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From Bunker Hill to Westwood: The Making of a University

INTRODUCTION

UCLA did not begin in Westwood. It began on a hilltop in downtown Los Angeles, in a five-story Victorian building at the corner of Grand Avenue and Fifth Street. When the California State Legislature authorized a southern branch of the State Normal School in 1881, the goal was simple: to train teachers for a rapidly growing Southern California. The school that opened in August 1882 had no way of knowing it would one day become one of the most recognized universities in the world.

The road from that hilltop to Westwood took nearly half a century. After outgrowing its downtown location, the school moved in 1914 to a new campus on Vermont Avenue. In 1919 it became the Southern Branch of the University of California. Enrollment kept growing, and another move became necessary. By 1925 a new site had been chosen in Westwood, and by 1929 students made the ten-mile trip to a campus built for the future. The photographs that follow trace that journey from a small teachers' college to a major university.

The Los Angeles State Normal School on Bunker Hill

A Teachers College Above the Growing City

In August 1882, the southern branch of the California State Normal School opened on a hilltop at the corner of Grand Avenue and Fifth Street in downtown Los Angeles. The site was soon known as Normal Hill. It rose well above the surrounding streets and offered wide views across the city. The five-story Victorian building, with its towers, tall windows, and detailed stonework, made a strong impression on the neighborhood below. Tuition was free, the program ran three years, and the mission was clear: to train teachers for Southern California.

From the start, the school combined classroom instruction with hands-on practice. A demonstration school on campus gave student teachers the chance to observe and work in real classrooms alongside experienced instructors. As enrollment grew and more courses were added, the hilltop site began to feel too small. In 1911 the property was sold to the City of Los Angeles, and in 1914 the school moved to a larger campus on Vermont Avenue, bringing its Bunker Hill years to a close.

The building that opened in August 1882 was built to make a statement. It rose five stories on a hilltop that was already easy to see from the streets below. Its towers, tall windows, and carved stonework gave it the look of a serious civic institution. The site had previously been used as a public garden called Bellevue Terrace, created in the early 1870s by Prudent Beaudry, a developer who also helped bring water service to the Bunker Hill area. Turning this well-known hilltop into a school sent a clear message that Los Angeles was serious about public education.

The school was authorized in March 1881 at the request of State Senator Reginaldo Francisco del Valle, one of the few California lawmakers of that era with roots in the state's Spanish and Mexican past. He pushed for a southern campus because the existing State Normal School in San Jose was simply too far away to serve the people of Southern California. The Los Angeles school charged no tuition, making it open to students who would go on to teach in public schools throughout the region.

This early photograph shows the building in its first year, before later additions changed its appearance. The land around it is largely open, a reminder of how small downtown Los Angeles still was in 1882. The hilltop location gave the school a strong visual presence above the surrounding neighborhood, which helped establish it as one of the city's most important public institutions from its earliest days.

The school opened with a demonstration school attached to the campus. Children of elementary school age attended classes there while student teachers watched and practiced alongside experienced instructors. This approach was based on a straightforward idea: learning to teach required real classroom experience, not just lectures and reading. The demonstration school enrolled around 150 children and is considered the direct ancestor of today's UCLA Lab School, one of the institution's oldest ongoing programs.

By 1893 the school had been open for more than ten years and had settled into its role as an established part of the city. Students, teachers, and visitors reached the hilltop by way of a long winding driveway on one side and a stairway on the other. The climb up Normal Hill was simply part of daily life for anyone connected to the school during these years.

As the city grew, the hilltop location became more of a problem than an advantage. The knoll interrupted the flow of downtown streets, and traffic in the area was increasing. After the school left in 1914 and its buildings were torn down in 1922, the top of Normal Hill was partially cut away so that Fifth Street could be extended through the site. The Los Angeles Central Library was later built there, though the hill no longer stood as tall as it once had.

By the early 1900s the campus had grown well beyond its original footprint. New wings, additional buildings, and outbuildings had been added over the years to keep up with rising enrollment. The landscaped grounds in this photograph show a campus that had invested in its appearance and expected to stay where it was, even as the pressure to find more space was quietly building.

The school's programs had also grown. It was no longer focused only on training elementary school teachers. Courses had expanded, and the student body was larger than the campus had been designed to hold. When the school finally moved to Vermont Avenue in 1914, the Victorian buildings it left behind were eventually torn down. Today only photographs remain of what the Normal School looked like during its years on Bunker Hill.

Seen from above, it is easy to understand why this hilltop made such a strong impression. The school sat well above the streets around it, reachable only through the driveway and stairway visible in this view. The neighborhood had filled in considerably since 1882, with homes, churches, and other buildings pressing close on all sides. The campus stood out as the most prominent structure on the hill.

Normal Hill was the southernmost point of the Bunker Hill ridge, which had become one of Los Angeles's most fashionable neighborhoods during the 1880s and 1890s. Large Victorian homes lined its streets, housing some of the city's wealthiest residents. Over time those residents moved to newer neighborhoods farther west, and Bunker Hill gradually changed character. By the mid-twentieth century it had become a very different place, eventually cleared and rebuilt as part of the modern downtown redevelopment that reshaped the entire ridge.

This photograph captures the school near the height of its downtown years. The large crowd gathered outside shows how much the institution had grown since it first opened with a small group of students in 1882. By this point the Normal School had trained teachers for classrooms across Southern California and had become a well-established part of the region's educational system.

Even so, the pressure to expand was growing. The hilltop campus could not easily be made larger, and enrollment continued to rise. In 1911 the school sold its downtown property to the City of Los Angeles, which planned to build a public library on the site. The school spent the next few years preparing for its move and left Bunker Hill for good in 1914, heading to a larger campus on Vermont Avenue and the next chapter in its history.

The Vermont Avenue Campus

From Normal School to the Southern Branch of the University of California

In 1914, the Los Angeles State Normal School left Bunker Hill and opened a new campus at 855 North Vermont Avenue in what is now East Hollywood. The new campus was designed by architects Allison and Allison in the Lombard Romanesque style, with red brick buildings, arched walkways, and open courtyards. It sat on 25 acres and gave the school far more room to grow than the old hilltop site had ever offered. Millspaugh Hall served as the center of campus life, housing administrative offices and providing a gathering place for students and faculty.

The school's most important transformation came in 1919, when California Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law on May 23rd, officially creating the Southern Branch of the University of California. The campus that had opened as a teachers' college now had a new identity and a new purpose. Enrollment came in that first year at 1,213 women and 207 men, and it kept climbing. By the mid-1920s the 25-acre Vermont Avenue campus was bursting at the seams, and the search for a new and larger home was already underway.

The visit by Thomas Edison to the Vermont Avenue campus reflects the school's growing public profile during its first years in the new location. Edison was one of the most celebrated figures in America at the time, and his presence at an educational institution was a notable event. School president Jesse H. Millspaugh, who served from 1902 to 1917, oversaw the move from Bunker Hill and the establishment of the Vermont Avenue campus. Millspaugh Hall, the campus's main administrative building, was named in his honor.

The Vermont Avenue campus was a significant step forward for the institution in terms of space and facilities. The Allison and Allison design gave it a cohesive architectural identity that the cramped Bunker Hill campus had never fully achieved. Red brick buildings with arched walkways and open lawns created an environment that felt more like a traditional college campus. The school was still primarily focused on teacher training during these years, but the stage was being set for something much larger.

This photograph was taken around the time the school made the transition from the Los Angeles State Normal School to the Southern Branch of the University of California. The change was the result of years of work by two key figures: UC Regent Edward Augustus Dickson and Normal School Director Ernest Carroll Moore. Dickson, the only UC Regent representing Southern California at the time, believed the region needed a full university of its own. Moore shared that vision. Together they lobbied the state legislature and pushed back against resistance from UC Berkeley, which feared competition for students, funding, and prestige.

Their efforts paid off on May 23, 1919, when Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law. The Southern Branch opened that September with more than 1,400 students enrolled. Most were still in teacher training programs, but a new two-year undergraduate curriculum in Letters and Science was also offered. Students who wanted to earn a full bachelor's degree still had to transfer to Berkeley for their final two years, a limitation that would fuel ongoing debate about the institution's future.

Millspaugh Hall was the most prominent building on the Vermont Avenue campus and the one most closely associated with the institution's public identity during these years. Named for former school president Jesse H. Millspaugh, it served as the administrative center of the campus and the primary gathering place for both formal events and everyday student life. Its Romanesque brick architecture set the visual tone for the rest of the campus and would later influence the design choices made for the Westwood campus.

