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The Changing Face of Muir Middle School

Check out old Muir yearbooks to see how the school, its faculty, and students have changed over the years.

Muir Middle School was built in 1922 among what was then the middle-class suburban tract housing that expanded south and west from downtown in the years following World War I, replacing what had once been farmland. (There was a dairy at Slauson and Vermont.) The site is just south of the Vermont Square District, at the time a fashionable area of town. Houses cost less back then (LA Times, Jan. 1922). So did groceries. Fashions were different. This is how fashion-conscious women dressed. The school, originally called John Muir Junior High School, is named for John Muir , legendary naturalist. (There are 35 other schools in the United States also named after John Muir.) John Muir was instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park. Newly accessible by automobile, the park was even back then a popular resort destination. Cars had just started to become cheap enough for the middle class, instead of merely being toys for the very wealthy. 1922 also saw the completion of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, and the first commercial radio stations in Los Angeles (KHJ, KFI and KNX). The following year, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was completed adjacent to the University of Southern California (USC), just north of Muir. In 1923 the population of Los Angeles reached one million people. (In 1900 the city had just 102, 000 residents. Today it has a population of over four million.) This photo of what was then John Muir Junior High School was taken in 1924. The original brick building is now covered with stucco, but otherwise looks very much the same. An aerial view of the campus during the 1920s (LA Public Library Photo Database). The cafeteria, then located in what is now the school library, looked a little different. The Student Body Officers in 1924. And the faculty. Attracted by the balmy climate, during the 1920s the motion and aviation industries converged on the Los Angeles area, creating a housing boom. By the end of the decade, 52 Los Angeles mo vied studios would employ some 15,000 workers. The 1921 oil strikes in the nearby Signal Hill and Baldwin Hills areas also fueled demand for housing. The craftsman-style homes in the area of Muir were built to accommodate that growth. Real estate developers, hoping to capitalize on the image of Los Angeles as a sun-drenched paradise, lined the streets of their developments with palm trees. Today, many of those trees remain, now soaring giants towering over the landscape. Vermont and Slauson, looking north in 1927 (from USC Digital Archive). At the turn of the century little more than an overgrown town, by 1927 Los Angeles was the fifth largest city in the United States. Muir Middle School used to be accessible by the University Red Car Line that traveled down the center of Vermont Ave. from downtown Los Angeles past the University of Southern California (USC). In the 1932 the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum adjacent to USC hosted the 1932 Summer Olympics. Thirty-seven nations and 1,408 athletes competed. Muir survived the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake which left 120 people dead and caused $41 million in damage. The earthquake led to major upgrades in Southern California building codes. Soon after the December 30, 1940 opening of the Pasadena freeway (the first true freeway in the US), what is now called the Harbor (110) Freeway was opened a few blocks east of Muir, extending the Pasadena Freeway south from Los Angeles into San Pedro. (The Pasadena and Harbor Freeways followed the path of famed coast-to-coast highway U.S. Route 66–also known as U.S. 6.) The 110 allowed easy access to downtown Los Angeles, but also led to the eventual disappearance of the Red Car Line from Vermont Avenue. Heavy rains in 1943 flooded Slauson Avenue (at Denker; LA Public Library Photo Database). Between 1941 and 1944 California's population tripled. Many of these immigrants were blacks fleeing the harsh discrimination then common in the American South, who found a temperate climate and decent-paying jobs in Southern California's war-time aircraft manufacturing plants. Though only five years earlier, agriculture had been the largest segment of the Los Angles county economy, by 1945 aircraft construction was a $7 billion a year business and local aviation plants were building new warplanes at the rate of one every seven minutes. Though discrimination was less than that found in the southern states, until shortly after World War II, blacks were only allowed to purchase property in specific areas within South Los Angeles. (The “black area” was east of Main Street. The 110 freeway, like many freeways, was built along what was at the time the racial dividing line.)[1] In the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s, Los Angeles was the scene of significant white-on-black violence, as black residents found outside of this “settlement area” were routinely harassed and beaten up by white gangs. This led to the establishment of black “mutual protection clubs” which eventually evolved into today’s street gangs.[2] In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the use of racially-restrictive covenants in housing, allowing blacks to move into the district.[3] After the war, though, jobs in the aviation industry dried up and the area went into a decline. By the late fifties and early sixties the neighborhood surrounding Muir was populated largely by low-income blacks. The lack of good jobs created simmering tensions which finally exploded in the summer of 1965. The 1965 Watts Riots destroyed hundreds of buildings in the area, but Muir was spared. In 1971 the Sylmar Earthquake caused extensive damage in the San Fernando Valley.In 1984 the LA Memorial Coliseum was again host to the Summer Olympics. Riots again hit the area in 1992 following the acquittal of police officers videotaped beating Rodney King. On January 17, 1994 the Northridge quake hit the San Fernando Valley. 57 people died in the earthquake, but once again Muir suffered little damage. Earthquakes, though, remain a part of Southern California life, and students at Muir regularly practice "earthquake drills." In the later half of the 20th century, immigrants from Latin American countries moved into the area, partially displacing the previous Black residents. By 2007 the area's population was about 75% Hispanic and 25% Black.

In the summer of 2008, a slight decline in enrollment allowed Muir Middle School to return to a traditional school calendar, after several years on a four-track, year-round schedule. At the same time Muir annexed 15 classrooms from adjoining Budlong Elementary School, enlarging the campus and further reducing overcrowding. During the 2008–2009 school year, Muir implemented Personalized Learning Environments (PLEs), dividing the school into four "mini-schools" (plus the already existing Magnet Program).

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More information about Los Angeles and its history can be found at LA Almanac and the LA City Historical Society.

Picturing Los Angeles (by Jon and Nancy Wilkman) is an excellent pictorial history of Los Angeles, available at many branches of the the Los Angeles Public Library.

More pictures of early Los Angeles can be found in Los Angeles: Then and Now, also available at the public library.

[1] www.sierraserviceproject.org/forms/LA%20Study%20Guide.pdf SSP Los Angeles Study and Discussion Guide. "Vermont Square Neighborhood, Los Angeles." 9/28/07

[2] ibid.

[3] ibid.

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