Anna Head School for Girls
2538 Channing Way, Berkeley, CAThis remarkable complex of shingle buildings evolved over a thirty-year period and remains a strong architectural statement of the Shingle Style and its interpretation in the Bay Area tradition. The complex is strong architecturally and also has considerable historical significance with its association with historical figures, Anna Head, and architect Walter Ratcliff, and in its role as one of the state's earliest and best-known schools.
The school is historically significant in that it is the original facility of one of the oldest private girls' schools still in existence in California. Since its beginning in 1892, the Anna Head School has served both as a boarding and day school for thousands of girls, many of whom later became prominent figures in California history. The school operated at this location until 1964 when it relocated to new quarters in Oakland. Anna Head's school was an innovative educational institution designed to do away with the useless routine work that encumbers so much of the ordinary teaching and replace it with what was best in the German and English systems.
The school is architecturally significant in that the original building is the first recorded fully shingled building built in Berkeley. The architect of the original building was Soule Edgar Fisher who ran an architectural office in Oakland from 1888 to 1894. Walter H. Radcliff, another prominent architect, designed eight of the buildings in the complex.
The school is representative of a crucial turning point in Bay Area architecture, 1888-1894, seven years which marked the end of the Victorian style as a central architectural form and the beginning of a Bay Area tradition in architecture. Although the Bay Area tradition took root initially in San Francisco, it flourished in the hills of Berkeley during the late 1890s. The completion of the new Anna Head School building on August 22, 1892, marked the beginning of the Shingle Style in Berkeley.
Thus, the Anna Head School remains a significant structure representing the beginnings of the vernacular style which was later to be known as the Bay Area tradition. As the first recorded fully shingled structure built in Berkeley, the building embodies the ideals of the simplicity of the plan, honesty of materials, and harmonious siting with the environment. Reflecting the advanced principles and high standards of excellence that the founders of the Anna Head School had as their goals for their students, the building itself embodies these standards and is a reminder of a standard of excellence from a time past to all who view and use it.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.