The Vermont Avenue campus was designed by the firm of Allison and Allison, the same architects who would later work alongside George W. Kelham on the Westwood buildings. David Allison's familiarity with the institution and its needs carried directly from one campus to the other, and the Lombard Romanesque style he favored at Vermont Avenue became the foundation for the architectural language of the permanent campus. In that sense, the buildings on Vermont Avenue were a direct predecessor to what would eventually rise in Westwood.

By the early 1920s the Southern Branch was growing fast. The first commencement was held in 1920, though early graduates received only two-year certificates. The push for full four-year degree programs continued, and in 1923 the state finally approved third and fourth year instruction for the College of Letters and Science. The first bachelor of arts degrees were awarded in 1925 to 100 women and 24 men, a milestone that marked the institution's formal arrival as a degree-granting university in its own right.

That same year, the College of Letters and Science was already ranked as the fifth largest liberal arts college in the country. The 25-acre Vermont Avenue campus was clearly not large enough to support the institution it had become. The UC Regents appointed a committee to find a new site, and proposals came in from locations across Southern California, including Burbank, Pasadena, Fullerton, and Palos Verdes. The site that was ultimately chosen was an undeveloped hillside west of Beverly Hills, in an area that would soon be known as Westwood.

Ralph Bunche enrolled at the Southern Branch with the help of an athletic scholarship and a part-time janitorial job that covered his personal expenses. He played varsity basketball, competed in debate, and excelled in the classroom. In June 1927 he graduated summa cum laude as the valedictorian of his class, earning his degree in political science. His graduation speech offered an early glimpse of the career that lay ahead: "The future peace and harmony of the world are contingent upon the ability, yours and mine, to effect a remedy."

Bunche went on to earn a master's degree from Harvard in 1928 and a doctorate in 1934, while also teaching at Howard University. He later joined the United Nations and became one of the most respected diplomats of the twentieth century. In 1950 he became the first African American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, recognized for his role in negotiating the 1949 armistice agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. He remains the only UCLA graduate to receive that honor, and Bunche Hall on the Westwood campus bears his name today.

This aerial view shows the full extent of the Vermont Avenue campus at a moment when it was still operating near its capacity. The 25 acres that had seemed generous in 1914 were now clearly insufficient for an institution with thousands of students and growing academic ambitions. The orderly arrangement of brick buildings and open lawns visible from above reflects the Allison and Allison design, which gave the campus a coherent look that belied the pressure building within it.

When UCLA moved to Westwood in 1929, the Vermont Avenue campus did not sit empty for long. The Los Angeles Board of Education purchased the property for $700,000 and opened the Los Angeles Junior College there that same September with an enrollment of 1,300 students. The school later changed its name to Los Angeles City College in 1938 and continues to occupy the site today. The buildings that once housed California's newest university branch became the foundation of a different institution, one that carries on its own tradition of public education on the same ground where UCLA first found its footing.

Development of Westwood

From Ranch Land to UCLA's Permanent Home

The land that would become UCLA and the surrounding Westwood community was once open ranch country, part of Rancho San Jose de Buenos Aires, a Mexican land grant dating to 1843. For decades it remained largely undeveloped, used for grazing and marked by rolling hills, dirt roads, and only a few scattered structures. Over time the property passed through several owners, including Benjamin Wilson and later the Wolfskill family, whose holdings helped preserve this stretch of the Westside long after other areas had been subdivided.

That changed in 1919, when retailer Arthur Letts purchased the land with plans for a carefully designed community. After his death, development was carried forward by his son-in-law Harold Janss and the Janss Investment Company. In 1925, a pivotal agreement secured 375 acres as the future home of UCLA, with the land acquired by local cities and transferred to the state. The university would anchor the development, while Westwood Village and the surrounding neighborhoods grew alongside it, transforming former ranch land into one of Los Angeles's most important districts.

The land visible in this aerial view had changed very little since the Wolfskill family acquired it from Benjamin Wilson in 1884. Wilshire Boulevard cuts across the frame as one of the few improved roads in the area, offering a connection to Los Angeles proper to the east. Beverly Glen, which would eventually run north through the hills toward the San Fernando Valley, had not yet been graded or opened. The Wolfskill ranch house sits near what would become the corner of Wilshire and Beverly Glen, a lone structure in an otherwise open landscape. The ridgeline visible to the north is where UCLA's campus buildings would eventually rise.

John Wolfskill had resisted pressure from developers and railroad promoters for decades, refusing to subdivide or sell any portion of his holdings. After his death the family finally parted with the property in 1919, accepting $2 million from Arthur Letts. The speed with which this quiet ranch became a major university campus and a planned residential district stands as one of the more dramatic land transformations in Los Angeles history. Within a single decade, the empty hillsides in this photograph would be home to Royce Hall, Powell Library, and thousands of students.

The ranch house at the far left of this photograph stood on land with deep historical roots. Originally granted to Maximo Alanis by the Mexican government in 1843, the 4,400-acre Rancho San Jose de Buenos Aires had supported cattle and horses for most of its existence. After passing through several owners it came to John Wolfskill in 1884, and after his death his heirs sold it to Arthur Letts in 1919. The building visible here connected directly to that long rancho history — a physical remnant of the era before streets, subdivisions, or a university campus had been imagined for this part of Los Angeles.

Understanding that history helps explain why the land had stayed intact for so long. Wolfskill refused for decades to open the ranch to developers, keeping a large and valuable parcel on the western edge of the city largely untouched. That resistance, in an indirect way, made the UCLA project possible. When the land finally did come available, the Janss Investment Company had an unusually large and undivided canvas on which to plan an entirely new community from scratch.

By the time this photograph was taken, the ranch house was already a building out of time. Surveyors had been through the surrounding land, streets had been mapped, and the Janss Investment Company was actively marketing lots to buyers. The structure itself would soon be bypassed by everything happening around it. What had once seemed a permanent feature of a quiet rural landscape was about to be overtaken by one of the fastest-moving real estate developments in Los Angeles history.

This moment captures the brief overlap between what had been and what was coming. Within a few years Wilshire Boulevard would carry far more automobile traffic, Beverly Glen would be graded and extended northward, and the hills visible in the background would be shaped into the terraced grounds of a new university campus. The ranch house that anchored this corner for decades left almost no trace once the transformation was complete. Only photographs like this one record what the land looked like in its final quiet years.

Sales and marketing in the 1920s real estate industry relied heavily on spectacle, and the Janss Investment Company was skilled at drawing attention to its new Westwood development. This temporary observation tower, erected at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Beverly Glen, gave prospective buyers a high vantage point from which to survey the surrounding hills and the lots being offered for sale below. The large WESTWOOD sign on the structure left no doubt about what was being promoted. Visitors who climbed to the top could look north toward the university site and south toward the planned commercial district that Janss had laid out along what would become Westwood Village.

The tower was a typical tool of the era, used by real estate promoters across Southern California to generate excitement and bring buyers to otherwise empty land. Janss marketed Westwood as a sophisticated, carefully planned community — eventually billing it as the Second Hollywood — and this kind of showmanship was part of how that message was delivered. The company's approach went well beyond advertising slogans. It hired respected architects, designed a cohesive Mediterranean-style commercial district, and carefully chose the mix of businesses that would open when Westwood Village launched in 1929, ensuring the neighborhood opened with a coherent identity rather than a random assortment of shops.

This view shows the Westwood subdivision at a critical moment: the streets have been drawn and the lots laid out, but the large open parcel in the upper left makes clear how much undeveloped land still remained. That parcel was the old Wolfskill ranch house site, sitting on more than 25 acres along the Pacific Electric railway line at a T-junction with Overland Avenue. The site would change hands several more times in the years ahead before the LDS Temple that stands there today was completed in 1956.

The street grid visible in this photograph represents the outcome of decisions made not just by Janss but by city planners, utility companies, and the University of California itself. Getting UCLA to commit to the Westwood site required the cooperation of multiple cities, state officials, and private landowners working toward the same outcome. The community that took shape around the campus over the following decade was among the most deliberately planned developments of its era, and the largely empty lots visible here give little hint of how quickly that transformation would come.

This promotional map was produced at the height of Janss Investment Company's campaign to attract buyers to Westwood. The "Second Hollywood" slogan reflected a genuine ambition: the company hoped that proximity to the film industry, combined with Westwood's planned commercial district and new university, would make the neighborhood as desirable as Hollywood had become. The map was a marketing tool as much as a geographic document, designed to convey a sense of order, planning, and momentum to anyone considering buying into the new community.

The deal that made the map's promise possible had come together just that year. In 1925, Janss sold 375 acres to the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills at roughly a quarter of the land's actual value. Those cities, which had passed bond measures to fund the purchase, conveyed the land to the state as the site of UCLA's permanent campus. A university anchoring the northern end of the development would generate steady traffic, institutional prestige, and long-term demand for everything Janss was selling in the surrounding neighborhood. The Janss Steps on the UCLA campus, named for Harold and Edwin Janss, remain the most visible reminder of the family’s role in shaping both the university’s setting and the surrounding Westwood community.

