By: Lillie Stonecipher
With its beautiful neo-Romanesque inspired architecture and its stunning bell tower, El Segundo High School is the pride and joy of the city from which it takes its name. But it wasn’t always this way. Until 1927, Inglewood High was the home-away-from-home for El Segundo students, as their small town did not have its own high school. However, when presented with the task of supporting and improving Inglewood High, the citizens of El Segundo chose to instead build their own school, and by 1924, over 90 percent of El Segundo’s population (900 people) and the majority of Inglewood petitioned for the city’s new high school. This request was granted by evidently popular demand, and construction began on April 27, 1927. Seven short months later, on November 14, all of the brick work, the manual arts building, and the household arts building for the school were completed. Reaching the eighth month, the administration building, the gymnasium, and the rest of the school was built. Throughout this process, 3300 cubic yards of concrete, 650,000 board feet of lumber, 1,030,000 squares of common brick, and 430,000 squares of face brick were brought together to create the school we attend today. By December 13, 1927, the school was open, welcoming the first-ever El Segundo High School class.
According to an El Segundo Herald survey of students, this class numbered a total of 124 students, with all of them taking English, 69 in mathematics, 93 in a second language course, and 59 in science-related classes. The school also offered typewriting—with twenty-one students—shorthand, with a total of seven enrollees, bookkeeping, with twenty, and business training, with a class of fifteen. The survey saw twenty-seven girls were in the homemaking course and twenty-eight in the art course, whereas orchestra was not as successful and saw only eighteen enrolled. Nevertheless, the school was off to a bright start, and its success skyrocketed during the 1940s.
In 1947, El Segundo High School had its first of many exposures to the film industry with the popular movie It Happened in Brooklyn. Thanks to its idyllic, cinematic look, the school has featured in a total of 39 television productions since then, with one in progress even now: Eddie Murphy’s Candy Cane Lane, set for release in 2023.
For 95 years, El Segundo High School has been the picture of success, shaping its students into the movers and shakers of today; such a school will continue to be the pride of future generations.