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The Original Solano Avenue Elementary School

6/21/2015

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Los Angeles, California, 1900.  The Twelfth United States Census, taken on June 1, 1900, revealed that there were 104,703 people living in the City of Los Angeles, with an additional 70,000 or so living outside the City in the county.  Of the nearly 105,000 residents of the City, slightly more than 32,000 of them were children under the age of 18 --in other words, children of school age.

The Solano Canyon community grows

By 1900, Solano Canyon was home to 52 families:  8  lived on Buena Vista Road (now North Broadway), 10 lived on Casanova Street, and 34 lived on Solano Avenue, for a total of 196 people.  As many as 80 of these were children, many of whom were of school age.  The first home in the la Loma community was not built until 1909, a 12' x 12', one-room house at 814 Spruce Street built by John Radulovich.

A school bond election passes

By 1903, Los Angeles City schools were being described as "... fearfully crowded ...".  Early that year, a bond election was held in Los Angeles, the purpose of which was to sell bonds to pay for construction of new schools within the City.  The bond issue passed easily, and as a result of the election, at its meeting of April 21, 1903, the Building Committee of the City Council met and awarded contracts for the architectural design and construction of 18 new elementary schools, a Polytechnic High School, and a warehouse.  It was the largest amount of money ever awarded for construction of schools in Los Angeles' history:  $476,625, slightly less than half of which ($200,000) was allocated for the new Polytechnic High School alone.  The new Solano Avenue School was one of the smaller schools in the group, at four rooms plus some site work, and the value of the contract was $12,500.  The architectural contract was let to the firm of Hudson & Mansell, a Los Angeles architectural firm that a year earlier had donated its services to draw up the plans for the new Barlow Sanatorium on Chavez Ravine Road.

Solano Canyon gets its own school

It is not known with certainty when the new Solano Avenue elementary school first opened its doors to students, but it must have been during the 1903-1904 school year or possibly the year after that, because the Board of Education, at its regular meeting held January 25, 1904, assigned Miss Addie J. Samuels, then a teacher at the Swain Street School, as teacher at the new Solano Avenue School and named her principal as well.
Addie J. Samuels was a long-time teacher and principal in Los Angeles.  She was an active teacher from at least 1885, and she came to Los Angeles for the 1892-93 school year as a 3rd- and 4th-grade teacher at the Swain Street School, located on the corner of N. Griffith Avenue, where she remained until her assignment to the Solano Avenue School in 1903.  In 1906-07, she was named principal at the Breed Street School, where she remained at least through the 1910-11 school year, and as late as 1918, she was the principal of the Sixty-eighth Street School at 714 Iola St., in a career that spanned more than 33 years.
At a special session of the Board of Education held August 22, 1904, it was announced that the 1904-05 school year would begin on Monday, September 25, 1904.  Miss Mary L. Small, a teacher in Los Angeles since 1893, and Miss Clara E. Heald were assigned as teachers at Solano elementary, with Addie J. Samuels remaining as principal.
Solano Avenue schools 1923
The original Solano Avenue elementary school (r) and the new school (l) in 1923
In the photograph above, the original Solano Avenue school is the large building on the right, facing Solano Avenue.  The vacant lot across the street served as the playground for the school.  Across Yuba Street to the left is the new Solano Avenue school, which is the current school.  Also identified in this photograph are Casanova Street (top) and Amador Street (bottom), with Solano Avenue running roughly horizontally through the middle of the photograph.

The original school is torn down

The original Solano Avenue school was eventually replaced by the new school shown in the photograph above and was torn down in 1935 as part of the construction of the Pasadena Freeway, now CA-110.  Parts of the foundation, a retaining wall and the concrete stairs leading up to the school remain, however, as the retaining wall of, and entrance to, the five-acre Solano Community Garden.

A personal connection to the school

In 1903, when the original Solano Avenue school was built, the author's grandfather, Teodoro Manuel Bouett, grandson of Solano Canyon founders Francisco Solano and Rosa Casanova, was living with his parents, Maria Agustina Solano and Guillermo Bouett, and his four surviving siblings at 1425 Buena Vista Road, now North Broadway, on the corner of Buena Vista Road and Casanova Street.  He was eight years old.  After the new Solano Avenue school opened, Teodoro Bouett became a student there.  Then, in 1920, my father, Guillermo Carlos Bouett, son of Teodoro, became the second generation of his family to attend the Solano Avenue school.

Guillermo Bouett attended Solano elementary between September 1920 and June 1926, from the 1st through the 6th grades.  The following table lists his teachers and principals during that time, compiled from his original report cards.  In addition, other known teachers and principals are listed, along with their dates of service.

Year

Grade

Teacher

Principal

1903-04

All

Addie J. Samuels

Addie J. Samuels

1904-05

?

Clara E. Heald
Mary L. Small

1905-06

?

Mary L. Small

1920-21

1st

Estella Thompson

C. G. Hopkins

1921-22

2nd

Leah Robbins
Mabel C. Moore

1922-23

3rd

Ethel R. Merrill

1923-24

4th

Esther Helm

1924-25

5th

M. G. Jones

1925-26

6th

V. Self

Orra Leta Hendrick

 

Bill Bouett Report Card
1923 Report Card from Solano Avenue School


A teacher-principal database, anyone?

If there are those of you who attended the original Solano Avenue school or would like to know more about who taught there and when, including the principals, I will be happy to continue to compile this database -- just let me know.

Solano Avenue elementary school today

Picture
The 'new' Solano Avenue elementary school today
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Community Service

6/3/2015

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Service or hypocrisy?

