Every day, people come to school. Day after day, week after week, month after month, repeating just like last year. And the year before that. And the year before that. School seems unchanging; the same classes every day, seeing the same people every day. But just how far back does this cycle go?
Interested, I spoke with Venice High administrator Brian Blesser. Doubling as the school’s historian, he provided what could be considered an informational time machine. Very few relics of that time have survived to this day, rendering knowledge priceless.
Venice was opened in 1911 as the “Venice Union Polytechnic High School”. In 1914, it served 166 students with 17 faculty members. Times were very different back then, but just how different? What was being a Venice student like exactly 110 years ago?
At the time, everything was very different. Los Angeles was a fraction of its current size, less than a tenth of its current population. Zones like Venice were especially popular and developed, with over 10.000 residents and 100.000 tourists per year.
Wake up at 8:00–8:30; make sure to dress accordingly, dress code is strict! Boys wore something nice, trousers and flannel preferably. Girls wore something formal, dresses or blouses. Getting dress coded meant getting detention.
Walk to school through the bustling streets of Venice. Your school was hosted in a brick building in a lagoon, today buried beneath a barbershop on the west corner of Main and Windward. Busses, trams, and shiny new Ford Model Ts puttered up and down the avenues. Venice Boulevard Line offered streetcars for five cents per ride, if you wanted to arrive a little faster. First period starts at 9:00, don’t be late.
High school was your last step in education at the time. Out of the 45 people in your grade, maybe one or two would move on to college. These were the most important years of your life! Venice was everything for you and your peers. In the mornings and during important events everyone would sing the school’s alma mater, which you were expected to have memorised.
We’re loyal to you, Venice High School—
To thee, we will always be true,
With hearts that are light
For we know we are right—
We’ll fight to defend the White and Blue.
Thy glory will live on forever,
We’re proud to be part of the crew,
We’re one for all and we’re altogether
Alma Mater, for you.
By blue Pacific water,
Echo the victor’s cheers,
Forward ye sons and daughters,
Onward ye Gondoliers.
We’re loyal to you, Venice High School,
To thee we will always be true,
We’re one for all and we’re altogether,
Alma Mater, for you.
Depending on your grade, you’d take your usual classes the whole year, divided into five types of courses. You’d take your usual liberal arts courses like Algebra and English Language, everyone took Penmanship and Typewriting, then there’s your commercial arts courses like Science. Boys took mechanical arts courses like Forging, Printing, and Marine Mechanics, whilst girls took household arts classes like Sewing and Dressmaking.
Lunch hour would have been around 11:45, and would’ve lasted all the way until around 12:30 in the afternoon. Usually, students that paid for lunch would be corralled into the yard where they would line up at the cafeteria, pick up a metal tray and utensils, and were given small, efficient portions so as not to “overburden their digestive powers”.
The original Union boathouse where classes were hosted for two years, c. 1911
You’d talk about the local news or recent events with your friends. Maybe you’d talk about how the school had burned down and flooded just a few months ago, or how fancy the new brick buildings were. Europe was at war with itself and it was so nice to be away from all that. Perhaps you’d talk about the upcoming seasonal dance. 110 years ago as of this day, you’d be preparing for the Winter Formal.
Other kids had enough time to walk down to the beachfront with their friends and eat at a cafe. IDs on your person at all times were regularly enforced, meaning coming and going during break hours was expedited. Be careful if you were walking around as an underclassman, though.
The only thing more important than what school you were in for your last four years of schooling was what grade you were in; upperclassmen had every right of way over those around them. A tenth year student was expected to stop whatever he was doing and move if a pair of seniors were walking through the hallway. Almost sounds like something out of a movie.
Lunch break is over, the next few classes were dedicated to fine arts like Music and “Vocal Expression” for freshmen and sophomores, Photography for juniors, and Water Colour for seniors. Sports, or “Physical Training” as it was called, was usually one of the last classes of the day. 4:00 in the afternoon is the end of school hours, but the day was nowhere near over; every single student was expected to attend clubs and extracurricular activities after school.
Every single faculty member, including your principal Mr. Cree T. Work (who would teach some of the higher-level classes), was expected to sponsor your extracurriculars, which included everything from rugby, football, and track to entire post-schedule classes for studying the Constitution and reading it aloud. Girls attended “less strenuous” activities as they were designated, though many clubs were mixed such as tennis, basketball, literary societies, and liberal arts.
You would meet with the rest of your club members, usually at an outdoor location until dark. As one of the most important aspects of your life, a short meeting would be anything less than two hours long.
Venice Union Polytechnic High School boys basketball team, c. 1914
Finally, after a long day of schooling, breaks, sports, and extracurriculars, around 7:00 is when you start heading home. Walk down Venice Boulevard in the warm evening breeze. Restaurants start lighting their new, fancy tungsten light bulbs on their storefronts as the sky grows dark. Ballrooms and clubs started filling up. A new attraction called “movie palaces” roped in hundreds of tourists and middle-class citizens.
As a polytechnic school that mainly operated on in-class experiments, the homework load at Venice Union was minimal, meant to prepare students for an industrial business society. Upper-level science courses like Chemistry or Physics would have required research papers, though most students at the time preferred more basic courses like Applied Marine Engineering.
Just how similar is this to what we know now? Go back five or six generations, and what were students the same age as us at the same school doing? It’s incredible how steadfast it is. The same curriculum and schedule persisted for decade after decade, despite the school moving in 1924 to the current property, despite the school being leveled in 1933 due to natural disasters, despite the school being hosted in a field of tents in an orchid for two years.
Left, what became of Venice student life after the Long Beach Earthquake, c. 1933; Right, colourised archival photograph of Venice High School, c. 1925
Venice’s past is surprisingly rich, especially the earliest couple of decades. It’s incredible to think how constant it’s been over the years, how people from what could be considered an entirely different era were doing the same activities and having the same days.
It’s reassuring, in a way. If they made it, so can you.
