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Judge Grants Injunction to Stop Demolitions at Historic Leuzinger High School
In response to the lawsuit filed in September 2011 by the local advocacy coalition Friends and Alumni of Leuzinger High School, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Torribio granted a preliminary injunction on January 16 to stop demolitions of historic buildings at the eighty-two-year-old campus. The case asks the Court to stop pending demolitions and require environmental review for campus plans. Read more about the lawsuit in the Daily Breeze.
Despite protest from local residents and Leuzinger High School alumni, the Centinela Valley Union High School District school board voted at their July 26 board meeting to adopt a Notice of Exemption from environmental review for the Leuzinger High School campus project. The following day, the district began demolition of all seven of the school’s distinctive, postwar-era “finger” classroom buildings, so named because of their slender shape. Read more about the demolition of the finger buildings in the Daily Breeze. The Conservancy has urged the school district to consider the campus a historical resource under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Earlier this year, local residents and Leuzinger High alumni formed the advocacy coalition Friends and Alumni of Leuzinger High School and created the Facebook page Save Leuzinger’s Legacy. Spurred by the passage of two recent bond measures, the Centinela Valley Union High School District has launched a series of construction projects at Leuzinger High School in the South Bay city of Lawndale. The projects have moved forward without any environmental review or evaluation of potential historic resources on the eighty-two-year-old campus.
While not every older school campus is historic, the Conservancy does believe that Leuzinger High School campus is significant and should be properly evaluated. The campus contains a number of irreplaceable buildings that tell the story of both the school’s and Lawndale’s growth and development. The Daily Breeze reported in October 2010 that “about three-quarters of Leuzinger High would be torn down and rebuilt” and the school district has maintained an aggressive demolition and construction schedule during the past year. In August 2010, the district demolished the school’s 1930s Industrial Arts Building and in July and August of 2011 demolished all seven single-story “finger” classroom buildings. Referred to as finger buildings for their long, slender shape and often arranged in rows with courtyard space in between, these buildings at Leuzinger High typified postwar California schools and featured such green design elements as passive solar shading. In May, June, and August, Conservancy staff attended board meetings of the school district and strongly urged the school board to prepare an environmental impact report (EIR) as part of its ongoing project. We emphasized that the campus can certainly accommodate expansion and upgrades, which an EIR does not prevent. State law (the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA) requires an EIR to outline impacts to historic resources and evaluate alternatives to mitigate those impacts.
The Conservancy strongly believes that the campus of Leuzinger High School is a historical resource and should be treated as such under CEQA. The following points summarize the Conservancy’s advocacy position:
For more information about our position, you can read our comment letter from August 2011 to the Centinela Valley Union High School District.
Located on Rosecrans Avenue near Hawthorne Boulevard, Leuzinger High School opened in 1930 in what was then a largely agricultural setting. It is the oldest of the three high schools in the Centinela Valley Union High School District. The school acquired a distinctive identity soon after opening: in return for providing staging facilities for aspects of the 1932 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, the school was authorized to use the Olympic rings and motto as its emblem. In addition to Leuzinger High School’s cultural association with the Olympics, several of the buildings on campus are architecturally distinct and represent different periods of growth in the school’s development through the postwar era. Some of the buildings on campus were designed by noted Southland architect T. C. Kistner of the firm Kistner, Wright & Wright. These include the Main Building and a PWA Moderne girls’ gymnasium that was financed in part through a Public Works Administration grant.
Postwar prosperity brought significant expansion to the Leuzinger High School campus with the construction of several new buildings and a modernization of the school’s Main Building. New construction included the boys’ gymnasium, which features exposed, structural arches, and the distinctive finger buildings that were demolished in 2011. As important anchors and centers of community, older and historic schools help define the places in which we live and are key to the health and sustainability of a neighborhood. Throughout the country, historic schools have been successfully adapted and upgraded to meet current educational standards while maintaining their authentic character. To find out more, visit the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s website.
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