History and Background:

"As described by the City Charter the Sacramento City Schools' district boundaries were coterminous with the city limits. When the city expanded its limits in [1911] it suddenly presented the schools with a serious problem. Many of the newly annexed areas either had no school or the existing facilities were not adequate for the projected growth in the city population." (Richard Rodgers, The First One-Hundred Years of the Sacramento City Schools 1854-1954 (1991) p. 39.) By 1913 35 portable classrooms were in use, by 1916 the number was 50. (Ibid., p. 28.) Attendance grew from 6,664 in 1911 to 13,394 in 1918. (Ibid.. at p. 41.) A school construction bond issue was proposed in the 1915-16 school year, but was not pursued because of the threat of World War I . The building program was postponed until after the Armistice in 1918. (Ibid., at p. 28.)
In 1919 the Sacramento Unified School District approved a $2,000,000 school bond to build ten new elementary schools because, as a recent Grand Jury had found:
". . . it is common knowledge that many school buildings of the City of Sacramento are overcrowded, inadequate, dangerous and unsanitary. "
Under this ambitious building program two existing schools, Marshall (27th & C), and Stanford (38th & 4th Ave) were to be enlarged and improved and ten new schools were to be constructed including Jefferson (1 6th & N), Fremont (24th & N), Newton Booth (26th and V), East Sacramento/David Luben ( 36th & K), El Dorado (53d & J St), Elmhurst/ Coloma (46/47th Sts., McKinley (7th & G), Bret Hart (Franklin Blvd.), Riverside/John Muir (Riverside Blvd.) and Highland Park/Sierra (3d & 24th).
To carry out the design and oversee the construction of these buildings the Board requested bids from architectural firms. Initially a San Francisco firm, Shea and Lofquist, was selected, but subsequently withdrew due to delays in the selling of construction bonds. Thirteen proposals were then considered and, following the advise advice of the Civic Architecture League, the School Board accepted three bids from local architectural firms requesting that they form an "Architectural and Engineering Commission." The architects selected were EC Hemmings, Jans Peterson and George Hudnutt. The three firms agreed to the Board proposal, incorporating as Hemmings, Peterson and Hudnutt, with offices at 9th and I streets. While incorporating to carry out the school contract, the architects also continued to maintain their own separate offices. The Board charged the architects with conducting a comprehensive survey and preparing a report on the entire elementary building program, preparing designs for the individual schools, preparing the bid process for selecting contractors, and inspecting the buildings. At the same time the Board undertook securing sites in the appropriate neighborhoods.
A Highland Park School had been constructed circa 1888 on 1/6th of a block at 3d Avenue and 24th Street. As rebuilt in 1907, it was a two story rectangular wooden building topped by a steeply pitched, hip roofed cupola. It served the surrounding , then suburban developments of, inter alia, Highland Park (1887), Curtis Oaks (1907) and West Curtis Oaks (1910). By 1919 the building was deemed inadequate to the needs of the growing neighborhood and the School Board was advised to abandon the "poor wooden building" and to acquire 5-6 acres for a new Class A school. A fire in 1920 damaged the building and increased pressure for new facilities.
In 1920 the Board approved sites and building plans for El Dorado, McKinley, and Elmhust/Coloma, but conflict over the proper site for the Highland Park School delayed building plans. The initial recommendation was for a site in South Curtis Oaks (near the present Bret Harte School), but both the Highland Park PTA and the neighborhood favored a site in the Heilbron Tract at 4th Avenue and 24th Street near the existing 1902 school. As a result of a petition signed at a "mass" meeting of the neighborhood, the Board accepted the Heilbron property in April, 1921, and directed the architects to report on the size and cost of the school. In May the architects presented preliminary plans based on a school intended to accommodate 475 students. The plan included ten classrooms, four special rooms and one kindergarten, administrative offices, teacher's rest room, and toilets for a cost of $175,000. By September October final plans and specifications were completed and in November a request for bids was made public. The contract was awarded to Robert Trost, a general contractor. In January of the next year, the Curtis Oaks Improvement Club requested that the Board change the name of the prospective school from Highland Park to Sierra School. Two other schools in the building program were also renamed in 1922, Elmhust became Coloma School and the East Sacramento Elementary became David Lubin.
Mid-way through the construction of the Sierra School in March, 1922, the School Board entered into an agreement transferring the architectural contract from the Architectural and Engineering Commission (Hemmings, Peterson and Hudnutt) to the new firm of Dean and Dean, consisting of brothers, Charles and James. This initial contract was limited to the completion of the schools authorized under the 1919 bond, but was soon expanded to include new work. Dean and Dean were charged to begin drawings for Jefferson, El Dorado and Coloma schools, and in November, they recommended to the Board that they accept the Sierra School building, holding over $2,000 from the final payment to the contractor. This action, recorded in the minutes of the Board on November 20, 1922, indicates that the principal building was near completion It was apparently occupied soon thereafter, as the January 13, 1923, edition of The Sacramento Bee listed 23 students as having graduated from elementary school there.
Even before the completion of the new building, the Board directed Dean and Dean to design a four classroom addition, plans for which were completed and approved in January 1923, with a contract awarded to HW Robertson for the construction work. The addition was accepted by the Board on August 20, 1923, and use commenced on the first day of school in September. The school's formal dedication ceremony was held November 9, 1923. The Sacramento Bee announced that it had eighteen classrooms, which included the expansion.
Landscaping plans were addressed by a special committee appointed to consider trees at the new school sites. The committee's recommendations then were discussed with the Superintendent of City Parks. The committee recommended that oriental plane trees, elms and poplars be planted in groups, approximately 15 per site. However, landscaping was delayed into April due to rains. At Sierra School the Board appointed a special committee to arrange for the planting of four oaks in the front of the school. Two of these have survived in front of the main building, but appear to be in poor condition. In addition there are two large oaks at the rear of the school yard, near the comer of 4th Avenue and 25th Street, which appear to pre-date the school. Landscape trees were planted, not in clusters as recommended by the committee, but at equal intervals around the perimeter of the school yard. An article in the Sacramento Bee in 1928 indicates that 28 oriental plane trees, donated by HJ McCurry, who's children attended the school, were set our around the school periphery. These trees appear to have survived and now provide a shaded perimeter around the grounds of the Community Center.
