George Washington High School

1. 1936

   George Washington High School was the first San Francisco project submitted to the Public Works Administration for funding. Miller & Pflueger designed the four-part campus in the Streamline Moderne style with Regency touches meant to echo Mount Vernon. The academic building was finished in 1935 and the shops building in 1936, and the school opened on 23 August 1936; the gymnasium and auditorium followed in 1940.

   San Francisco New Deal Historic Context Statement, adopted 2023
2. 1936

   The school carries one of the most ambitious New Deal public art programmes in the city. Victor Arnautoff painted the roughly 1,600-square-foot mural cycle Life and Era of George Washington across the stairway and lobby walls; Gordon Langdon, Lucien Labaudt and Ralph Stackpole painted frescoes in and above the second-floor library; and Sargent Johnson carved a cast-stone bas-relief of athletics in 1942. Dewey Crumpler's Multi-Ethnic Heritage murals were installed at the west end of the main hall in 1974 in answer to protests against Arnautoff's cycle.

   San Francisco New Deal Historic Context Statement, adopted 2023
3. 1936

   George Washington High School, designed by John Bakewell Jr.

   Architecture, Planning & Preservation Professionals: A Collection of Biographies, adopted 2021
4. 1936

   George Washington High School, 1936, by Timothy Pflueger with James Rupert Miller, a Public Works Administration project. Four collaborative fresco murals were painted in its lobby and corridors in 1935-36 by the WPA artists Victor Arnautoff, Lucien Labaudt, Gordon Langdon and Ralph Stackpole.

   Modern Architecture and Landscape Design Context Statement, adopted 2011
5. August 13, 1964

   Photographed, showing the George Washington High School.

   San Francisco Subjects Photograph Collection (SFP 162), San Francisco Public Library
6. Apr 2014

   Permit 201404173486 $$$ $150,000

   (restroom) to erect 1 story, no basement, muni operator restroom.

7. 2019

   The school board voted in 2019 to remove, paint over or cover the 1930s mural cycle in the lobby and stairway after objections to its depictions of Native Americans. A court halted the removal in 2021 on the ground that no environmental review had been carried out, and in 2022 the board voted not to appeal.

   Nina Bogdan, Russian American Historic Context Statement, San Francisco Planning Department, adopted by the Historic Preservation Commission October 15, 2025

21 nominal $1 street-space or sidewalk permits are omitted from the timeline. 3 expired permits are not shown.