Piedmont Avenue Elementary School

Piedmont Avenue Elementary School

        Piedmont Avenue Elementary School held its first classes about 145 years ago.  The Hume family, about whom more will appear in a future blog, lived way out in the country on an unpaved road that led to the cemetery.  They had two children of school age, but the nearest school was at 28th and West, several
miles away, so Mrs. Hume’s sister, Miss Zilphia Raymond, who lived with them
and who was a teacher, began informal lessons in the Hume dining room around
1876.

        Walter Blair, at Blair and El Cerrito, the Hume’s nearest neighbor, also had
a girl and a boy of school age and they soon joined the Hume children in their
lessons.  Then Fred Walker’s family, who owned a dairy ranch on what is now Grand Avenue, heard about the educational opportunity in the neighborhood and they arranged for him to attend.  He rode a horse to school most days.

        With five children now meeting in the Hume dining room, Walter Blair approached the state for support in forming a school.  In 1878, the new school was official and named Piedmont Elementary School.  By 1880 the enrollment had increased to 10 students and the Hume dining room was no longer adequate to house the pupils.  An actual school was built, between a saloon and the home and nursery of Walter Blair’s brother.  The saloon is still there, now called The Kona Club.

        By 1890 the new school was too small, too, and construction was underway for a new school at a new/old site.  The Humes sold a corner of their property at Piedmont Avenue and Echo Avenue to the school district for $16,000 and a grand two story Victorian building was erected.  First classes were held there in February
1892.

       The City of Piedmont had formed by 1907, and its border with Oakland was only a few streets from the school.  A school called Piedmont School but not actually in Piedmont was confusing, so the name was changed to Piedmont
Avenue School.  Another and probably the last name change came in 1928.  This is when the 7th and 8th graders began attending Westlake school and the school became Piedmont Avenue Elementary School.

       The present building was erected in 1939, after a disastrous fire destroyed the original one, and the style reflects the architecture of those years.  An impression in the sidewalk in front of theschool shows that it was installed by WPA.  If you read my blog on Sidewalk Archaeology, you know that the
accompanying 1941 means that’s when it was installed.  WPA was an economic recovery program under President Franklin Roosevelt, and the sidewalk was poured by WPA workers after the school was completed.  A few years ago, after several years of some classes being held in portable buildings on the playground, an addition enlarged the school building to its current size.  But the outside remains very much its Art Deco original self and is a neighborhood architectural treasure.