King Elementary School history

In 1883, Miss Louisa Low purchased Mrs.

Harrison School started in 1913 with grades 1-4.

In November 1914, agents for the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad Company, which operated the cable car, approached the Seattle School Board with an offer to sell the district a prospective site for a school in the valley.

Opening in 1922, the Thomas School was intended to be both a day and boarding school.

The School was successful but in 1944, the heirs of Miss Louisa Low and Miss Edith Heywood sold the property on which the school was located.

In 1954, a group from the Harrison community approached the school board requesting that the school's boundaries be expanded to maintain a racial balance.

Within a month of the sale, the school relocated to Judge Lockwood’s estate on Courtland Avenue and in 1969, finally settled into the Walker estate adjacent to the King School on Newfield Avenue.

Built in 1972, King Elementary was originally designed with an open floor plan.

The school was built in 1973 and named after Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. making it the first OPS school to be named after a prominent African-American.

In spring 1974, a school-wide election supported changing the school's name from Harrison to honor Martin Luther King Jr., and the renaming was subsequently approved by the school board.

In 1975, Louisville and Jefferson County Public Schools were merged and reorganized under court-ordered desegregation.

Both the King School and Low-Heywood Thomas School maintained individual identities until 1988, when the King & Low-Heywood Thomas School was formed as a coeducational school.

In 1989, King Elementary became a learning choice school for visual and performing arts and initiated a Gifted and Talented Program to meet the goals of project renaissance.