Rear view of the San Francisco State Normal School following the fire of June 12, 1917, which severely damaged the Normal School Library and Training School facilities. Visible charring and structural damage appear along the right side of the building. The structure originally served as the chapel of the Protestant Orphan Asylum before becoming part of San Francisco State’s Buchanan Street campus. After the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed the earlier Powell Street campus, this site became the institution’s first permanent home. The Training School—established as an experimental laboratory school for teacher preparation—demonstrated educational theory through supervised classroom practice for kindergarten through eighth grade. After the 1917 fire, the Training School relocated temporarily to the Waller Street wing of College Hall. (Caption information adapted from original print.)
