Abraham Lincoln High School, usually referred to simply as Lincoln High School, is a secondary school located in the Lincoln Heights district of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is located in the East Los Angeles-area community, surrounded by El Sereno, Chinatown, Boyle Heights and Cypress Park. The school is named after Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, and is one of the first public high schools established in California. It is one of the District 5 high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the nation.
Lincoln students are drawn from Koreatown and other areas. Cypress Park residents may attend either Lincoln or Franklin high school.
History
The early history of Lincoln High School is unusually complicated because it was founded in 1878 as Avenue 21 Grammar School. By 1913, the Avenue 21 school had become an intermediate school and its student population had grown to the point that a new campus was needed. That year the intermediate school moved to the present Lincoln High School site, and the curriculum expanded to include the senior high school grades. This marks the true beginning of Lincoln High. Pending the construction of a new school (the current site) on the former mansion property of Charles Woolwine, the Avenue 21 intermediate school moved its location to the hillside site (now the current physical education and track field), where students studied under the trees. Through the early 1970s, students from all six upper grades attended the school together.
In 1878, the plant was extended across Lincoln Park (Los Angeles) Avenue, which is now the current site. In 1881, the school added a gymnasium and a science building in 1924. The present school was built extensively in the 1940s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt under his Works Progress Administration reform. Much of the construction and renovations occurred after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, which damaged the gymnasium, the auditorium, the music building, the library, and the English building. Jim Tunney Stadium, home to Lincoln's football and track teams, was built during the reconstruction of Lincoln High School.
In 2009 the opening of the Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Centers relieved Lincoln.
Demographics
Lincoln is mainly made up of a large Hispanic and Asian student body, though there is also an even smaller African-American and Caucasian student population.