescent until by 1935 only seniors were members. Star and Crescent probably disappeared after World War II, but it is difficult to determine the exact year since no one at the school today can say when it ended. In particular, yearbooks were published during the years of America's involvement in that war, so it seems likely it might have disappeared after the war years. In the S'42 yearbook a page was devoted to Star and Crescent with its Officers and Faculty sponsors listed. The graduating class of 1970 received their Star & Crescent pins at a special ceremony. On July 1, 1961, the Los Angeles City High School District and the elementary school districts were merged into the Los Angeles Unified School District. The replacement structure has been universally decried and finds no champions among either current or former students and faculty, or residents of the neighboring community. The school population peaked at 10,800, but overcrowding at the school has been relieved by West Adams Preparatory High School, which opened in the 2007–2008 school year. In 2009, some territory of Los Angeles High School's attendance boundary was transferred to Fairfax High School. In February 2012, a gunman shot at teens near the high school. Two were wounded.

Neighborhoods zoned to LAHS include: Brookside, Harvard Heights, Koreatown, Lafayette Square, and Little Ethiopia, and portions of Hancock Park and the Pico Union District.

As of 2001, 75% of the student body was Hispanic and Latino. 14% was black and 7% was Asian. Other ethnic groups made up the remainder.