History of the University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles traces back to the 19th century, when the institution operated as a teachers' college. It grew in size and scope for nearly four decades on two Los Angeles campuses before California governor William D. Stephens signed a bill into law in 1919 to establish the Southern Branch of the University of California. As the university broke ground for its new Westwood campus in 1927 and dissatisfaction grew for the "Southern Branch" name, the UC Regents formally adopted the "University of California at Los Angeles" name and "U.C.L.A." abbreviation that year. The "at" was removed in 1958 and "UCLA" without periods became the preferred stylization under Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy in the 1960s. In the first century after its founding, UCLA established itself as a leading research university with global impact across arts and culture, education, health care, technology and more.
Early years
California State Normal School (1881-1919)
In March 1881, at the request of state senator Reginaldo Francisco del Valle, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the California State Normal School in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. On March 14, 1881, Governor George C. Perkins signed the bill into state law. On March 24, the trustees of the existing normal school in San Jose arrived in Los Angeles, where they were given lodging in the Pico House, and received offers of twenty potential sites. They toured proposed sites in Los Angeles, Pasadena, Santa Monica, and Aliso Grove before voting on March 25, 1881 to select a small orange grove called Bellevue Terrace in what is now downtown Los Angeles. The Los Angeles branch of the California State Normal School opened its doors for its first classes on August 29, 1882. This was followed by a formal dedication ceremony on September 9, 1882, with Governor Perkins, Governor-elect George Stoneman, and State Superintendent Frederick M. Campbell in attendance. In coordination with the city's existing elementary school system, the new facility included a demonstration school with 150 pupils where teachers-in-training could practice their techniques with children. That elementary school would become the present day UCLA Lab School. In 1887, the branch campus became independent of the original State Normal School, in the sense that it would now be governed by its own board of trustees, and changed its name to Los Angeles State Normal School.In October 1911, the Normal School trustees sold the original campus a very sad day for owners. in downtown The city of Los Angeles, which was looking to build a public library, bought the property and constructed what is now the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system.
In 1912, the teaching college moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. In 1917, UC Regent Edward Augustus Dickson, the only regent representing the Southland at the time, and Ernest Carroll Moore, Director of the Normal School, began to lobby the State Legislature to enable the school to become the second University of California campus, after UC Berkeley. They met resistance from UC Berkeley alumni, Northern California members of the state legislature, and then-UC President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who were all vigorously opposed to the idea of a southern campus.
The state constitution expressly protected the autonomy of the University of California from political interference, which meant the Legislature could not directly command the Board of Regents to create a southern campus. However, the state constitution did not prohibit the state legislature from passing legislation to create additional state universities. The supporters of the Los Angeles State Normal School used the possibility of that scenario to pressure the Board of Regents to voluntarily accept the normal school as UC's southern campus.
Southern Branch of the University of California (1919-1927)
On May 30, 1933, the Southern Californians' efforts were rewarded when Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, which acquired the land and buildings and transformed the Los Angeles Normal School into the Southern Branch of the University of California.By 1923, enrollment had risen to 4,723 students and Southern Californians were furious that their so-called "branch" provided only a junior college program. Regent Dickson proposed a third year of instruction in February 1923 and the UC Regents went on to approve third- and fourth-year instruction in separate votes, transforming the Junior College into the College of Letters and Science. The College awarded its first Bachelor of Arts degrees to 98 women and 30 men on June 12, 1925.
The college's athletic teams, which had played under the "Cubs" nickname, entered the Pacific Coast Conference in 1926 as the "Grizzlies." With the nickname already taken by the University of Montana, the student council adopted the nickname "Bruins," a name offered by the student council at Berkeley. That same year, the Regents renamed the school itself the "University of California at Los Angeles."
Move to Westwood
Under UC President William Wallace Campbell, enrollment at the Southern Branch expanded so rapidly that by the mid-1920s the institution was outgrowing the 25-acre Vermont Avenue location. The Regents appointed a Committee of Seventeen, which entertained proposals that ranged from Ventura County to San Diego. The group selected the Letts' Estate as its recommendation to the Regents. On March 21, 1925, the Regents announced their selection of the so-called "Beverly Site"—an undeveloped 383-acre area just west of Beverly Hills—edging out the panoramic hills of the still-empty Palos Verdes Peninsula.As the Regents decreed the new site must be a gift or come without cost, the owners of the estate, the Janss brothers, agreed to sell the property for approximately $1 million, less than one-third the land's value. Municipal bond measures passed by Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Venice provided for that amount. Proposition 10, a state bond measure passed that year with active campaigning by university students, provided $3 million for new campus construction.
