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Historic Name

Sierra Vista Elementary School

Address

253 E 14th Street
Upland, CA 91786

Evaluation

Building
5/8/2007

Construction Date

1950

Current Owner

Upland School District

Description

International Style design distinguishes the Sierra Vista Elementary School. One-story, the building consists of seven brick units connected by covered walkways. The individual units are brick, with single slope roofs extending past the walls of the buildings to shade glass curtain walls and clerestory windows. Slender metal pipe columns carry the concrete walkway roofs. Each classroom has an associated paved play area, separated from that of its neighbor by a brick wall extending perpendicularly from the building. Walkways are also paved; otherwise the school sits amidst fields of grass. It is in good condition, and the original buildings appear unaltered.

The Sierra Vista school exemplifies the modern approach to school design. Classrooms are bathed by light and linked by an outdoor circulation system. The architecture is straight-forward, unadorned, modular - dependant on its honest use of materials, visible structure, and the harmony of parts and proportions for its beauty. Built in 1950, the school was designed by the architectural firm of March, Smith and Powell. Specialists in school design, the office had begun designing schools some twenty years earlier. An example of their work which combines the earlier Streamline Moderne aesthetic with the emerging International Style is the Upland Elementary School, constructed eleven years earlier. The Sierra Vista School may have come towards the ends of their careers; research has not revealed any buildings of later date. Erected at a cost of $222,000, the school was the second to bear the name Sierra Vista.

The first was the old 18th Street School, built in 1886, moved to 13th and Campus in 1920, and re-named Sierra Vista. It had been sold in 1940. The new Sierra Vista was the first of a slew of schools constructed after World War I1 in Upland, to meet the burgeoning demand of the rapidly growing community. It is notable for its design and its architects, and marks the beginning of a new era in Upland.