Our Piedmont Recreation Department’s Walking on Wednesdays group had a great turnout of 48 walkers and three K-9 best friends when we assembled this week at the Exedra for our weekly walk.
We were pleased Robert L brought Tom B to walk with us for the first time, and that Lori R was back after a long absence. We were also happy Judy Love invited her granddaughter, Emilia R, to join us. Emi is starting first grade at Havens School on Monday, and the walk had some special relevance for her. This was the last Wednesday this summer that we could walk the three Piedmont elementary schools’ campuses.
We went up Highland Avenue to the Havens School entrance. Teachers were just leaving the school’s Ellen Driscoll Playhouse. They said it would be fine for us to go inside and some history was shared. The City of Piedmont was incorporated in September 1907. Its population grew dramatically after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and city leaders decided to build two schools. The first school was built in 1910 and opened its doors in 1911. It was originally named “The Bonita Avenue School,” but was later renamed “Frank C. Havens Elementary School” after the land donor.
Havens was expanded with Depression New Deal funds in the 1930s. A new five-classroom wing was built on the eastern edge of the grounds in 1937-38 and an auditorium was added in 1940-42. The auditorium was named in honor of Ellen Driscoll, who was Havens’ first principal and taught at the school for 20 years. Students participated in painting the ceilings of all the Piedmont school auditoriums. The theme for Ellen Driscoll’s is California history, at Wildwood it’s U.S. history, and at Beach it’s literature. Fifth and sixth graders painted the panels in a paint-by-number fashion before they were applied to the ceilings.
A new Havens School was built at the same site in 1955. The 1910 school, which faced Bonita Avenue, was torn down. The New Deal classrooms and auditorium in the back remained, but in 2010 the school was completely rebuilt, and the 1938 classrooms were demolished.
We exited the auditorium and stopped outside for a group photo with young Emi at her new school. We continued to Bonita and Oakland Avenues for the long walk down to Beach School. We entered the Linda Beach Playfield at Howard Avenue and made our way to the Beach School playground. New play structures had been installed over the summer and many young people were enjoying them.
“The Lake Avenue School” was built in 1913. There were four teachers and 100 students in six grades. In 1918 the school was renamed the “Egbert W. Beach School” in honor of Egbert William Beach, the first Piedmonter and California officer killed in France during World War I.
The rapid growth of Piedmont from 1920 to 1930 created school facility needs. Beach students were taught in cramped, wooden portables. In 1933 the buildings were condemned as firetraps and an earthquake menace. They were torn down in 1934 and replaced in two Depression-era projects. The main wing was built in 1936, and an auditorium/classroom wing was added in 1940.
As part of city-wide seismic facility upgrades, Beach hosted some Havens students for the 2009-10 school year while Havens was rebuilt, and Wildwood students in 2010-11. When Beach had its renovations in 2011-12, the school temporarily relocated to Emeryville with buses shuttling students there and back. In the fall of 2012, the school re-opened with two new classrooms and new playground facilities.
We exited the playground on Linda Avenue and went down to Grand Avenue. We crossed Grand at Ace Hardware and walked up Wildwood Avenue to Wildwood School. We stopped in front of the school for its history. Wildwood School opened in 1924 and was expanded from 1936 to 1940 in four Depression-era projects with new classroom buildings and an auditorium.
We then got a look at the newly finished Witter Field track, climbed “PE Hill,” walked through the PHS campus, and returned to the Exedra. Young Emi R made the whole three-mile tour and learned a lot about Piedmont schools before her first day at Havens.
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