This history of Beacon Hill Elementary School is taken from the second edition of Building for Learning: Seattle Public School Histories, which includes histories of every school building used by the district since its formation around 1862. The original essay was written for the 2002 first edition by Nile Thompson and Carolyn J. Marr, and updated for the 2024 edition by HistoryLink editor Nick Rousso.
Beacon Hill School
Beacon Hill in Seattle was named by financier M. Harwood Young after a favorite landmark in his hometown of Boston, where Beacon Hill was named in the earliest colonial period for the beacon at its summit. The population on Seattle’s Beacon Hill grew in the early 1890s when a streetcar line extended to the neighborhood from downtown. Land for the first school on the hill was purchased by the district in 1892. During the planning stage, it was called Bay Side School because it was in the Bay Side Addition, but the school was renamed Beacon Hill School in 1899, about the time the school opened. This first school was a two-room, wood pavilion and had three classes. Enrollment expanded to 100 students in grades 1-5 during the 1901-1902 school year and doubled in enrollment the following year when it went to grades 1-8.
A substantial new building opened in 1904. It was built in the Colonial Revival style with a design based on James Stephen’s model school plan. Its rectangular structure allowed for future additions to be connected to the original core as the student population grew.
In 1906, the school board proposed removing the 1899 schoolhouse. Not satisfied with the bids received, they kept the building. A 1912 addition to the newer, 1904 building added 12 classrooms and completed the “H” shape with a north block and connecting wing. Enrollment in the enlarged 20-room structure was 402 pupils, so at first some rooms stood empty. The first kindergarten class at Beacon Hill began in 1913.
Full House
By 1916, enrollment had reached nearly 500 and all classrooms were in use, including the old 1899 building. During the 1918-1919 school year, the school was so crowded that the school board voted to send Beacon Hill 8th graders to Summit School for the year. The following year, the Robert Fulton School was opened as an emergency annex at 24th Avenue S and Stevens Street. The 1899 structure at Beacon Hill was subsequently converted to house domestic-science classes in one room and manual-training classes in the other.
Several portable buildings had been brought in by 1926 to accommodate the 800 students attending the school. With numbers continuing to increase, minor alterations were made to the building in 1931, including adding some small rooms to the east. Enrollment peaked at 928 students in 1931-1932. Gym classes were held in a rickety old portable, which was so cramped that most exercises were of the stationary variety. Boys playing softball attempted to belt home runs over the roof of the 1899 building. Only the most athletic succeeded. At that time, there were few children of color at Beacon Hill School with a small percentage of Japanese American students.
By 1952, grades 7 and 8 no longer attended the school. Crowded conditions were not alleviated, however. In 1960, the district opened a portable school of eight classrooms on the former site of Robert Fulton School. Housing over 200 students, this was first known as Beacon Hill Annex and later developed into Kimball School.
New School, New Location
In the early 1970s, a new Beacon Hill Elementary School was constructed several blocks to the northwest of the earlier school buildings, with an “open concept” floor plan. Large teaching areas, called “pods,” held up to three classes each. The school opened in March 1971.
One proposal made for the 1904 building was that it serve for a few years as a pilot middle school for 5th and 6th graders before being torn down. As the fate of the 1904 building was being discussed, a federal antipoverty program was abruptly curtailed in fall 1972, ending the English and Adult Education Program at South Seattle Community College. As a result, about a dozen Latino students and their supporters peacefully occupied the 1904 building for three months. They later occupied the office of Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman. This was the birth of El Centro de la Raza, a social and cultural center for the Latino community, which still operates at the site today. Initially, the property was leased by the organization, but in 1999, it purchased the property and began to renovate the site.
Beginning in 1978, Beacon Hill (K, 4-6) formed a triad with Genesee Hill (K-3) and Schmitz Park (K-3) for desegregation purposes. Starting in September 1985, all kindergartners were sent to Beacon Hill.
In 1993-94, Beacon Hill became one of eight magnet schools in the district. New technology helped create innovative programs such as a student-operated book publishing. By 2000, the Beacon Hill community, now with about half of the students being Asian American, had created a model for educational reform, and academic test scores rose dramatically. In 2000, the school board proposed building new classrooms to replace portables. In 2005, a construction project expanded the school by more than 18,000 square feet with the addition of four classrooms, a cafeteria/auditorium, a kitchen, and a daycare facility. The existing building remained occupied during the construction, and in early 2006 the portables were removed from the site.
In January 2008 the district announced that Beacon Hill would become Seattle’s second international elementary school, to be known as Beacon Hill International Elementary. It was modeled after the John Stanford International Elementary School, which started in September 2000. Beginning with the 2008-09 school year, Beacon Hill began offering Spanish and Mandarin Chinese immersion programs, along with an English-immersion program for new immigrants learning English. The programs were successful, and in March 2013, Beacon Hill principal Kelly Aramaki was named the state’s elementary principal of the year by the Elementary School Principals Association of Washington.
In 2022, more than 86 percent of the students were students of color and over 32 percent spoke English as their second language. Many of the parents were new immigrants to the United States. They came from Vietnam, China, Laos, Mexico, Guatemala, Somalia, and elsewhere.
History
Beacon Hill School
Location: 16th S and Lander
Building: 2-room wood
Architect: n.a.
Site: 3.07 acres
1899: Opened
1904: Closed in spring
1916: Reopened as an annex
1971: Closed
1977: Became part of El Centro de la Raza
1988: Destroyed by fire on August 8
Beacon Hill School
Location: 2524 16th Avenue S
Building: 8-room wood
Architect: Saunders & Lawton
Site: 3.07 acres
1904: Opened; named on September 7
1912: Addition (Edgar Blair)
1931: Addition (Floyd A. Naramore)
1971: Closed in March
1972: Occupied in October by Chicano community
1999: Sold to El Centro de la Raza
Beacon Hill Elementary School
Location: 2025 14th Avenue S
Building: Brick
Architect: Durham, Anderson & Freed
Site: 1.9 acres
1971: Opened in March
2005: Addition (BLRB Architects)
2008: Renamed Beacon Hill International Elementary
Beacon Hill International Elementary in 2023
Enrollment: 388
Address: 2025 14th Avenue S
Nickname: Tigers
Configuration: K-5
Colors: Blue and gold
