A School on the Hayward Fault to Become an Artists' Colony

Hillside Elementary School is a 50,302 square foot former public elementary school in the hills of Berkeley, California. Designed by architect Walter H. Ratcliff, the building was constructed in 1925 on the site of several homes destroyed by the 1923 Berkeley fire. It is registered as a local historic landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The school opened its first location in 1901, but that structure was destroyed in the 1923 fire. The present building underwent a major seismic retrofit in the 1930s to meet Field Act requirements and received an additional wing in 1964-65. It served as a primary school until 1983, when the district closed it due to a declining school-age population and its proximity to the Hayward Fault.

Since the closure, the site has hosted the Berkeley Chess School and the German International School of Silicon Valley. In 2012, the school district sold the property to the German International School, which replaced the original slate shingles and copper gutters. The school used the building as a campus until 2016, when it closed due to unmet seismic retrofit needs.

In 2018, Finnish entrepreneur Samuli Seppälä purchased the property with plans to redevelop it into a home and artists' colony. While neighbors previously proposed a special assessment district to purchase the playground section of the site, Seppälä has stated that the playground will be kept open voluntarily. A pedestrian path on the property remains heavily used by area residents.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons