Lick-Wilmerding Schools
1896

The suggestion to combine the Wilmerding School with the Lick School of Mechanical Arts offers a solution of many of the difficulties that have presented themselves in regard to the establishment of that institution. The Wilmerding bequest of $400,000 is hardly sufficient to develop the usefulness so greatly desired for the institution. The Lick bequest is $540,000. Of this amount $115,000 was expended in starting a school, leaving $425,000 as a permanent fund for its maintenance. This is none too large, but it is about $140,000 more that would be left in the Wilmerding fund if the proposed school be set up on a scale of excellence equal tot hat of the Lick. This, of course, would not produce as good results as would be possible under some plan of combining the two schools.

The details of the proposed combination are that the regents of the State University, who are the trustees of the Wilmerding bequest, lease one of the two excellent buildings of the Lick School and erect an additional house in the near vicinity, the two schools to be then conducted so as to be mutually helpful. As the Lick is more for theoretical instruction than the Wilmerding was intended to be, each school can be made a complement of the other and an aid to the other’s efficiency. This suggestion has received an added interest from the recent movement to locate the Southside High School in the immediate vicinity of the proposed combined schools of industrial art.

The placing of the Wilmerding School anywhere but in San Francisco would be a subversion of its purpose. It was clearly the intention of the founder that the school should be located here, and it is equally clear that in no other locality in the State could such a school be advantageously and conveniently used by so many students. Several sites have been offered in the City, and each has it peculiar advantages. It will be the duty of the regents to weigh these and select the site that is likely to conduce most to the fulfillment of the will of the founder—that of providing the test training possible for the greatest number of boys and girls in trades that will enable them to the self-supporting, helpful citizens of the community.

Source: San Francisco Call, 29 March 1896, page 20.