Mission High School

1. 1897

   The Mission High School Club secured the large lot at 18th and Dolores Streets and the Board of Education bought it for the school, until then in temporary quarters.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
2. August 21, 1897

   The cornerstone of the first Mission High School was laid on August 21, 1897, by Superintendent Webster and a pupil, Harry F. Grady, before a crowd of Mission district schoolchildren.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
3. 1898

   The first Mission High School was completed on land formerly owned by the Jewish Cemetery Association — a monumental Renaissance Revival building by Charles I. Havens, and the first public comprehensive high school in San Francisco. A figure caption in the same statement dates it 1897.

   Mission Dolores Neighborhood Historic Context Statement, adopted 2022
4. 1900

   Built.

5. 1906

   The school survived the earthquake and fire and overlooked the refugee camp in Mission Park.

   Mission Dolores Neighborhood Historic Context Statement, adopted 2022
6. 1906

   The first Mission High School served as an official neighborhood shelter for the homeless camped in Dolores Park.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
7. 1922

   The original Mission High School building was destroyed by fire.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
8. 1925 and 1927

   Completed.

9. 1925

   The first, western phase of the new Mission High School was finished: science and vocational classrooms and the west gymnasium, entered from 18th Street beside the gym at Church Street.

   SF Planning, landmark designation
10. 1926

    The Board of Education moved the overcrowded Sunshine School into a building here behind Mission High School; that building no longer stands.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
11. 1927

    The second, eastern phase of Mission High School was completed, adding the present main entrance, the 127-foot bell tower, academic classrooms, the auditorium, the little theater and the cafeteria.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
12. 1928

    The rebuilt Mission High School complex was fully occupied.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
13. 1936

    Edith Hamlin, assisted by Betty Wiley and Jay Risling, painted three murals here for the Federal Art Project: two six-by-twenty-four-foot works in the library, Civilization Through the Arts and Crafts as Taught to the Neophyte Indians and Mission San Francisco de Asis, and a third in the stair tower that was removed in 1973. The school is City Landmark No. 255.

    San Francisco New Deal Historic Context Statement, adopted 2023
14. 1938

    Mission High School had no room for playing fields when John Reid Jr. built it in the 1920s. In 1935 the Board of Education asked the Public Works Administration for $65,000 to lay out fields north of the academic building; the block of Dorland Street between Dolores and Church was closed and about twenty buildings on its north side were condemned and cleared before work began in late 1938 or early 1939.

    San Francisco New Deal Historic Context Statement, adopted 2023
15. 1939

    Drew Athletic Field was completed behind the school.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
16. June 22, 1964

    Photographed, showing the Mission High School.

    San Francisco Subjects Photograph Collection (SFP 162), San Francisco Public Library
17. 1973–1977

    Mission High School was closed until 1977 for a seismic retrofit under the state's school safety law; free-standing ornament was taken off the front.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
18. 1989

    Mission High School, where the 1989 conference Dynamics of Color on race, gender and sexual orientation was held; the school also hosted regional and national conferences of gay and lesbian choruses in the 1980s. A designated San Francisco landmark (No. 255).

    Donna J. Graves and Shayne E. Watson, Citywide Historic Context Statement for LGBTQ History in San Francisco, San Francisco Planning Department, adopted by the Historic Preservation Commission November 18, 2015
19. 2007

    Designated San Francisco Landmark No. 255, Mission High School.

    SF Planning, landmark designation
20. May 2007

    Issued Permit M68924

    Otc alterations permit.

1 nominal $1 street-space or sidewalk permit is omitted from the timeline. The assessor dates the building to 1900; Planning's historic resource survey records 1926. The statement dates Mission High School to a two-phased construction in 1925 and 1927 in one passage and to 1926 in another; Planning's historic resource survey records 1926 and the assessor's roll 1900.