Before any classrooms or lecture halls could rise on UCLA's new Westwood campus, a basic problem had to be solved. A deep natural arroyo cut across the site, separating the planned academic buildings from the eastern entrance at Hilgard Avenue. Without a crossing, construction materials could not reach the hilltop where the campus was to be built.
The solution came in 1927 with the construction of the Arroyo Bridge, the first structure completed on the site. Designed by supervising architect George W. Kelham, the bridge was more than a temporary crossing. Its three-arch form, inspired by Roman aqueducts, established the architectural character of the campus even before the first buildings were finished.

Ground was broken at the Westwood site on May 3, 1927, and the first order of business was getting across the arroyo. The ravine ran along what would become the eastern edge of the main campus quadrangle, cutting the construction zone off from Hilgard Avenue and the access routes beyond it. Until the crossing was in place, heavy materials could not be delivered to the hilltop where Royce Hall and the College Library were to be built.

The arroyo itself was a natural feature of the landscape, a chaparral-covered gully typical of the rolling hills west of Beverly Hills. Before UCLA arrived, the land had seen little development and the ravine had simply been left alone. Building a campus on this terrain required solving problems that a flat city lot would never have posed. The bridge was the first and most essential of those solutions, and its completion a few months later opened the entire site to the construction effort that followed.

As work on the bridge deck neared completion, crews moved on to finishing the sidewalks and surface details that would make it functional for daily use. The pace reflected the urgency of the larger project: every week the bridge remained unfinished was a week that construction on the campus buildings was delayed. Once the surface was ready, the crossing immediately became the primary route for the mules and workers hauling cement sacks, lumber, and brick from Hilgard Avenue to the building sites above.

The bridge that took shape during these weeks was a structure of genuine architectural quality. Kelham's design drew on northern Italian Romanesque traditions, the same broad family of styles that would be applied to Royce Hall, Powell Library, and the other original campus buildings. Giving even the bridge this level of care and detail sent a clear message about the kind of place UCLA intended to become. The crossing was practical by necessity, but it was also the first physical expression of the campus's architectural identity.

This side view makes clear why the bridge had to come first. The ravine drops well below the surrounding terrain, and the three arched spans reach across it with the proportions Kelham had drawn from Roman aqueduct design. The bridge measured 285 feet in length, stood 40 to 50 feet above the arroyo floor at its tallest point, and stretched 75 feet wide. Those dimensions reflected both the practical demands of construction traffic and Kelham's intention that the crossing also serve as the formal eastern entrance to the campus.

The cost came to $100,000, a significant sum that reflected the quality of materials and craftsmanship involved. The carved limestone panels, the inlaid red brick, and the detailed parapets were not inexpensive additions. But the University of California had committed to a campus built to last, and the bridge set the standard for everything that followed. Every building constructed at UCLA during those years took its visual cues from the architectural language Kelham established here first.

The Arroyo Bridge was formally dedicated on October 22, 1927, in a ceremony that drew a large crowd to the still-unfinished campus. Associated Students President Thomas J. Cunningham presided, and California Governor C. C. Young cut the ribbon. Student Helen Fitch handed the governor his scissors. UC Regent Edward A. Dickson, who had spent years working to bring a permanent UCLA campus to Westwood, stood watching at the right. His name would later be given to the plaza and courtyard built over the filled arroyo.

Cunningham's remarks captured the spirit of the day. "In opening this bridge," he said, "we are opening the portals for a new era in the history of the university." The words were ceremonial, but they were also accurate. The bridge was the only completed structure on the campus that day. Royce Hall, Powell Library, and the other buildings that would define UCLA were still under construction on the hilltop above. The dedication marked, in every practical sense, the formal beginning of the Westwood campus.

By 1929, two years after the dedication ceremony, the campus the bridge had made possible was nearly complete. The twin towers of Royce Hall rising in the distance mark the progress that two years of construction traffic across this span had enabled. Cement, lumber, brick, and the countless other materials needed to build a university had moved across this crossing, delivered from Hilgard Avenue and carried up to the building sites above.

The bridge had also found a new role. Designed from the beginning as both a working crossing and a formal entry point, it was now serving as the main eastern approach to the campus. Walking west across it toward the towers of Royce Hall, a student arriving for the first time in the fall of 1929 would have understood immediately that this was a place designed to make an impression.

The bridge quickly became part of daily campus life, used by students moving between classes, the library, and the residential streets east of Hilgard. Over the years it accumulated stories that became part of UCLA lore. During the Depression, students who could not afford housing found shelter beneath the arches. One account from 1931 described a young woman spending her days in class and her evenings in the library, showering in the women's gym and sleeping under the bridge until campus officials discovered her situation, arranged an emergency loan, and found her a place to live.

During World War II the bridge took on a different role. With Japanese submarines active off the California coast, university officials stored enough food beneath it to feed a reported 50,000 people in the event of an attack. The crossing built to move construction materials had become a civilian emergency depot. These stories reflect how completely the bridge had grown into the life of the institution during its two decades of active use.

This view shows the bridge as it functioned in the early years after the campus opened: a well-traveled link between the street grid to the east and the academic core to the west. Royce Hall and Haines Hall are visible in the background, the buildings whose construction the bridge had made possible. The arroyo below is still open, its slopes unchanged from before the campus was built. That would not last much longer.

In 1947, with postwar enrollment rising sharply and the university needing more usable land, the decision was made to fill the arroyo. Thousands of cubic yards of soil were moved in, retaining walls were built along the edges of the bridge, and the ravine disappeared. The area on either side of the bridge road became Dickson Court, named for UC Regent Edward A. Dickson, the man whose decades of effort had brought UCLA to Westwood. The bridge's arches, buried but intact, remain underground today.

At street level, the scale of the bridge and the quality of its construction are easier to appreciate. The decorative stonework, the arched openings, and the detailed parapets give the structure a character that most pedestrians crossing it probably took for granted. Kelham had designed it to function as a gateway, and from this vantage point it reads as exactly that: a formal threshold between the world outside and the campus within.

The bridge is still there, invisible beneath Dickson Court. Buried in 1947, it has been maintained and inspected ever since to meet current safety and earthquake standards. An unobtrusive weight limit sign on the road above is the only surface evidence that a bridge lies beneath. The six-mile system of maintenance tunnels that runs under the UCLA campus connects to the space under the arches, and the bridge remains a functioning part of the university's infrastructure nearly a century after it was built. Today, thousands of people cross this ground daily, most of them unaware of what lies below.

With the land secured and Westwood taking shape, attention turned from planning to construction. The first step would not be a classroom building, but a bridge that made the campus possible.

Building UCLA: The Westwood Campus Takes Shape, 1927 to 1929

Architecture, Planning, and the Creation of a Lasting Campus Identity

When voters approved the purchase of land in the Westwood hills in 1925, they set in motion a construction effort unlike any the University of California had undertaken. Within two years, ground had been broken on a bare chaparral slope west of Beverly Hills, and a team of architects was at work designing a campus that would stand as both a practical center of learning and a lasting statement about the value of public education. The four original structures they created, the College Library, Royce Hall, the Physics-Biology Building, and the Chemistry Building, known today as Powell Library, Royce Hall, Kaplan Hall, and Haines Hall, were arranged around a central quadrangle on the highest ground of the site. Overseen by supervising architect George W. Kelham of San Francisco, working alongside the Los Angeles firm of Allison and Allison, the design drew on the northern Italian Romanesque Revival style to give the young campus an air of permanence and scholarly tradition.

Construction moved with real urgency. UCLA's enrollment at its cramped Vermont Avenue campus had grown so rapidly that by the mid-1920s the institution was outgrowing the space entirely. Buildings went up simultaneously, workers hauled materials across unpaved roads with mule-drawn wagons, and the Westwood hills around them remained open countryside. Yet by September 1929, when the first assembly was held in Royce Hall, students could look out across a campus that felt, in its architecture and its organization, like it had been there for centuries.

The Architects and Their Vision

The story of the UCLA campus begins not with bricks and mortar but with a deliberate choice about what kind of place this new university should look like. George W. Kelham served as the University of California's supervising architect and brought to the project a deep familiarity with grand institutional design. His collaborator, David Clark Allison of the firm Allison and Allison, had already designed UCLA's Vermont Avenue campus and understood both the character of the institution and the practical demands of building in Los Angeles. Together, they fashioned a master plan that drew its inspiration from the medieval universities and religious complexes of northern Italy.

