541 N. Lemon St., Orange, California. County/parish: Orange.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places April 07, 2015. NRIS 15000123.
1 contributing building.
The Lydia D. Killefer School in Orange, California, was constructed in 1931 and listed in 2015 on the National Register of Historic Places administered by the National Park Service. The National Park Service notes the school's significance under Criterion A (Social History) "as an example of institutional development associated with the early twentieth century growth of the Cypress Street Barrio in Orange". Killefer School also is noted by the National Park Service as significant under Criterion C (Architecture) as a rare extant "example of a Spanish Colonial Revival schoolhouse in Southern California" which survived the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.
Lydia D. Killefer School is approximately 31 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, and 22 miles northeast of Long Beach, on the east side of North Lemon Street and north of North Lemon Street and West Walnut Avenue. The neighborhood is historically known as the Cypress Street Barrio, a rural colonia settlement for Mexican immigrants who worked in Orange County's citrus industry. The National Park Service notes "there are over two hundred historic homes in the Cypress Street Barrio, over eighty of which are listed in the National Register of Historic Places as contributors to the Old Towne Orange".
The school is named after teacher Lydia D. Killefer, who was in 1928 one of the teachers of Orange with the longest record of service in the city. The City of Orange purchased the five-acre tract for the school, then an orange orchard, for a total of $23,000 or $4600 per acre.
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