Los Angeles State Normal School

The history of University of California, Los Angeles starts in 1919, when the Southern Branch of the University of California, which was created by the State Legislature, took over the facilities of Los Angeles branch of the Los Angeles State Normal School. After moving to its new campus in Westwood in 1929, it was renamed UCLA and has since expanded to become a leading world university.

In March 1881, after heavy lobbying by Los Angeles residents, the California State Legislature authorized the creation of a southern branch of the California State Normal School (now San Jose State University) in downtown Los Angeles to train teachers for the growing population of Southern California. The State Normal School at Los Angeles opened on August 29, 1882, on what is now the site of the Central Library of the Los Angeles Public Library system. The new facility included an elementary school where teachers-in-training could practice their teaching technique on real children. In 1887, the branch campus became independent as the Los Angeles State Normal School.

In 1914, the school moved to a new campus on Vermont Avenue in Hollywood. In 1917, UC Regent Edward A. Dickson, the only regent representing the Southland at the time, and Ernest Carroll Moore, Director of the Normal School, began working together to lobby the State for the second University of California campus, after Berkeley. On May 23, 1919, their efforts were rewarded when Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, which turned the school facilities into the Southern Branch of the University of California and added its general undergraduate program, the College of Letters and Science. The Southern Branch campus opened on September 15 of that year, offering two-year undergraduate programs to 250 Letters and Science students and 1,250 students in the Teachers College, under Moore's continued direction. The school newspaper, Cub Californian, athletics, student government, and Greek chapters were organized in the first year at the Vermont location.

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