The University of California's Board of Regents had seriously considered Spanish Colonial or early California Mission styles, which would have been less expensive and perhaps seemed more naturally suited to the Southern California landscape. In the end, those options were set aside as not sufficiently grand for a major research university. Kelham wrote that the northern Italian style, with its rich brick walls, terra cotta ornament, tile roofs, and rounded arches, lent itself beautifully to the textures and colors that the Southern California climate would reveal at different hours of the day. Allison shared that enthusiasm. His love of Lombard Romanesque architecture, its proven compatibility with brick construction, and its direct connection to the founding of historic Italian universities in Bologna and Padua made the style feel exactly right for a place whose purpose was the transmission of knowledge across generations.

Construction Begins: Breaking Ground and Building the Campus

Breaking Ground

Ground was officially broken for UCLA's Westwood campus on May 3, 1927, though some accounts place a ceremonial groundbreaking as early as September 27 of that year. Construction began on the future campus with the completion of a bridge over the shallow ravine separating the building site from what would become Hilgard Avenue on the east. Once that bridge was in place, materials and workers could reach the hilltop, and the cranes visible in this photograph represent some of the earliest heavy equipment on the site.

The view northwest captures Royce Hall in its most skeletal state, before any of the characteristic brick facing or stone ornament had been applied. At this stage the campus existed more as a promise than a reality, a network of temporary roads and construction staging areas spread across what had recently been rolling chaparral grazed by sheep. The speed of the work was driven in part by the rapidly deteriorating conditions at the old Vermont Avenue campus, where maintenance had been deferred for years in anticipation of the move west.

The College Library was the first of the four original buildings to begin rising from the Westwood site, with construction spanning from 1927 to 1929. George W. Kelham served as its executive architect, and his design centered on a tall octagonal dome flanked by two wings that opened onto the quadrangle to the north. The exterior was modeled in part on the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, a tenth and eleventh century church whose rounded arches, brick surfaces, and commanding presence made it an ideal source for a building meant to anchor a new center of learning.

This photograph, taken from or near the still-unfinished Arroyo Bridge, shows how closely the two great construction projects were linked. The bridge was not merely an engineering convenience but the lifeline of the entire campus, the single route by which building materials, equipment, and workers reached the elevated building site. Without it, construction of the library and the other buildings would have been far slower and more costly.

This northeast-facing view reveals the remarkable ambition of the construction program, with all four original buildings going up more or less simultaneously. The decision to proceed on this scale required coordinating multiple construction crews, two separate architectural firms, and a steady supply of brick, stone, steel, and tile across roads that were still largely unpaved. Kelham served as executive architect for Powell Library and Haines Hall, while Allison and Allison took the lead on Royce Hall and Kinsey Hall, the building that would house physics and biology.

That the two firms worked so seamlessly together is a testament to the strength of the shared vision they had developed. Despite dividing oversight of the buildings between them, every facade used the same vocabulary of red brick, cast stone trim, rounded arches, and clay tile roofing. A visitor walking across the quad when the buildings were finished would have had no way of knowing that two separate firms had designed the structures facing each other across the central open space.

Labor and Logistics

Everything that went into the buildings, brick, stone, steel, tile, cement, timber, water, and equipment, had to be hauled up to the hilltop across roads that were still largely unpaved. The site was accessible only through the Arroyo Bridge to the east and a handful of dirt tracks from the surrounding countryside, and in the late 1920s, much of the daily hauling was still done by animals.

Despite the scale and ambition of the construction project, much of the daily work of moving materials around the site was done with mule-drawn wagons. Motorized vehicles were present and were used for longer hauls and heavier loads, but the unpaved surface of the campus grounds, the steep grades of the surrounding hillside, and the general condition of the roads made animal power both practical and necessary. Mules were reliable, maneuverable on rough terrain, and required no fuel beyond feed and water.

The scene captured here reflects a transitional moment in the history of American construction, when the gasoline-powered era was well underway but had not yet fully displaced the methods that had served builders for centuries. Within a decade, most construction sites of this scale would be dominated by motorized equipment. But in 1928, on a hilltop in Westwood that was barely connected to the surrounding city, the sight of a mule team hauling water or building materials across a dirt road was an entirely ordinary part of the day's work.

This photograph is a remarkable document of what Hilgard Avenue looked like before it became one of the main streets bounding the UCLA campus. The road was still a dirt track in 1928, and the campus buildings visible in the distance appear almost impossibly grand against the unpaved foreground and the open hillside. The bridge connecting the road to the campus quad is visible at center right, underscoring how recently the entire site had been rural land with no connection to the city grid.

The mule-drawn water wagon was a fixture of large construction projects in this era, responsible for mixing concrete, wetting down dusty roads to keep them passable, and supplying drinking water to workers in the heat of a Southern California summer. Water was a particularly precious resource on a hilltop site without established utility connections, and the logistics of keeping the construction crews supplied while simultaneously raising four major buildings demanded careful planning by the project managers overseeing the work.

Royce Hall: The Crown of the Campus

Of the four original buildings, Royce Hall was designed to be the most commanding presence on the new campus. Architect David Allison modeled its twin towers and rounded entrance arches after the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, a church built in the tenth and eleventh centuries that had long been associated with scholarship and civic life in northern Italy. Allison's building was sited on high ground at the north end of the quadrangle, facing south to catch the California sun, and positioned on axis with the lower Powell Library across the open space below. Even a visitor approaching for the first time would immediately sense that Royce Hall was the hub around which the campus turned.

The building was named for Josiah Royce, a California-born philosopher who earned his bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley in 1875 and went on to teach at Harvard, where he became one of the most respected thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The choice of his name for the campus's dominant structure was a statement about what the new university aspired to be: not merely a training ground for teachers and professionals, but a place where serious intellectual life could flourish in the American West. Allison reinforced that aspiration by designing the building with an 1,800-seat auditorium, cloistered walkways, and a series of smaller lecture halls arranged around the central hall, creating a sense of layered academic purpose within a single structure.

This photograph captures Royce Hall in the midst of its most intensive construction phase, when the brick and stone work was being laid by hand around a steel structural frame. The colors of brick used across the exterior were deliberately varied, drawing on all nineteen shades of brick commercially available at the time of construction. This approach, in which no two sections of wall are quite the same tone, gives the finished building a richness and warmth that a uniform surface could never achieve, and it echoes the centuries of patina visible on the Italian originals that Allison had studied.

As the building neared completion, architect Allison added an inscription to the proscenium arch of the auditorium, transferring a text that had graced the administration building at UCLA's old Vermont Avenue campus. Written by Ernest Carroll Moore, the university's first director and provost, the inscription reads: "Education is learning to use the tools which the race has found indispensable." The University of California's president at Berkeley objected strenuously, arguing that only Berkeley had authority to approve inscriptions on university buildings anywhere in the system. Moore held firm, and the words have remained on the arch ever since, becoming one of the most beloved features of the building.

The two figures passing through the construction zone offer a rare sense of human scale against the rising buildings. During active construction the campus was an open, working landscape, with little of the formality that would later define it. Pedestrians, workers, delivery wagons, and construction equipment shared the same dirt-covered ground, and the distinction between the finished campus and the raw hillside was blurry at best.

The spatial relationship captured here, with the library in the foreground and Royce Hall rising prominently in the background, reflects the intentional hierarchy built into Allison and Kelham's plan. Powell Library sits slightly lower on the site, its dome offering a visual counterpart to the twin towers of Royce without competing with them. The architects understood that a successful campus required not just fine individual buildings but a clear and legible relationship between those buildings, one that could be grasped almost intuitively from any point in the central space.

Powell Library: The Academic Heart

While Royce Hall was designed to inspire and impress, Powell Library was built to serve. As the College Library, it was meant to be the intellectual engine of the campus, the place where students came day after day to pursue the work of reading, research, and sustained study. George W. Kelham gave it an exterior of considerable beauty, centered on a tall octagonal dome topped by a copper cupola, with arched balconies and a mosaic-adorned entrance. The dome, as Ernest Carroll Moore noted, took on different tones throughout the day as the California light shifted, its brick surfaces glowing warmly in the morning and softening in the afternoon.

The building was renamed Powell Library in honor of Lawrence Clark Powell, who served as UCLA's University Librarian from 1944 to 1961 and as founding dean of the Graduate School of Library Service from 1960 to 1966. During his twenty-eight years at the institution, Powell grew the library's collection from roughly 400,000 volumes to more than 1.5 million, transforming it from a regional resource into a collection that drew scholars from across the country. His dedication to the idea that a great library was inseparable from a great university made his name a fitting one for the building that had always stood at the center of UCLA's academic life. In 1951, author Ray Bradbury wrote an early draft of Fahrenheit 451 at one of the library's rental typewriters, a detail that speaks volumes about the kind of creative and intellectual atmosphere Powell had helped cultivate.

