[Music] the area where City College of San Francisco is located to today has a long and colorful past during 1849 to 1936 the area housed what was known as The House of Refuge a correctional facility for troubled youth and later San Francisco County Jail just as this particular area has changed over the years so is San Francisco in general it was a drastically different place during the gold rush it was a wild City but mildly because the Gold Rush had brought brought in all sorts of different people and it was lawless there were vigilante groups to maintain control and uh it was not a city I think any of us would wanted to live in uh because it was basically survival of the fittest it was immediately a world-class world famous city um it uh of course traed people from around the world for the Gold Rush the opportunities for quick wealth and uh only a very few were fortunate enough to make money in the gold mines so in this context uh you have children who are growing up impressionable kids and they're seeing that um you know certain behaviors are not being punished uh early references go back as early as 1851 of 14-year-old boys who were on the Chain Gang because of their criminal activities there are others who are mentioned in the context of uh the need for a House of Refuge which was the generic term for juvenile facility in 1851 the House of Refuge was authorized by state legislation in uh in 1852 it was put in at the time because there were children that were arriving in the cities and some of the parents abandoned the children uh others of the children uh simply got into Pro trouble especially the teenage children and all sorts of activities they were involved with and they were children that broke laws it almost seems as though the big question was what are we going to do about Bob Durkin and his gang and Bob Durkin was a um nine 10-year-old who through Charisma or whatever had a gang of of kids in San Francisco that were essentially terrorizing uh the city so in 1858 all the necessary pieces came together thanks to Bob Durkin and uh construction began on what became known as the industrial school which is San Francisco's specific term or title for the generic House of Refuge or uh juvenile Reformatory the reason they put it out here was because they wanted the children to do farming because they would grow their own crops and feed themselves and then they would sell the Surplus which would then provide money for the operation of the school so it was supposed to be self- sustaining and the placement of the school was they wanted to place the school on where science building is now it almost seems like something out of Oliver Twist with a touch of um lord of the flies it was a um a witches brew of combinations of very very young kids as young as 2 years old uh to hardened teenage uh criminals in in the same environment and it included for the first 10 years boys and girls together at the end of the first year the U people who were in charge they were officially called the managers essentially admitted looking back after their first year of operation that they didn't know what they were getting themselves into it was pretty graphic how a couple of boys were uh tied beaten but the bottom line was that the uh people who were accused of doing it admitted having done it uh said that it was necessary and there were no consequences to them uh in 1874 1875 you get the jail being put in had that jail was built it had 200 cells in it and the cells were by 9 ft which is not very big and they put two in each cell so uh that was for hardened criminals now the school still operated until uh about 1880 but uh at that point the problem came in that there were too many criminals and the young people were being influenced by the criminals so they decided to close the school down it was causing a lot of problems because it was where it was the the city was catching up to it when it was uh first established in the 1850s San Francisco was 5 miles away and one of the criticisms was that it's too far away from the city over the years over the decades the city gradually spread out uh fine homes and and neighborhoods were being constructed Around the House of Refuge lot around the county jail and this isn't something that uh people were happy about having in their backyard even though that was their first and then you get the um school coming in in 1935 since then City College of San Francisco has used the land to educate millions of students and further their educational goals the current campus is still undergoing changes in construction that will certainly benefit generations of students to come I think it's kind of good actually that instead of a prison system we have an education system so I think that's a positive change I guess they put better used to it and made it to school so that's better than the jail live in the neighborhood and I'd rather have a City College than a prison as my [Music] neighbor