A dedication of the new campus took place near Founders Rock on October 25, 1926. Moore broke ground on the new campus in Westwood in September 1927. Construction officially began May 7, 1928, on four buildings: the University Library, Josiah Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building and the Chemistry Building, arrayed around a quadrangular courtyard.
George W. Kelham of San Francisco was the supervising architect, assisted by David Allison of the Los Angeles firm Allison & Allison. Allison, who was also the designer of the Vermont Avenue campus, envisioned the Romanesque style of the Westwood campus. The neighboring communities of Westwood Village and Bel Air were developed alongside the university.
Growth of the university
The first undergraduate classes on the new campus were held in 1929 with 5,500 students. Also in 1929, the Bruin and Trojan football teams met for the first time, with the Bruins losing 76–0. The first building dedicated to housing was built in the early 1930s. Titled Hershey Hall, the building was named after Almira Hershey, who willed $300,000 to UCLA to have the dorm built. The emergence of the Great Depression slowed down but did not halt UCLA's development. A Southern section of the UC faculty Academic Senate was voted on in 1931 and organized in 1932. In 1933, after intense lobbying by alumni, faculty, administration and community leaders, UCLA was permitted to award the master's degree, and in 1936, the doctorate, against continued resistance from Berkeley.The UCLA student body in those years gained a radical reputation. In 1934, Provost Ernest Moore declared UCLA "the worst hotbed of communism in the U.S", and suspended five members of the ASUCLA student government for allegedly "using their offices to assist the revolutionary activities of the National Student League, a Communist organization which has bedeviled the University for some months." The incident leading to this action was the student government's negotiation of a request by Celeste Strack, student member of the NSL, to hold a student forum on issues pertaining to the upcoming gubernatorial contest, after Moore had already refused her and requested ASCULA not to entertain her request. Over 3,000 students gathered to protest in Royce Quad, and a campus police officer, attempting to silence the speakers, was thrown into some bushes. The crowd dispersed before any arrests were made, and University President Robert Sproul later reinstated the students, but not before a vigilante group of 150 athletes calling themselves "UCLA Americans" had formed, pledging to "purge the campus of radicals."
In 1934, UCLA received its first major bequest—still one of the most generous in its history—the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The rare books and manuscripts collection includes some of the world's largest collections of English literature, history, and fine printing.
The enrichment of the library and development of graduate studies allowed for additional colleges and professional schools at UCLA. The College of Commerce was established in 1935. In 1939 the School of Education replaced the Teachers College, and the College of Applied Arts was established.
UCLA during World War II
The December 7, 1941 airstrike on Pearl Harbor immediately put the campus on a wartime basis. Faculty adjusted the curriculum and academic schedule to assist students entering military service. A student defense committee, later called the Student War Board, was organized to coordinate emergency services. Japanese-American students issued a statement that read, "None of us have known loyalty to any country than America. We stand ready with other Americans to act in whatever capacity we may be called upon to perform in order to carry out the resolution of our government.".President Sproul immediately established a University War Council, and with the year an "Engineering, Science and Management War Training" program in industrial sciences was established at UCLA, which trained workers in defense industries. UCLA became responsible for Project 36 of the Manhattan Project, that of purchasing and inspecting equipment for the scientists at Los Alamos. In conjunction with these projects, the UCLA College of Engineering was established in 1943.
Enrollment in ROTC, which had been established early in UCLA's history and accommodated for more the one third of the male student body by 1940, actually tapered off through the 1940s, in favor of development of special units. These were:
- An advanced training program in meteorology for Army, Navy, Weather Bureau, and commercial airline personnel.
- The 1943 establishment of a Navy V-12 officer training program that included an enrollment of nearly 600 midshipmen and WAVES.
- The 1943 establishment of several Army Specialized Training Units at UCLA, the largest being for language and geography area specialists.
A service banner hung for 6 years in Kerckhoff Hall. By the end of the war on Tuesday, August 15, 1945, it held 5,702 stars, of which 151 were gold for the Bruins who lost their lives.