In 1928 the School Board again undertook a survey of schools in order to relinquish unwanted school sites and to reexamine the earlier building program. As a result of this study they adopted a Buildings and Grounds program which included the addition of auditoriums to several of the schools initiated under the 1919 bond. Sierra School was selected to add a 400 seat auditorium, as were Bret Harte, Coloma, Donner, and Newton Booth. After a competitive bid process, Dean and Dean were selected to design the auditoriums for Bret Harte, Coloma, Donner, Newton Booth and Sierra Schools. In August, 1929, the plans for Sierra School were approved and were put out to bid. Henry Finnegan was hired to construct the auditorium and the connecting corridor. The work was completed and accepted by the School Board December 30, 1929.
Two months later, James Dean withdrew from the firm to take the post of City Manager, City of Sacramento. The firm however, retained the joint name.
Significance:
Sierra 2 Community Center is eligible for designation as a local Sacramento Landmark, as well as for listing on the National Register of Historic Places and the California Register of Historical Resources under Criterion C as an excellent example of its architectural style (Spanish/Mediterranean Revival) and as the work of Charles and James Dean (Dean and Dean) significant, if not the most significant, architectural firm in the Sacramento area in the 1920s and 30s.
As noted above, Sierra School was part of a large school expansion program undertaken in the 1920s by the City. The program under which Sierra School was designed emphasized standardization of educational facilities. Although based on a "typical" ground plan, each of the schools designed under the program was distinctive in its exterior design and detailing. In an article in the Architect and Engineer in 1922, the author described the schools produced under the city's program as straightforward (sic) in composition and detailing, with simple massing, and "never without grace." Although the buildings were uniform in certain respects, he concluded that: "The sense of solid achievement with an entire absence of striving gives the buildings an atmosphere of genuine importance."
All of the ten schools constructed under the building program of the 1920s (the 1919 school bond), were designed in the Spanish/ Mediterranean Revival Style. Popular throughout California in the 1920s this style was advocated by a number of architects and designers as particularly suited to the California climate and natural setting which is very similar to that of Spain and Mexico. A large number of widely available architectural travel books documented both high style and vernacular Spanish architecture. Volumes such as Mexican Houses by Richard Garrison, Colonial Architecture of Mexico by Bertrand Goodhue, as well as studies by Rexford Newcomb of Spanish Colonial Architecture in Florida, the Southwest and California made available examples of Spanish architecture available. From the late teens through the 1920s, the Architect and Engineer frequently featured drawings and photographs of Spanish buildings. In 1915, the San Diego Panama Pacific Exposition, designed by Goodhue, made Spanish Style architecture familiar throughout the state.
The design for the 1920's Sacramento Schools drew heavily on these readily available precedents, particularly the vernacular forms of Andalusia and Southern Spain. Executed either in brick or hollow clay tile clad with stucco, the buildings generally featured low pitched mission tile roofs, second-story, iron railed balconies, terra cotta embellishment at entrances (particularly in the cases of Fremont and Newton Booth with their formal pillars and cornices), arched openings and arcades, grille work and towers. Sierra School embodies all of these characteristics and is and an excellent example of this style. Donner and Leland Stanford also based on the Andalusian vernacular, have been demolished.
Sierra School is restrained in its design and decorative treatment. The two primary entries, at opposite ends of the principal north-south wing, are set back and framed with austere pilasters and architraves, each with an iron railed balcony above. The balcony is accessed from recessed, glazed double doors that open from the hall. The balcony is repeated in the end wall of the single story projecting north wing. Small grill covered windows flank both doors with a circular window on the wall opposite the main entrance. The original roof was mission tile. At the rear of the building, a covered loggia supported by arched openings provides access between rear classrooms on the exterior of the building. Tall, stucco chimneys, one, on the north end with a hipped opening and one on the south end with a battered profile add interest and reference the tall, elaborated chimneys common on Spanish Style buildings. The 1929 additions to the building enhanced its Spanish/Mediterranean attributes, introducing a courtyard between the original school block and the auditorium. The auditorium, while simple in concept, is embellished with stucco buttresses along the side walls and a portico with a tiled roof supported on arched columns. The interior of the portico is richly embellished with tile work and the double entry doors are paneled and glazed and are trimmed with heavy studs. Mission tile grillwork is found on the side walls of the portico and at the apex of the gable end. Brick, geometric grillwork is also introduced on the auditorium side walls.
The buildings and additions to the Sierra Schools are generally attributed to Dean and Dean. The design of the 1919 bond school buildings was initially entrusted to a group of local architects who incorporated under the title of the Architecture and Engineering Commission. The three firms involved were Hemmings, Peterson and Hudnutt. James Dean, a young architect who had come to Sacramento to join his brother Charles in the California State Architects Office in 1912, by 1920 was working in the offices of EC Hemmings. James appears to have been significantly involved in the school building work awarded to the co-commission members. He appeared on several occasions before the Board of Education to discuss the building program and signed correspondence from the Commission to the Board. He also initialed each page of the original plans as checked by himself.



