| After Stanford University opened its doors in 1891, the people
of this community wanted their children to have an equal opportunity
with others to attend this new university, so a group of twenty-one
citizens, elected to represent seven elementary school districts,
met at the San Mateo County Court House, August 24, 1895, and
proceeded with the organization of the Sequoia Union High School.
They followed closely the advice of Dr. David Starr Jordan, then
the president of Stanford. The first principal selected for Sequoia
was David A. Curry, who developed facilities at Yosemite National
Park.
After Redwood City had been decided upon as the site for the school,
the name Sequoia was chosen as the most fitting to stand for the
district as a whole. Sequoia, the name of the great redwood, is
named after Sequoyah, the great Cherokee Indian scholar and inventor
of the writing system for the Cherokee language.
School opened September 16, 1895 with an enrollment of 53, and
as it was the only high school on the Peninsula between Santa
Clara and San Francisco, a five-dollar tuition fee was charged
to students from outside the district. Classes were held upstairs
in the old Central School building, which was razed to permit
the construction of the Sequoia Theater, presently the Fox Theater,
on Broadway in downtown Redwood City. In 1899 Frank Rossiter,
the principal of the Redwood City elementary and grammar school,
became the principal of the high school. At that time that building
held all the school children of Redwood City as well as the high
school students. In 1900 the University of California accredited
the school.
In 1904 the High School District constructed a building on Broadway
between Middlefield and Jefferson, and except for the reconstruction
period after the 1906 earthquake, that building housed Sequoia’s
students until completion of the present plant in 1924. Immediately
this new structure on the present campus was famous for its Spanish
renaissance architecture. At the time, its spacious auditorium
was the largest theater with modern equipment between San Francisco
and San Jose.
S. P. McCrea became Sequoia’s third principal in 1905 and
A. C. Argo followed as the fourth principal in 1921, a position
he held until 1948. A. C. Argo’s contribution, and that
of the faculty he hired between 1923 and 1945, was not only a
modern physical plant for Sequoia High School, but also the expansion
of the institution’s educational scope. The Bell Tower is
named in Mr. Argo’s honor.
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