Garfield School in the late 1800s.
As Alhambra’s children get ready to go back to school in early August, here’s a brief history of Alhambra’s schools and a slideshow of a few historic photos of Alhambra’s elementary and high schools throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries.
In 1880, the San Gabriel School District extended from the Los Angeles City boundary to Duarte, including the great ranches in between. It was considered at one time to be the wealthiest district in Los Angeles county. However, the early school houses consisted of redwood “shacks,” one of which was located under an oak tree on the ranch owned by J. A. Graves. A similar one was situated on Roses Road near the Bradbury Packing House, and another on Santa Anita Ranch, which later became the Baldwin Ranch. A fourth school house was an adobe building at the southeast corner of Las Tunas Drive and Mission Drive in San Gabriel.
San Gabriel District trustees decided in 1881 that they needed a new and better-equipped school house. A special tax was voted and a two-room building was erected at Vega and Main Street, on the west bank of the Arroyo. About 1884, the Alhambra Tract homeowners decided they wanted their own school house. After two bond elections failed, partly because of the strong opposition of the San Gabriel School District, Alhambrans petitioned for a division of the district and agreed to give San Gabriel the school at Vega and Main. Old Mill Creek became the dividing line on the east, with a detour that gave San Gabriel the school.
When the petition was granted, the new school was opened in an empty redwood shack near the corner of Chapel Avenue and Main Street. A hydrant across a plowed field supplied the school with drinking water. When the roof on the school caught fire one day, the children brought water in their lunch pails to extinguish the blaze. A few years later, a $10,000 bond measure was passed to build a school and a site at the corner of Garfield Avenue and Alhambra Road was purchased from John Conner for $175. A four-room, two-story frame school house was constructed.
In September 1887, the school opened with 27 elementary and high school students. Mrs. Edward Jones was the principal. Because of the increasing enrollment, Marengo School was built in 1905 and the cornerstone for Alhambra High School was laid in April of that same year.
Alhambra would go on to construct four high schools: Alhambra High School (rebuilt several times at the same location, south of Main Street and between Second and Third Streets); Mark Keppel High built in 1939 on Hellman Avenue; San Gabriel High, constructed in 1955; and Century High School, located south of the former Marengo Elementary School. Today, there are 13 elementary schools in Alhambra Unified School District – nine in Alhambra and four in the City of Monterey Park.
Ramona Convent – an all-girls boarding school – was opened on January 30, 1890. The Convent was built on land donated by James de Barth Shorb, Don Benito Wilson’s son-in-law and an early prominent resident. Shorb’s daughter, Edith, disliked going to Northern California to boarding school. It is said that she convinced her father to donate the land for Ramona Convent so that she could attend school in Southern California.
Portions reprinted from the City of Alhambra’s history webpage.
The Prose of Preservation 
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