Los Angeles City Council districts are large areas and each includes several communities.  Within our communities, we probably tend to feel that our City Councilperson exists to serve only us.  While it is true that there may be district-wide issues within each district, it is also true that there are community-wide issues that are unique to each community, and which are not district-wide issues.

Traffic on Solano Avenue in the Solano Canyon community is one such local issue, and it is one that is apparently not being adequately addressed, at least according to many of the residents of Solano Canyon.

This is the area near Solano Canyon.  Notice the hulking presence of Dodger Stadium, whose existence has been the subject of several blogs, on both this website and on the Chávez Ravine website.  In particular, see the recent blog, A Disaster Waiting To Happen.
Dodger Stadium and Solano Canyon
This is the location of the Solano Canyon community.
Solano Canyon identified


Stadium traffic on game days

This is the route that stadium traffic that uses Solano Avenue for access to Dodger Stadium must take on Dodger game days.
Game-day traffic
The yellow arrows point to traffic traveling both northeast and southwest on North Broadway.  The red line is the tortuous route that that traffic must take up Solano Avenue to the 500 block; then, after making a hard left-turn onto Amador Street, it follows Amador to an "S" curve (Amador Place) that empties once more onto Solano Avenue, which then merges with, and becomes, Academy Road, and which eventually provides access to the Dodger Stadium parking lots through the Academy Gate (Gate D).  Approximately 10% of stadium traffic on game days uses the Academy Gate.

In truth, however, this picture is itself incomplete; there is yet additional  traffic that empties off of southbound CA-110 (upper yellow arrow) onto 30-foot-wide Academy Road (white line), which is actually nothing more than an extension of Casanova Street, an original street in Solano Canyon that dates from 1888.
Add Casanova Street


CD-1 and LADOT devised a plan

Former City Councilman Ed Reyes of CD-1, after listening to the complaints of the residents of Solano Canyon and working closely with them, came up with a traffic mitigation plan that was approved by the City Council in 2013.
2013 DOT plan
Now, Dodger Stadium has five gates that provide access to various areas of the vast stadium parking lots.


Other access to Dodger Stadium

Bouett Street closure
The purpose of this plan, which was explained in detail in the blog A Disaster Waiting To Happen, was effectively to close Solano Avenue to Dodger Stadium game-day traffic.  In addition, and somewhat bizarrely, a one-block segment of Bouett Street was also closed, although rarely did any stadium traffic fail to make the "S" turn on Amador and instead continue up Amador to Bouett Street, which then required a full stop at Bouett, followed by a hard-right turn onto Bouett and another hard stop at Solano Avenue; and, finally, a hard-left turn onto Solano Avenue, which would have been solid with stadium traffic that was not likely to yield to allow cars to enter onto Solano from Bouett.  That strange closure is the short, white line marked with a red "X".
Picture
Of the five access gates, the preferred gate, according to the City and the Dodgers, is the Downtown Gate (Gate E).  Other gates are the Sunset Gate (Gate A), the Stadium Way Gate (Gate B), also popularly known as the Scott Gate, and the Golden State Gate (Gate C).
Interestingly, the Scott Gate was closed for a time, due to complaints from the residents of Echo Park about excessive traffic in their community on game days (does that sound familiar?).  Although the Scott Gate is once again being used, the residents of Echo Park have achieved a modicum of relief by restricting parking on several of their streets.  (See the blog, "Equal treatment under the law?" on this website.)  It should be noted that Echo Park residents live in CD-13; Solano Canyon residents live in CD-1.


Don't complain; solve the problem!

We all know that it is easy to complain; it is another thing altogether to solve the problem.  While there may not be an easy solution to the problem of game-day traffic through Solano Canyon, there may exist more than one solution.

One such solution is to enforce the City Council-approved DOT plan to limit — if not eliminate — stadium traffic through the Solano Canyon community on Solano Avenue on game days.  It is known for certain that there continues to be an ongoing dialog with CD-1 staff about this issue; but, to date, community efforts at a solution have been met with delay and obfuscation.

Or how about simply making better use of the existing Downtown Gate exit from CA-110 that empties directly onto the access road to the Downtown Gate, which both the City and the Dodgers profess is the preferred access gate to the stadium?  That would eliminate — eliminate, not simply reduce — game-day traffic on Solano Avenue.

Why not try to think outside the box for a change?

One solution
Here, the lower red "X" shows Solano Avenue closed to game-day traffic; the upper red "X" shows the same for the Academy Road exit from CA-110; and the red arrow shows the existing exit from CA-110, one that delivers game-day traffic directly to the Downtown Gate.

It's just a thought ...
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    About the Author

    Lawrence Bouett is a retired research scientist and registered professional engineer who now conducts historical and genealogical research full-time.  A ninth-generation Californian, his primary historical research interests are Los Angeles in general and the Stone Quarry Hills in particular.  His ancestors arrived in California with Portolá in 1769 and came to Los Angeles from Mission San Gabriel with the pobladores on September 4, 1781.

    Lawrence Bouett
    Lawrence Bouett may be contacted directly here.

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  • Home
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  • History
    • Timeline
    • Street Name Histories >
      • Solano Avenue
      • Buena Vista Road
    • People of Solano >
      • Francisco Solano
      • Rosa Casanova
      • Alfredo Solano
      • María Solano
      • Guillermo Bouett
    • Photos
  • Blog
  • 1866 Org.
  • City Service Requests
  • Mission San Conrado