UCLA Used to Be Normal

UCLA, when it first was created as the Southern Branch of the University of California, operated in an old state “normal” school on Vermont Avenue where LA City College is now located. If you have been in that neighborhood, you may have noted that LACC is at the corner of Vermont and Normal Street. Above is a photo of the California State Normal School. (Normal schools were teacher training institutions. A quick internet, dictionary, and encyclopedia search failed to determine why they were called “normal.”)

UPDATE: The comment by Andy Sabl seems to have it right. Normal school is a translation of the French “école normale.” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says that the name “normal” stems from “the fact that the first French school so named was intended to serve as a model.”