This southwest-facing view shows the four-building campus emerging from a landscape that was still essentially undeveloped hillside. The dirt roads, open grades, and absence of any surrounding neighborhood make it easy to understand just how isolated the construction site must have felt to the workers who came here each day. The rolling terrain of the Westwood hills, which the Janss brothers had sold to the university at well below market value in the mid-1920s, stretched in nearly every direction without a building in sight beyond the campus core.

The buildings had been positioned deliberately on the highest ground of the site, giving them visibility from a distance and projecting an air of permanence. The layout the two architects had worked out in their master plan was already legible at this stage: four buildings enclosing a central open space that was not simply left-over ground but the organizing idea of the entire composition, the common ground from which all academic life would radiate.

The exposed steel frame of the library tower reveals the structural logic hidden beneath the eventual brick and stone exterior. Steel framing allowed the building to rise quickly and provided the load-bearing capacity needed to support the heavy masonry that would be applied over it. The combination of a modern structural system concealed beneath a traditional architectural skin was typical of institutional construction in this period, and it gave buildings like Powell Library both the speed of modern construction methods and the visual weight of historic European architecture.

The decision to use brick as the primary facing material was not simply aesthetic. Kelham wrote that the northern Italian style lent itself beautifully to texture and color in brick and terra cotta walls, and the construction team sourced materials that could deliver on that promise. The brick was laid in patterns that varied slightly across the surface of the building, creating the subtle visual complexity that distinguishes handmade masonry from more mechanical wall surfaces. This attention to craft, visible in the finished building even today, was built into the design from the very beginning of construction.

By late 1928, the College Library was approaching its finished form. The dome and central tower had taken shape, and the brick work on the wings was nearing completion. Scaffolding still clung to portions of the exterior, but the building's overall composition was now clearly visible: a symmetrical facade anchored by the central dome, with two lower wings extending to either side and a projecting entrance pavilion at the base of the tower.

The entrance of the completed building would be adorned with mosaics carrying a phrase from Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: a Latin inscription appropriate for a building dedicated to undergraduate learning. Inside, the Main Reading Room on the second floor, with its Renaissance printers' marks painted on the ceiling, would become one of the most beloved spaces on campus. For decades it served as the social and academic center of UCLA's student life, a place where the architecture itself seemed to encourage the kind of focused, unhurried study that a university education requires.

The Campus Takes Shape: 1928 to 1929

As the individual buildings moved toward completion, the campus began to take on the character of a coherent place rather than simply a collection of construction projects. The open space at the center was becoming the quad the architects had envisioned, paths were emerging where workers and visitors crossed the ground, and a nursery had been established on the north edge of the site to grow the trees that would eventually shade the walkways and soften the formal lines of the architecture.

This view shows the campus at a stage when the buildings were substantially complete but the surrounding grounds had yet to be landscaped. The Arroyo Bridge at the far right anchors the scene, a reminder that the entire project depended on this single point of access to Hilgard Avenue and the city beyond. Without the bridge, none of the buildings could have been built on the schedule the university required, and the isolated quality of the hilltop site would have made the entire plan impractical.

The relationship between the four original buildings and the space they enclosed was central to the architects' intentions. The quad was not simply the area left over between the structures but a designed space in its own right, a common ground where the academic community could gather, move between buildings, and experience the campus as a unified whole. That core design concept, the campus organized around a central open space rather than along a street or corridor, gave UCLA's original core its distinctive character and set the pattern for later expansion.

This view documents the beginning of the campus's first expansion beyond the original four buildings. Moore Hall, known initially as the Education Building, was completed in 1930 and followed the same northern Italian brick-and-tile vocabulary established by the earlier structures. Its construction so soon after the original four buildings reflects the rapid growth in enrollment and academic programs that UCLA was experiencing even before the Westwood campus had fully opened.

The decision to extend the campus in a consistent architectural style was not automatic. The university could have chosen a different idiom for later buildings, as many campuses did as they grew across the twentieth century. Instead, the Romanesque vocabulary of brick, arches, tile, and cast stone was maintained for the early additions, giving the expanding campus a sense of coherence that later generations of students and visitors would experience as something close to historical continuity, even though the buildings had been built within just a few years of each other.

The Physics Building, designed by Allison and Allison and completed between 1928 and 1929, formed the southeastern anchor of the original quadrangle. Like the other original buildings, it was constructed in the northern Italian Romanesque Revival style, its brick exterior and tile roof harmonizing with Royce Hall across the quad and with Powell Library on the opposite diagonal. The building later housed humanities programs and is today known as Kaplan Hall.

The three buildings visible here represent three of the four corners of the original quad, and together they convey the orderly logic built into the master plan. Each building was given a distinct program and a slightly different architectural emphasis while remaining part of the same overall composition, with enough visual variety to reward close attention but enough consistency to read as a single, purposeful design.

This colorized version of the original photograph reveals the visual character of the campus in a way that black-and-white images alone cannot fully convey. The warm red of the brick walls, the pale cream of the cast stone trim, and the deep orange of the clay tile roofs were all deliberate choices, materials selected not just for their structural qualities but for the way they would look in the Southern California light. Kelham had written that the northern Italian style lent itself beautifully to texture and color in brick and terra cotta, and the colorized image makes that quality visible in a direct way.

The surrounding landscape, still largely bare hillside with dirt roads and open grades, reinforces just how new and freshly completed the buildings were at the time this photograph was taken. The contrast between the elaborately crafted masonry of the campus buildings and the raw, undeveloped terrain around them was striking to observers who visited the site during construction, and it captured something essential about UCLA's situation in these years: a great institution taking form in a place that had barely begun to be a city.

In 1928, there was almost nothing to see from this vantage point but open hillside. Few homes existed near the campus during this period, and those that did were scattered and widely spaced across the Westwood hills. The decision to build a major university on this particular parcel of land had been made only three years earlier, and the residential development that would eventually surround the campus on every side had barely begun. What neighbors there were could watch the buildings rising across the chaparral with little sense of how completely the landscape around them would change within a decade.

The surrounding neighborhoods of Holmby Hills and Westwood Village developed rapidly once UCLA opened in 1929. The presence of the university acted as a powerful magnet for residential construction, commercial investment, and population growth throughout the early 1930s. Streets were paved, streetcar lines extended, and lots subdivided at a pace that would have been difficult to imagine from this quiet hilltop vantage point just a year or two before. By the mid-1930s, the isolation visible in this photograph had given way to one of the most desirable residential districts in Los Angeles.

Aerial Views and the Finished Campus

As the buildings reached completion and construction equipment began to withdraw from the site, photographs taken from the air revealed for the first time the full scope of what had been accomplished. The original plan that Kelham and Allison had drawn showed four buildings arranged around a central quadrangle on a hilltop, connected to Hilgard Avenue by the Arroyo Bridge. The aerial images taken in 1929 showed that the plan had been executed with remarkable fidelity, the buildings positioned exactly as drawn, the central space open and legible from above, the surrounding landscape still largely undeveloped.

This aerial view shows all four original buildings arranged around the central quad, with the Arroyo Bridge visible to the east connecting the campus to Hilgard Avenue. The surrounding area remained almost entirely undeveloped at this date. The neighborhoods of Holmby Hills and Westwood Village that would grow up around the campus in the 1930s were barely begun, and the rolling Westwood hills stretched in most directions without significant settlement.

The aerial perspective reveals something that is difficult to appreciate from the ground: the precision with which the buildings were placed relative to each other and to the topography of the site. Royce Hall sits at the highest point, Powell Library faces it across the quad on a slightly lower grade, and the two flanking buildings complete the four-sided enclosure. The geometry is not perfectly regular, because the architects had to work with the natural contours of the hillside, but the overall impression from above is of a carefully considered composition rather than a series of buildings placed one at a time.

The nursery visible in this aerial view was an essential part of the campus construction program, though it is rarely mentioned in accounts of the period. The trees grown there would supply the shaded walkways, planted courtyards, and landscaped grounds that transformed the campus from an architectural composition into a living environment. Planning for the landscape had proceeded alongside planning for the buildings, and the nursery ensured that by the time students arrived, the campus would have at least the beginnings of the mature plantings that would eventually define its character.

The decision to establish a nursery on site rather than transplanting mature trees from elsewhere reflected both practical and financial considerations. Growing trees from young stock was less expensive and produced plants that were better adapted to the specific soil and microclimate of the Westwood hills. It also allowed the landscape program to be scaled to the pace of construction, with trees ready to plant as each part of the campus was completed rather than requiring a single large delivery at the end.

