Fern Elementary School in Torrance began in 1926 as a group of bungalows assembled as a remote addition to Torrance Elementary School.

The school originally was known as Redondo Boulevard School, named after the nearby street that would later become Torrance Boulevard.

The school’s name changed to Fern Avenue School in 1928, after the street on which it actually was located.

On March 27, 1931, Torrance voters voted in favor a $12.7 million bond issue for the Los Angeles School District, as did the rest of the city. Torrance still was part of the Los Angeles district; it would not establish its own independent school district until 1947.

The city was assured that part of the bond money would go toward the construction of a permanent $80,000 structure to house Fern Elementary. The bungalows had proven to be substandard and inadequate as the population of the school grew from its original 119 students. Architectural plans were announced and artist’s renditions of the new building made public.

So Torrance officials and residents were outraged when the L.A. district announced in September 1931 that the school would not be built until the district was convinced that Torrance would not form its own school district and take over the school.

An incensed Torrance Chamber of Commerce immediately petitioned the L.A. district board to change its mind, pointing out that Torrance voters always had supported school bond measures and that the city gave a disproportionate amount to the big city district when compared what it received in return in the way of teachers and facilities.

That argument only would grow louder in the years leading up to the 1947 establishment of its own school district. But Torrance was not actively formulating a plan to form its own district in 1931.

In the meantime, the vociferous protests from the city wore down the L.A. school board, which reversed itself in 1932, when construction of the school began.

Even details of the construction process became rancorous.

The Los Angeles board voted in July 1932 to build a cesspool at the Fern Avenue school site, rather than spend an extra $400 to $700 to connect the school to the main sewer line as it had promised to do. Fortunately, Torrance residents were paying attention and nixed the cesspool idea.

After the lengthy struggle, the $84,000 Fern Avenue School building at 1314 Fern Avenue opened its doors to students on Jan. 2, 1933. Guy Holliday was its first principal, retaining the job he had been performing since 1929.

Weeks after the school opened, the city of Torrance announced plans to pave Sonoma and Eldorado streets. The two dirt streets leading to Fern became impassable during rainy weather. The city of L.A. already had paid for an extension of Fern Avenue to the recently renamed Torrance Boulevard.

Two months after the school opened, it was shaken but not seriously damaged by the Long Beach earthquake, which rolled through the area at 5:54 p.m. on March 10, 1933.
Fern Avenue School’s Parent Teacher Associated was formed by 20 charter members on April 29, 1933, with Mrs. C.D. Lowen as its first president.

By 1940, the school had grown to 285 students. It officially became part of the new Torrance Unified School District on July 1, 1947, when its keys were handed over to Torrance’s first superintendent, J.H. Hull.

In 1949, the Torrance district began looking at options to provide more facilities for Fern Avenue Elementary. The district owned a lot on the southwest corner of Fern and Eldorado, a low-lying area with drainage problem.

The district decided to solve the drainage problem and build a school there. Greenwood School opened in 1951. It was operated jointly with Fern Avenue School from 1953 until its closure in 1984.

Ownership of the land passed to the Torrance Parks and Recreation Department, which opened Greenwood Park on the site in 1995. The Greenwood School buildings are now occupied by a privately owned day care center.

By this time, the Fern Avenue School main building had survived two earthquakes, the one in March 1933 mentioned above, and another quake that damaged many buildings in Torrance on Nov. 14, 1941.

After the 1933 quake, the Field Act was enacted in California, setting quake safety standards for public buildings.

On March 6, 1957, realizing that many of its older school buildings didn’t meet those standards, the Torrance board of education announced plans to abandon and demolish the Fern building, in addition to the Perry School administration building and 24 additional structures at five other Torrance schools.

The district hired a Long Beach architectural firm, Killingsworth, Brady and Smith, to design a new building.

After some deliberation, the state of California in March 1958 saved Fern from the wrecking ball, rejecting the idea of replacing the elegant old school building. The state determined that rehabilitation of Fern to meet earthquake standards would be more cost effective than razing it and starting over.

The project, which took several months, was completed in 1959 at a cost of $240,000.

In recent years, overcrowding at the school, now known as simply as Fern Elementary School, led to the district leasing back some of the land that was now Greenwood Park in 1996 for a place to put portable classrooms. For more than a decade, students had to be escorted across the street to and from the temporary structures.

After several attempts at getting enough money to unify the school on its main site, the passage of Measures Y and Z in 2008 finally provided enough funding for the job.

The $13.5 million renovation uniting the split campus opened to students with the first day of classes in September 2012.

The new campus includes 14 new classrooms, a multipurpose room and a new cafeteria.

The school’s 83-year-ol main building has been upgraded and renovated, but remains intact, a survivor of both natural and man-made attempts to destroy it.

Sources:

Daily Breeze files.

The History of Torrance Schools, 1890-2000, by Thomas Rische, Ph.D, TUSD History Project, 2002.

Los Angeles Times files.

Torrance Herald files.