Manual Arts High School is a secondary school in Los Angeles, California. When founded, Manual Arts was a vocational high school, but later converted to a traditional curriculum.HistoryManual Arts High School was founded in 1910 in the middle of bean fields, one-half mile from the nearest bus stop. It was the third high school in Los Angeles, California after Los Angeles High School and L.A. Polytechnic High School, and is the oldest high school still on its original site in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school that would eventually become Lincoln High had been founded decades earlier but was still an elementary school at this time.One of the school's first teachers was Ethel Percy Andrus (1911 - 1915). In 1916 Dr. Andrus became California's first woman high school principal at Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles. She later founded AARP.After three semesters in an abandoned grammar school building, Manual Arts High School was opened on Vermont Avenue. After the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, the entire campus was rebuilt, constituting the present Manual Arts High School campus adjacent to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and USC. In 1995, "The Arts" became a Pacific Bell Education First Demonstration Site joining thirteen other demonstration sites in California, and in 1996 the school was named a California Distinguished School. In 1998, Manual Arts was officially granted Digital High School status.