Looking from the nursery back toward the completed buildings, this photograph captures a moment when the campus was poised between its construction phase and its life as an active academic institution. The buildings are finished, or nearly so, and the grounds around them are beginning to be shaped by the landscape work that would continue for years after the academic program began. The trees visible in the nursery foreground would go on to define the shaded walkways and planted quads that generations of UCLA students would come to associate with the spirit of the place.

By 1929, UCLA's decision to invest in serious landscape planning alongside its architectural program was already beginning to pay dividends. The formal geometry of the buildings, with their straight edges, symmetrical facades, and hard masonry surfaces, was softened and humanized by the plantings that grew up around them. This relationship between architecture and landscape, between the made world and the natural world, was central to the vision that Kelham and Allison had brought to the campus from the beginning.

This west-facing aerial shows the campus as it appeared at or near the time of its formal opening in September 1929, when classes moved from Vermont Avenue to Westwood and the first assembly was held in Royce Hall. The academic core is fully formed, the four original buildings in their final positions around the central quadrangle, the Arroyo Bridge providing the primary connection to the city. The arroyo itself, which the bridge had been built to cross, would later be filled and buried, but in 1929 it was still a visible feature of the landscape, marking the eastern boundary of the campus.

Moving Day, May 31, 1929, had been a memorable occasion. Students and faculty gathered on Heliotrope Drive at the old Vermont Avenue campus in the early afternoon, then joined a ten-mile caravan of more than 500 cars and trucks loaded with books, furniture, and laboratory equipment, led by a police motorcade to the new campus in Westwood. UCLA provost Ernest Carroll Moore and the campus military band met the arrivals outside Royce Hall. There were no formal speeches; students simply carried the first furnishings into the buildings and began the work of occupying their new home. "It was a thrilling sight to see 2,000 young people pour themselves among the buildings and into them," Moore wrote afterward.

Then and Now

Nearly a century separates the UCLA that opened in 1929 from the institution that occupies the same Westwood hillside today. The then-and-now comparisons below make that distance visible in a single glance. What they also reveal, perhaps more surprisingly, is how much the architects got right from the start. The central quad, the placement of the original four buildings, and the Romanesque vocabulary of brick and tile that Kelham and Allison chose are all still there, holding their ground at the heart of one of the largest and most complex university campuses in the country.

When UCLA opened its Westwood campus in 1929, it stood largely alone amid rolling hills and open land. The early academic core, a small cluster of buildings gathered around a central quad, was surrounded on nearly every side by undeveloped chaparral and dirt roads. Royce Hall, visible near the top center of both images, serves as the fixed reference point across time, its twin towers unchanged while everything around them was transformed.

The aerial view of today tells a different story entirely. Westwood Village grew up alongside the university through the 1930s, and the campus itself expanded steadily in every direction, filling the surrounding hillsides with classrooms, laboratories, student housing, and cultural institutions. What had been an isolated hilltop experiment in public education became one of the most recognized university campuses in the world. The growth of UCLA and the development of the Westside of Los Angeles are, in many ways, the same story told from two different angles.

Few comparisons illustrate UCLA's transformation more clearly than this one. Where the earlier image shows dirt roads, construction cranes, and buildings rising from an undeveloped hillside, the later view shows a mature urban campus surrounded by the dense neighborhoods of Westwood, Holmby Hills, and Bel Air. The original buildings are still there, though now framed by decades of additional construction on every side.

What the comparison also shows, perhaps more powerfully, is what did not change. The four original buildings remain in their original positions. The central quadrangle, the organizing idea of Kelham and Allison's master plan, is still the heart of the campus more than ninety years after it was laid out. The Romanesque Revival architecture that the architects chose over the objections of those who favored something cheaper or more locally characteristic proved durable enough to define UCLA's visual identity for generations. In that sense, the architects' confidence in their vision was entirely justified.

The Campus at the Close of 1929

By the end of 1929, the most intensive phase of construction was over. The four original buildings were complete, the quad between them had taken shape, and students were already crossing the Arroyo Bridge each morning on their way to class. What had been an open chaparral hillside just two years earlier was now a functioning university campus. These final views from 1929 capture that moment of arrival, when the work of building gave way to the work of learning, and UCLA's permanent home in Westwood became a reality.

By the close of 1929, the primary construction work on the four original buildings was complete, and attention was shifting toward landscaping, finishing the surrounding grounds, and beginning work on additional structures. The panoramic quality of this view emphasizes the openness of the site at this moment, a hilltop campus surrounded by undeveloped countryside, with only the earliest traces of the residential neighborhoods that would eventually press close on every side.

The campus that opened in 1929 was at once finished and incomplete. The buildings were done and the quad was in place, but the landscape program was only beginning, the library collections were being assembled from the Vermont Avenue campus, and the surrounding infrastructure of roads, utilities, and transit connections was still being worked out. In many ways the physical campus of 1929 was a frame awaiting a picture, a setting in which decades of academic life, research, teaching, and cultural activity would gradually accumulate.

This east-facing view shows the completed campus buildings as they appeared to someone approaching from the direction of Hilgard Avenue and the Arroyo Bridge. The formal axis running south from Royce Hall through Powell Library and toward the lower portions of the site was already established, and it would eventually be extended and formalized by the creation of the Janss Steps, the 87-step entrance stairway that became another defining feature of the early campus. The steps connected the academic quad to the residential and commercial areas developing below, drawing a physical and symbolic line between the university and the city around it.

By 1929 UCLA's Westwood campus had taken on its recognizable form, its earliest buildings arranged around a central quadrangle and its architectural identity firmly established. The brick and tile Romanesque style would remain dominant through the late 1940s, when modernist buildings began to appear. But the original four structures have never been overshadowed. They remain what the architects intended from the beginning: the architectural soul of the university, a statement in brick and stone about the enduring purpose of a place dedicated to learning.

Janss Steps

The Ceremonial Gateway to UCLA

The Janss Steps have served as the ceremonial heart of UCLA since the campus opened in September 1929. Designed by architect George W. Kelham and funded by real estate developers Edwin and Harold Janss, the 87 steps were constructed between 1928 and 1929 to connect the lower hillside with the central academic quad above, where Royce Hall and the original campus buildings stood ready for their first students.

The story behind the steps begins with the Janss Investment Company, a family real estate firm that played a major role in shaping the early development of Los Angeles. In 1925, Edwin and Harold Janss agreed to sell 375 acres of their Westwood holdings to the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Venice at a price far below market value. Those cities then donated the land to the state of California, making the Westwood campus possible. As construction progressed, the Janss brothers funded the grand staircase as a gift to the university, and it was named in their honor.

From the moment the campus opened, the steps became far more than a practical route between two elevations. They oriented every visitor, framing the twin towers of Royce Hall as a focal point visible from below and drawing people upward through what was then a largely bare and unlandscaped hillside. Over the decades, mature trees and planted lawns transformed the setting around them, but the steps themselves remain unchanged, still carrying the same alignment and ceremonial purpose that Kelham gave them nearly a century ago.

A Gift That Helped Shape UCLA’s Entrance

Construction of the Janss Steps in 1928 was part of a broader push to complete the Westwood campus in time for its September 1929 opening. The surrounding terrain was raw and largely unfinished at this stage, with the hillside still showing bare earth and little of the landscaping that would come in later years. Work crews moved with urgency across the site, knowing that thousands of students would arrive within months.

The steps were informally referred to as "the 87" before being formally named for the Janss brothers. Architect George W. Kelham, who served as executive architect for the campus and also designed the bridge spanning the arroyo along Hilgard Avenue, gave the staircase a scale and formality that matched the ambitions of the institution being built above. Their placement at the western edge of the campus was deliberate, aimed directly at the new Westwood Village commercial district the Janss brothers were simultaneously developing just south of campus.

UCLA officially opened its Westwood campus on September 23, 1929, welcoming approximately 5,500 students to a campus that was still very much a work in progress. There was no grass. The grounds were muddy from recent rains, and construction debris remained scattered across the site. Despite these conditions, the campus opening was celebrated with great optimism, arriving just weeks before the stock market crash that would usher in the Great Depression.

The Janss Steps were immediately the primary pedestrian route between the lower campus entrance and the main academic buildings gathered around Dickson Court above. On that first day, as this photograph shows, dignitaries and invited guests were among the first to descend the newly completed steps, with the broader student body close behind. For students coming from Vermont Avenue, where UCLA had previously been housed in a crowded and aging campus, the sweeping view up toward Royce Hall must have felt like a dramatic arrival at something entirely new.

The men descending the steps are dressed in the formal attire that was standard for any public occasion in 1929, with suits, ties, and hats. This was a day of great civic pride, not only for UCLA but for Los Angeles, which had campaigned hard in the preceding years to bring the university to Westwood. High school and college students had appeared on radio stations, screened short films in movie theaters, and stood in pairs outside polling places to persuade voters to approve the bond measures that paid for the land.

