ALAMEDA — After a $60 million makeover, Historic Alameda High School this month will return to its original use after more than four decades: Serving high school students.
The work to modernize the Central Avenue school and make it earthquake-safe began in April 2017, and construction records underscore the massive undertaking.
Workers removed 2.4 million pounds of concrete and 900,000 pounds of wood, and installed 1.2 millions pounds of steel, 19 miles of conduit and wiring, 6,000 panes of glass and five miles of copper and steel piping, according to the Alameda Unified School District.
But it’s the smaller touches that will likely strike alumni and old-time residents.
The facade of the Neoclassical revival style building built in 1924 has its original cream and white color back, and markers for time capsules buried near the front steps by former graduating students have been fixed up.
The earliest marker dates to 1927, the year Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean, and the most recent to 1977, when Elvis Presley died and the first “Star Wars” film premiered.
Spots have been now set aside for the next wave of students — who will arrive for the first day of school on Aug. 19 — to bury their own capsules, district spokeswoman Susan Davis said.
“It has been restored to its former grandeur,” Davis said about the campus. “It’s really a majestic building.”
The dark patina of the brass front doors has been left alone as a tip of the hat to the school’s long history.
Designed by architect Carl Werner, who along with business partner, Matthew O’Brien, also designed the Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters in San Francisco, the school was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
The restoration means Alameda High students will attend most classes this fall in the old school, moving from the newer campus building just behind it that fronts Encinal Avenue.
On Thursday, the district will mark the restoration with a ribbon-cutting and tours.
The 100,000-square-foot Historic Alameda High School complex actually consists of three buildings.
The main building, made up of two wings of classrooms and an auditorium, was built in 1924. The science building at Central Avenue and Oak Street was added 10 years later and the west wing at Central Avenue and Walnut Street was built in 1957.
All three buildings have been upgraded.
Thirty-seven classrooms were modernized and 11 science labs were created, plus a half-dozen meeting rooms were built.
Earlier this week, crews were busy with last-minute work, including installing a safety rail on an outdoors stairway.
Beate Bruhl, an architectural finisher from Benicia, spruced up the black metal door of a walk-in safe in a room that will be a faculty lounge.
It’s one of three safes in the building. Just why the bank-like safes were initially installed has been lost to time.
Over the years so much scotch tape accumulated on the safe’s doors and locking mechanisms, Bruhl said, that it has taken hours to remove.
“Teachers are no longer allowed to use scotch tape, in my book,” she joked, as she used a razor blade to carefully peel away the old glue and grime.
“We want to clean it up, but also keep the old look,” Bruhl said.
Principal Robert Ithurburn said the school likely will use one of the safes, which is near the main entrance, as a secure location to store deliveries.
Over the years, the old school has housed the administrative offices of the Alameda Unified School District, the Alameda Adult School and the main branch of the Alameda Free Library.
It became vacant in 2012 when the district moved its offices to Challenger Drive amid concerns about earthquake safety.
Along with restoring the main lobby, upgrades include new electrical and fire sprinkler systems, as well as repairing the outside terrazzo stairs.
“The goal of the project was to restore and preserve the 1920s architecture while creating 21st-century learning environments,” Mark Quattrocchi, the project’s architect, said in a statement.
Students will continue to take English classes at the Encinal Avenue site, the principal said, while the adult school will take up about half of the Encinal school’s second floor.
About 1,786 students attend Alameda High School.
Students departed the historic campus for the newer school on Encinal Avenue in 1978, just a year after district trustees voted to demolish the older building. Their decision followed city voters repeatedly rejecting bond measures to fund retrofitting during the previous decade.
News that demolition was imminent prompted a group of city officials and activists to rally to save the historic school, and they finally secured a $47 million bond measure in 1989.
The money, however, only paid for retrofitting the building’s Kofman Auditorium. Another bond passed in 2004 also came up short.
Money from Measure I, a $179.5 million bond Alameda voters passed in November 2014, paid for much of the current restoration. The rest of the money came from state matching grants for seismic improvements, the district’s deferred maintenance fund and Proposition 39 allocations for energy efficiency improvements.
Historic Alameda High School ribbon-cutting
When: 4 p.m. Thursday
Where: 2200 Central Ave., Alameda
Speakers: Will include Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan, Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, Superintendent Pasquale Scuderi and school board President Mia Bonta
More details: For information, contact the Alameda Unified School District at 510-337-7000
