Taft Union High School – Taft CA

Description

Taft Union High School’s main building was constructed with federal help under the New Deal.  It is an elegant Art Moderne (Art Deco) facility with lovely decorative elements, particularly the colored bas-reliefs (probably terra cotta).

The original Taft Union HS had been built in 1917 with local funds, but the state declared it unsafe in 1934 – most likely because of the great Long Beach earthquake in 1933.  It was not torn down entirely, but reconstructed and expanded.

The federal government offered a grant of $51,000 in 1935 – almost surely from the Public Works Administration (PWA).   The county passed a school bond issue of over $150,000 that same year, but work did not begin until the Works Progress Administration (WPA) offered an additional $53,000 in September 1936.

The project included a new entrance and lobby, library, study hall, classrooms, a basement and rehabilitation of most of the rest of the building.  The north and south wings were added in a second contract in 1937 and completed in 1938.

The architecture of the renovated building appears to have been transformed to match the Art Deco design of the beautiful 1920s auditorium and 1932 music building sitting just to the north. Those had been built, along with a new gymnasium, with funds from a bond issue passed in 1923.  It appears that those buildings still stand, but we are unsure about the science building, cafeteria, shop building and domestic science building constructed  1924-32.