History
The high school was founded in 1924 under the direction of Principal Rae G. Van Cleve. Most of the original campus facilities were demolished in 1966 because they did not meet earthquake safety standards, but the historic Auditorium and its iconic Rotunda were spared by preservationists and are still in daily use. Greenway Court, originally built in 1939 as a social hall by the students at Fairfax as a class project, was also spared and was moved to its current location on Fairfax Avenue, where it now stands as a theater and has served since 1999 as the home of the Greenway Arts Alliance.
Fairfax High School has been known since the 1930s as a breeding ground for future major figures in the entertainment industry.
Former NFL official Jim Tunney served as the school's principal from 1964 to 1970.
When the 1971 Sylmar (San Fernando) earthquake struck on February 9, 1971, with a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale, nearby Los Angeles High School was damaged severely and closed for repairs. Students from LA High attended Fairfax High on "double sessions," with Fairfax students using the campus from 7am-12 noon, and LA High students from 1pm-6pm.
In 2009 some territory from the Los Angeles High School attendance boundary was transferred to Fairfax High School.
Read more about this topic: Fairfax High School (Los Angeles)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)