In 1922 Charles also left the State Architect's Office and together the Dean brothers established their own firm. In June, 1922 the School Board transferred the program contract from the Architectural and Engineering Commission to Dean and Dean. An article, published the same month in the Architect and Engineer, acknowledged the involvement of Hemmings, Peterson and Hudnutt in the building program, but emphatically attributed the actual design of the buildings to Dean and Dean. Building plans and photographs included in the forty-one page article cite both Hemmings et al and Dean and Dean as "Architects, Designers and Successors." It appears from the Board Minutes, the original plans, and the Architect and Engineer article that the Deans played a substantial role in the design of the original Sierra building and there is no question that they designed the classroom addition of 1923 and the auditorium addition of 1929.
The Dean and Dean firm practiced in Sacramento and the adjacent region from its founding in 1922 until Charles' death in 1956. Although James left the firm in 1929 to become City Manager, the double names continued to be used. They played a significant role in the transformation of the City of Sacramento from a small town of predominantly Victorian architecture to a regional center with numerous important public buildings executed in the Revival styles of the 1920s and 30s. Although they designed several Tudor and Norman Revival buildings, they tended to favor the Mediterranean style in their more monumental works. Among their most important downtown Mediterranean buildings are the Memorial Auditorium, the Sutter Club, the Westminster Presbyterian Church, and the Breuner's Furniture Store (demolished). They often worked in the white washed style of Andalusia, favoring stucco walls with terra cotta trim, red tile roofs and iron balconies, grill work, and decorative tile. Public and commercial buildings that drew their inspiration from this southern Spanish vernacular and are still in evidence include the Sutter Club, Westminster Presbyterian, the "Cafe Metro" building on Freeport Boulevard, and the Alhambra Shopping Center on Alhambra Boulevard.
They also worked in the more formal Romanesque styles of northern Spain, usually favoring brick masonry embellished with more or less elaborate terra cotta decoration. Certainly the most monumental buildings in this variation of the style were the Memorial Auditorium and the main building of Sacramento City College with its high tower and arched entryway (now demolished). Other, less monumental, but still important, examples of their Romanesque inspired works include the Eastern Star Temple (K& 28th ), the Clunie Library in McKinley Park, the YWCA (L & 17th) and the Dean Apartments (N & 15th ).
In addition to their public and commercial work, Dean and Dean also executed a large number of residential commissions for individual clients and developers. They designed a number of houses in the Wright and Kimbrough Tract 24 (the Fabulous 40's), at least seventeen of which can be identified from their drawings in the collection of the city archives. Two of the most notable residences are Mediterranean in style, the Jacobs house on the comer of 44th and M, which also has a later Thomas Church garden, and the Hart House on 40th. Both of these are large, two-story stucco houses with extensive tile work and detailing. Although not Mediterranean in style, Dean and Dean also designed the Pollack house which served as the residence of Ronald Reagan during most of his two terms as governor of California. The JC Carly house on Montgomery Way (comer of Franklin) is another excellent example if of Dean and Dean residential architecture in the Spanish style. The Carly house is one of several homes designed by Dean and Dean in association with JC Carly, the developer of much of the Curtis Park area. A portion of South Curtis Oaks subdivision #1 which extends from Donner Way to 6th Avenue between East Curtis Drive and Franklin, a Carly development, is the only wholly architect designed tract in Sacramento. In addition to appearing in feature articles in the Architect and Engineer, 1922 and 1927, Dean and Dean's residential designs were featured in the Home Designer magazine and in a pattern book published by House and Garden Magazine.
The school buildings designed by Dean and Dean between 1920-1929 were a significant aspect of their body of work. Among their earliest public building designs, they explored variations on the popular revival styles of the period, introducing variety and distinctiveness of design within a standardized set of requirements. Of the several school buildings they designed, only a handful remain. Newton Booth and Fremont School are listed on the National Register and have been adaptively reused, the former as an office complex and the latter as an adult school. Coloma and Sierra schools have been converted into community centers. The annex to Marshall School and the Jefferson School (former District Administrative Building), both designed in a Tudor Revival style, also survive. This represents 50% of the school buildings designed by Dean and Dean in the 1920s. Sierra School is the only surviving example of a school building designed in the Andalusia inspired vernacular style with stucco cladding.