This colorized version of the photograph, enhanced by Richard Holoff, gives a vivid sense of the scene's energy and scale. The partial view of Royce Hall in the background connects the moment to the building that would quickly become the university's most iconic symbol. The hall's twin towers, modeled on the Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio in Milan, rose above a campus that had been carved from rolling chaparral hills covered, just years before, with barley, wild grasses, and jackrabbits.

This northeast view shows the deliberate visual relationship between the Janss Steps and Royce Hall. Kelham and his collaborator David Clark Allison, the architect responsible for Royce Hall itself, arranged the campus so that anyone approaching from below would see the twin towers framed directly at the top of the staircase. It was an intentional piece of campus design, meant to signal the university's architectural seriousness and to give the act of arriving at UCLA a sense of occasion.

The Italian Romanesque style chosen for the original buildings extended to the overall feeling of the steps and their approach. Kelham wrote of the architectural style that it lent itself beautifully to texture and color in brick and terra cotta, with colorful tile roofs and richly ornamented details. The steps, though simpler in character, shared the same formal sensibility, creating a unified procession from the street below to the academic core above.

Early Use and an Unfinished Landscape

This aerial view, taken not long after the campus opened, captures a campus still finding its footing. Formal landscaping had not yet taken hold, and the slopes on either side of the steps remained largely bare. The informal dirt paths worn into the hillside by students taking shortcuts are visible alongside the steps, a reminder that even the most carefully planned campus infrastructure must contend with how people actually move through space.

Those improvised paths would eventually give way to planted lawns, walkways, and a canopy of mature trees that now shade the entire hillside. But in this early period, the Janss Steps stood as the campus's most defined feature, a clear spine running through an otherwise unfinished landscape. Their presence in daily life was already total, as the photograph shows students moving up and down in steady numbers less than a year after the campus opened.

Aerial photography from the Goodyear blimp was a popular medium in 1930s Los Angeles, used to document the rapid growth of the city and its institutions. This view places UCLA in its larger geographic context, showing the campus sitting at the edge of a lightly developed landscape, with the Westwood hills to the north and the streets of the surrounding area just beginning to take shape. The Janss Steps stand out clearly as one of the campus's most visible and organized features.

At the time of this photograph, the Janss brothers were simultaneously building Westwood Village immediately south of the campus, developing it as a planned Mediterranean-style commercial district that would eventually become one of the busiest shopping and entertainment destinations on the Westside. The steps, pointed directly toward that emerging neighborhood, connected the university and the village in a physical and symbolic way that the Janss family had clearly intended from the beginning.

From Bare Hillside to Shaded Landmark

The contrast between these two images shows how completely the setting around the Janss Steps was transformed over eight decades. In the earlier view, the steps emerge from a hillside that is raw and spare, with little vegetation and a wide open sky. By 2007, the same staircase is flanked by tall trees and bordered by established plantings that give the approach to campus an entirely different character, shaded and enclosed where it was once exposed and stark.

What has not changed is the alignment of the steps themselves and their relationship to the buildings above. The path traveled by millions of students, faculty, visitors, and dignitaries leads to exactly the same place it always did. This consistency across nearly a century of change is part of what makes the Janss Steps such a reliable touchstone for UCLA's history. They are one of the few elements of the original 1929 campus that can still be seen and used in essentially the same form in which they were built.

The aerial perspective makes the transformation around UCLA impossible to miss. In the 1930 image, the campus sits at the edge of an open and largely quiet landscape, with the surrounding hills and streets only beginning to fill in. By 2024, the campus is ringed by dense urban development, with the Westwood and Century City skylines visible in the distance and every surrounding block built out with residential and commercial structures. What was once the edge of the city has become one of its most intensely developed neighborhoods.

Through all of that change, the Janss Steps remain clearly legible in both images, holding their position and their form through nearly a century of growth. They continue to connect the lower campus to the original quad just as they did on that September day in 1929, when the first class of Westwood students climbed them and found Royce Hall waiting at the top. For anyone who knows where to look, the steps serve as a fixed reference point from which everything else can be measured.

UCLA in Its New Setting

The Westwood Campus at the Moment of Arrival

These views show UCLA at the time of its opening in 1929, when the campus stood at the edge of largely undeveloped land. From surrounding hills and open spaces, the university appeared as a newly planted institution set into a still-rural Westside.

This wide view shows how isolated the new UCLA campus initially appeared. Beyond the university’s core buildings, the surrounding hills and neighborhoods were only lightly developed. The image captures UCLA as a prominent new landmark emerging within an open landscape.

Seen from the Bel-Air Country Club, UCLA appears as a compact academic core set amid open land and infrastructure. The reservoir reflects the importance of water systems in supporting Westside growth, linking the university’s development to Los Angeles’ expanding water network.

This angle emphasizes the campus’s original focal point: the central quadrangle framed by its two most prominent buildings. From the beginning, the arrangement was designed to convey permanence, order, and institutional presence.

Postcard views like this helped introduce the new campus to a wider public. Side and rear views reveal how the buildings were designed as a unified group rather than as isolated landmarks.

The colorized version helps bring out architectural details such as brickwork, stone trim, and rooflines. While enhanced for clarity, the image reflects the true appearance and layout of UCLA’s original buildings at the time of opening.

Before classes could begin, UCLA had to physically relocate from its Vermont Avenue campus to Westwood. The move itself marked the final step in establishing UCLA’s permanent home.

The move to Westwood was both symbolic and practical. Students, staff, and workers helped transport books, equipment, and supplies into buildings that were still being finished. The image captures the campus in transition—new, incomplete, and already in use.

UCLA opened its Westwood campus in September 1929. Classes began while construction crews were still at work, creating scenes where student life and building activity overlapped.

This view shows UCLA operating as a functioning university even as final construction work continued. The central quadrangle was already serving as the heart of campus life.

Registration scenes highlight how quickly the campus had to transition from a construction site to a working university. Despite unfinished areas, academic life moved forward immediately.

This image captures two worlds at once: builders completing the campus and students beginning their daily routines. It underscores how UCLA opened not as a finished monument, but as a living, evolving place.

Images like this bring a human dimension to UCLA’s opening. Clothing, posture, and expressions remind viewers that the university’s history is shaped as much by its people as by its buildings.

Historical Notes

Royce Hall was built in 1928-29 and designed by Allison and Allison, Architects. It was constructed in a northern Italian Romanesque Revival style, inspired by Sant' Ambrogio in Milan (12th century). It is one of the four original buildings on UCLA's Westwood campus and has come to be the defining image of the university.

Historical Notes

The brick and tile building is in the Lombard Romanesque style, and once functioned as the main classroom facility of the university.  Today, Royce Hall’s twin-towered front remains the best known UCLA landmark.

Royce Hall was named after Josiah Royce, a California-born philosopher who received his bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley in 1875.*^

Historical Notes

Powell Library (originally called College Library) is named for Lawrence Clark Powell, the University Librarian at UCLA from 1944 to 1961 and Dean of the Graduate School of Library Service from 1960 to 1966.

Like the building facing it across the quad, Royce Hall, the building's exterior is modeled after Milan's Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio.*^

Historical Notes

The entrance of the library is adorned with several mosaics, one of which depicts two men holding a book bearing the phrase, from Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta, "Haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant". This loosely translates as "Studying in youth sustains delight into old age", an appropriate dictum for the vast collection for undergraduate students.*^

Historical Notes

The great amount of skilled hand work needed for the detailed tile and brick work of the Lombard style of architecture made it impossible to continue in the same architectural tradition when costs rose after World War II. The above view shows the interior of the main lobby and stairs to the reading room at the Powell Library.*

Historical Notes

Royce Hall’s first performing arts season was 1937. The first subscription series included the great contralto Marian Anderson, the Budapest String Quartet and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Also appearing at Royce Hall that year were Jimmy Dorsey’s Band and the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by famed conductor Otto Klemperer. A year later in 1937, Duke Ellington’s Orchestra and avant-garde composer Arnold Schoenberg made appearances.

Luminaries who have appeared on its stage include musicians George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and Ella Fitzgerald, and speakers Albert Einstein and John F. Kennedy.*^

Historical Notes

During the 1930s several other buildings were added to the cluster around the main quadrangle--the Education Building, Kerckhoff Hall, the Men's Gymnasium, the Women's Gymnasium, Mira Hershey Hall, and the Administration Building.**

Historical Notes

On March 27 and 28, 1930, the formal dedication of the University of California at Los Angeles took place.  Speakers at the ceremonies included Dr. Arthur Thompson of the University of Aberdeen and Dr. Ernest Carroll Moore, director of UCLA.  Delegates representing 168 colleges and universities from around the world were present.

