Orick Elementary School - Orick CA

City:: Orick, CA
Site Type:: Education and Health, Schools
New Deal Agencies:: Public Works Funding, Public Works Administration (PWA)
Started:: 1935
Completed:: 1936
Quality of Information:: Very Good
Marked:: Yes
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

The Public Works Administration (PWA) provided the bulk of funding for a new school for the small town of Orick in Humboldt County. Orick was a lumber town when the school was built in 1935-36 and much in need of school facilities. The style of the building is Mission Revival, much in vogue in California at the time but not so frequent along the North Coast where wood frame building were most common.

The PWA report by Short and Stanley-Brown provides more details about the site: ‘The new building contains two large and two small classrooms with a stage at the end of one of the larger classrooms, a typing room, a library, a general laboratory, and a principal’s office. It is not fireproof and its plan leaves much to be desired from the point of view of school functional planning. However, it is adequate, sanitary, and provides well lighted and ventilated rooms. It was completed in May 1936 at a construction cost of $25,911 and a project cost of $29,194.”

The little school achieved a measure of fame when state and federal officials met there in 1968 to hammer out an agreement on the creation of a new Redwood National Park, according to rangers at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

Source notes

Short, C. W. and R. Stanley-Brown (1939) Public Buildings: Architecture Under the Public Works Administration, 1933 to 1939. United States Government Printing Office: Washington, DC.

Site originally submitted by Gray Brechin on October 7, 2011.
Additional contributions by Richard A Walker.