Integrity:

The most significant change to the school buildings was the replacement of the original mission tile roof with composition shingle. The rustic, red/brown tile was an important design element found in all of the Spanish/Mediterranean school buildings designed by Dean and Dean. Its removal affects the integrity of design and materials of the building. However, in most other ways the school buildings have been minimally changed. The original design and its sympathetic 1920s additions are still intact, both on the exterior and interior. Cladding, fenestration, and detailing remain largely undisturbed. In a few cases, earlier interior and rear exterior doors have been replaced by standard institutional fire doors. The adaptive reuse of the building as a Community Center is consistent with its earlier functions as an educational institution. A number, of non-profit, educational organizations maintain space there and offer instruction in everything from yoga to Italian. The building is immediately recognizable as a traditional neighborhood school. Over all the building retains integrity of design, materials (with exception of the roof), workmanship, setting, feeling and association.

Conclusion:

The building is eligible for designation as a City Landmark. It is an excellent example of its property type ( a neighborhood elementary school), of its architectural style (Spanish, specifically Andalusian/ Vernacular revival) and as the work of an important architectural team who made a major contribution to the built environment of the City and County of Sacramento in the period of the 1920s-30s. Two other Dean and Dean school buildings from this period have been designated, Newton Booth and Fremont Schools in the mid-town area. The Sierra School building compares favorably in its design, execution and integrity with these buildings and is the only remaining example of its specific genre.

Copyright 2003 Dan Murphy