For nearly 85 years, the Lincoln Child Center (LCC) occupied the property located at 4368 Lincoln Avenue. While some know the history of the site, many students, parents and alumni are unfamiliar with the property or its longtime connection with Head-Royce School.
Purchased initially as the site for the Lincoln Home for Children (an early name for the LCC), the property was under the same ownership for more than eight decades. There, the LCC served its mission of bettering the lives and education of orphaned and troubled children in Oakland. The LCC—which dates back to 1883—now operates out of facilities in West Oakland and focuses on community-based programming and serving its clients closer to their homes.
What few people know is that the Josiah Royce School for Boys leased some of the buildings shortly after the School was founded. While the Anna Head School for Girls occupied the current “north campus,” the Royce School was located across the street for many years. Even after the schools joined into the co-educational Head-Royce School, the property at the LCC was leased for a number of reasons, most notably use of the gymnasium and athletic field for practices.
Unlike our current campus, the new South Campus property is visible from Lincoln Avenue. It sits on a eight-acre parcel with frontage along Lincoln to the northwest. The lot is situated on gently hilly terrain, with beautiful views of Oakland, the Bay and San Francisco. There are a range of mature trees that provide shade and nooks, sheltering some areas of the campus and providing the parcel with a woodsy feel within a residential neighborhood.
For those alumni in the community who played basketball in the Royce School gym when it was leased from the LCC, visiting the “new” campus may indeed feel like a homecoming.
