April 15, 2025
“Old School”
Looking out from the tree-shaded Park onto busy Prairie Avenue, the building named to commemorate Jim Thorpe on February 23, 1974, is probably the oldest standing connection to our City’s first school, Hawthorne Grammar School.
The town of Hawthorne was granted permission to establish a school district in 1907. Construction of the first purpose-built schoolhouse was begun on the west side of Washington Ave between Ballona Ave (El Segundo Blvd) and Maine Ave (129th St) and the new school was opened to students in 1908.
To accommodate a growing population, a new, larger school building, Ballona School, was raised along the south side of Ballona Ave between Hawthorne Ave (>Blvd) and Washington. It was opened in 1917.
In the following years, smaller, freestanding auxiliary buildings were constructed on the combined site to fill specific needs. Though the date of construction is not known, the building now located near the intersection of Prairie Ave and 141st St was one of them. In 1933, a major earthquake struck Southern California. Ballona School was one of the thousands of buildings that were damaged. The 550-seat auditorium at its center was closed. In 1937, the remainder of Ballona School was condemned and the building was torn down. The older schoolhouse, which in the meantime had been renamed Washington School, was undamaged. Over the next year, rooms and buildings at Washington were repurposed to accommodate some of the students displaced from Ballona.
A large new wing was added to Washington School along the north side of 129th St, between Hawthorne Blvd and Washington Ave, in 1941. The 1908 schoolhouse was designated a fire hazard in 1949 and was demolished. A new school, Hawthorne Intermediate (now Hawthorne Middle) was built along the south side of 129th St, facing Washington, in 1950, and seventh- and eighth grade students were moved to the new campus.
In 1954, a new wing was added to Washington School on the west side of its namesake avenue, including the site where the first schoolhouse had stood. Some of the auxiliary buildings were razed, but this building was saved and moved to Prairie Park.
In a special historical issue of “The Washingtonian,” the school newsletter, edited by Carol Hiles in April, 1963, correspondent Irene Whitaker Greasby – herself an alumna of Washington School, 1940 – 1947 – recalled that this building, “ . . . the band building {instruction and practice} that at one time housed the cafeteria and some of the classes is now being used at Prairie Park.”
It has also been reported that this building was used as a teacher’s lunchroom and that the City of Hawthorne employed it for various civic purposes (possibly, a senior care facility) and as a commercial rental – once, as a dance studio.
In 1974, the park and the building were rededicated to honor Hawthorne’s longtime resident and legendary athlete, Jim Thorpe.
After the sale of the former (1948 – 1978) 126th St City Hall property to the developers of TownePlace Suites / Courtyard by Marriott, the City officials, in 2015, provided a displaced tenant, the Hawthorne Historical Society, with the Jim Thorpe Building as our new Museum/home.
“There’s no place like home”