Historical Notes

Designed by architects Allison & Allison, Kerckhoff Hall was completed in 1931. The hall is named for William G. Kerckhoff, a successful lumber and energy magnate, who died prior to the building's completion. Mr Kerckhoff's widow spent $815,000 to build and completely furnish Kerckhoff Hall.

Historical Notes

The Kerckhoffs visited the Westwood campus under construction in early 1929 and were told by the provost of the need for a student union. On his deathbed a month later, Kerckhoff told his wife that he wanted to build such a building.*

Historical Notes

William Kerckhoff moved to Los Angeles from Indiana in 1878-1879 and worked for the Jackson Lumber Company. In 1887, he built the first ocean-going vessel to use oil for fuel. In the 1890s, he founded the San Gabriel Power Company, a hydroelectric power company. By the turn of the century, together with A.C. Balch, he owned half the stock of Henry E. Huntington Pacific Light & Power Company used to provide electricity to Pacific Electric, and he served as its President. In 1902, they purchased the San Joaquin Electric Company. They also founded Southern California Gas Corporation in 1910, and built a 120-mile pipeline from the San Joaquin Valley to Los Angeles.

In 1900, Kerckhoff together with Burton E. Green, Charles A. Canfield, Max Whittier, Frank H. Buck, Henry E. Huntington, William F. Herrin, W.S. Porter and Frank H. Balch, known as the Amalgated Oil Company, purchased Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas from Henry Hammel and Andrew H. Denker and renamed it Morocco Junction. After drilling for oil and only finding water, they reorganized their business into the Rodeo Land and Water Company to develop a new residential town later known as Beverly Hills, California.

Historical Notes

Today, Kerckhoff Hall is one of the main student union buildings of UCLA. Among its offerings are: study lounges, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, meeting rooms, a salon and the student government offices.*

Historical Notes

For many Bruins, the iconic Gothic spires of Kerckhoff Hall, rising majestically high above campus, are second only to Royce Hall as a symbol of UCLA.

Historical Notes

Marymount was established in 1923 by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Mother Joseph Butler of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary founded the school in 1923. Marymount students and teams are known as the "Sailors." *^

Historical Notes

In the early years, parking on the UCLA campus was not a significant concern.  After World War II, UCLA experienced significant growth, and this growth led to increased demand for parking facilities. This expansion coincided with the post-war boom in car ownership in the United States. To address the growing parking demand, UCLA constructed its first parking structures in the 1950s and 1960s. These multi-level parking garages helped alleviate some of the parking congestion on campus.

Historical Notes

Named for philanthropist Glorya Kaufman, Kaufman Hall was originally UCLA's women's gym. She is the widow of Donald Bruce Kaufman, who co-founded KB Home with Eli Broad in 1957.

The building was eventually remodeled and renovated in 2005 to become the house of UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures as well as dance. Aside from the WAC department, Kaufman Hall also is host to the Kaufman Garden Courtyard, the Kaufman Garden Theater, the Kaufman Hall Dance Theater, and the North pool.

Glorya (Pinkis) Kaufman was born in Detroit, Michigan during the Great Depression. Her father worked as a production manager for Automotive News and her mother volunteered for Jewish charities. Her parents could not afford dancing lessons for her.

In 2009, she donated $20 million to the Los Angeles Music Center to establish the Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance series. She has also donated millions to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Juilliard School in New York City. In 2011, she donated several millions to the University of Southern California for the establishment of the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and the construction of the Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center.*^

Historical Notes

On August 8, 1933, just 14 years after the Los Angeles campus became a part of the University; the Regents authorized graduate training for the M.A. degree and specified a graduate enrollment of 125 students. In the first year, 170 qualified students applied and were enrolled. Graduate enrollment has been climbing ever since.

On May 22, 1936, the Regents extended their authorization to include the Ph.D. degree. At June Commencement two years later, the first Ph.D. degree was awarded to Kenneth P. Bailey, a student in the Department of History. One year earlier, a Ph.D. degree had been conferred at Berkeley on Norman Watson, a student in the Department of Physics who had done much of his graduate research at Los Angeles.**

Historical Notes

Kenny Washington led the nation in total offense and became the first consensus All-American in the history of the school's football program in 1939. He rushed for 1,914 yards in his college career, a school record for 34 years. He was one of four African American players on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team, the others being Woody Strode, Jackie Robinson and Ray Bartlett. Washington, Strode, and Robinson starred on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team, in which they made up three of the four backfield players. This was a rarity to have so many African Americans when only a few dozen at all played on college football teams. They played eventual conference and national champion USC to a 0-0 tie with the 1940 Rose Bowl on the line. It was the first UCLA-USC rivalry football game with national implications.*^

Historical Notes

In this 1965 speech at UCLA, Martin Luther King called for students to join a "Domestic Freedom Corps" to work in 120 counties of the Deep South to help increase the number of registered African American voters.*

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In 1965, he and the SCLC helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches and the following year, he took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include poverty and speak against the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam".

In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee.

King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986.*^

Historical Notes

From 1967–69, Lew Alcindor played under coach John Wooden, contributing to the team's three-year record of 88 wins and only two losses: one to the University of Houston in which Alcindor had a not fully healed eye injury, and the other to crosstown rival USC who played a "stall game" (i.e., there was no shot clock in those days, so a team could hold the ball as long as it wanted before attempting to score). In his first college game, Lew set a UCLA single game record with 56 points.

The 1965–66 UCLA Bruin team was the preseason #1. But on November 27, 1965, the freshman team led by Alcindor defeated the varsity team 75–60 in the first game in the new Pauley Pavilion.  Alcindor scored 31 points and had 21 rebounds in that game.

During his college career, Alcindor was twice named Player of the Year (1967, 1969); was a three-time First Team All-American (1967–69); played on three NCAA basketball champion teams (1967, 1968, 1969); was honored as the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament (1967, 1968, 1969); and became the first-ever Naismith College Player of the Year in 1969.*^

Historical Notes

Ihe UCLA Bruins have won 125 national championships, including 108 NCAA team championships as of December 2011, more than any other university. UCLA student-athletes have won 214 Olympic medals – 106 gold, 54 silver and 54 bronze. The Bruins have had at least one competitor in every Olympics since 1920 with one exception (1924), and UCLA has won a gold medal in every Olympics since 1932 with the exception of 1980 (boycott).*

Historical Notes

In some cases, the word "legend" is an understatement. That was the case with former UCLA coach John Wooden, winner of 10 national titles in a 12-year stretch. He'd announced his retirement before the 1975 national title game against Kentucky. The 1974 -75 squad was not Wooden's best -- he didn't have Lew Alcindor or Bill Walton -- but the Bruins' 92-85 win in the national title game that year guaranteed a proper sendoff for Wooden. He left the game on top. Few coaches in any sport can match that.*

Historical Notes

After World War II, the architects changed to a less costly and more modern style buildings which still featured red brick. The 1950s and early 1960s saw a building boom that produced more than 60 permanent structures on campus.**

Historical Notes

Westwood and UCLA were developed on the lands of the historic 'Wolfskill Ranch', a 3,000-acre parcel that was purchased by Arthur Letts, the successful founder of the Broadway, and Bullock's department stores, in 1919.*^

Historical Notes

Westwood Village would contain a unique blend of pedestrian and automobile-oriented development.  Wide sidewalks and landscaping were priorities.  Corner buildings would be accessible from both streets and interior courtyards.

Historical Notes

Westwood Village was created by the Janss Investment Company, run by Harold and Edwin Janss and their father, Peter, in the late 1920s as an autonomous shopping district and headquarters of the Janss Company. Its boom was complemented by the boom of UCLA (which selected the Westwood Hills as its new home in 1926), developed as a shopping district not just for the residents of Westwood but also for the university.*^

Historical Notes

In 1911 Harold Janss married Arthur Letts' daughter Gladys. In 1923 after Arthur Letts, Sr. died, leaving control of the 3,300-acre William Wolfskill ranch on Rancho San Jose de Buenos Ayres to Harold and Gladys Janss. Through a three-way deal with the State of California and the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills, the UCLA campus was built. Janss Investment Company went to work in parallel developing the Westwood Village commercial area and surrounding residential neighborhoods.*^^

Historical Notes

The Janss Dome ranks alongside the white Spanish Revival/Moderne tower of the Fox Theater as an iconic landmark of Westwood Village.

Historical Notes

Back of postcard reads: Westwood is a district 13 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, and includes the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a residential neighborhood, and Westwood Village, a shopping district. Clustered around its central thoroughfare of Westwood Boulevard, the shopping district serves the affluent neighborhoods of Bel Air and Westwood to the north, as well as students from UCLA. ##

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