- City:
- Whittier, CA
- Site Type:
- Education and Health, Schools
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Started:
- 1938
- Completed:
- 1938
- Designer:
- William Harrison - Architect
- Quality of Information:
- Good
- Marked:
- Unknown
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
Lou Henry Hoover School in Whittier was built in 1938 by the New Deal. It has recently been renamed the Lou Henry Hoover School of Fine Arts. Lou Henry Hoover was the wife of President Herbert Hoover and a played a role in California architectural history by her support of early Modernists.
Construction was most likely paid for by the Public Works Administration (PWA), which funded schools throughout Southern California. A local history claims it was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, but that is unlikely that an outside architect would have been hired from outside by the WPA.
The building’s style is Art Moderne, designed by renowned architect William Harrison. It has a lovely curved center section flanking the front entrance.
Over the entrance is a bas-relief frieze by Bartolo Mako that shows a scene of the early Quakers who founded the city of Whittier. The front terrace has a bas-relief inscription with a quotation from the 19th century geographer Alexander von Humboldt: “What you would want in the life of a nation you must first put into its schools.”
Source notes
Kevin Starr. Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California. 1996: p. 318.
See My Whittier video "4 Amazing buildings in Whittier, California," 0:27-2:19
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Parick Praetorius
Linda de Vries
I went to Hoover school from 1970-73. I have great memories of the teachers, classes, and the school itself! There was a natural hill behind the school with trails, thick with vegetation which we were not allowed to play in during school, but would roam for hours after school and in summers. I now teach high school history, and I am having my students research WPA projects as part of our study of the Great Depression.
This was a PWA building, not a WPA. The WPA was created when the PWA was abolished as a result of a supreme court decision against the constitutionality of the National Recovery Act.
No, the PWA was not abolished by that Supreme Court decision, which only pertained to the other sections of the NIRA. PWA remained active into the Second World War. – R. Walker