See 10 historic school buildings in metro Detroit
Michigan is home to thousands of school buildings, some of which have been shuttered, and some more than a 100 years old that are still operating. In metro Detroit h alone, public school districts trace their origins back to the 1800s, including the Detroit Public Schools Community District. A handful of buildings have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In Detroit, the city
h conducted a study of vacant school buildings owned by the city in 2020 and built a website to showcase the project’s findings, noting the conditions and features of the buildings with hopes that someday the buildings can be developed for new uses, such as housing. Here are some
h historic school buildings in metro Detroit:
330 Glendale Ave., Highland Park
As Highland Park, a small enclave within Detroit, expanded rapidly in population in the 1910s due to Ford Motor Company operations, the demand for schools became significant. The cornerstone for Highland Park High School was laid in a ceremony in October 1914, the Free Press reported, and opened in 1915. Wells D. Butterfield was the architect.
Highland Park High School students eventually moved to a new building in the 1970s, and a community college instead moved in for several decades, according to detroiturbex. Then the school became a vocational training program for high school students until 2009, when the building was shuttered. In 2022, a fire burned through a wing of the building containing the school’s auditorium, but the brick façade of the building still stands.
Grosse Pointe Academy
171 Lake Shore Rd Basecamp 1, Grosse Pointe Farms
The Grosse Pointe Academy was first planned by an order of cloistered nuns in 1885, and the campus used to be a farm, according to the school’s website. The chapel on the school’s campus was built in 1899, and the main school building today was built in the 1920s. The Gothic-style building sits along Lake St. Clair, serves students from ages 2.5 through eighth grade and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Detroit Waldorf School
2555 Burns Ave., Detroit
The Detroit Waldorf School runs classes in a building designed by prolific Detroit architect Albert Kahn in the Indian Village neighborhood. The school’s website boasts the building as the last remaining Albert Kahn-designed school in the world, built in 1913 and expanded in 1923. The school currently serves students from pre-K through eighth grade.
Duane Doty School (now University Prep)
10225 Third Ave. Detroit
The Duane Doty School opened in 1909 in the Boston-Edison neighborhood. It was built in the arts and crafts decorative style, at a cost of $64,000 originally, named after a former superintendent
of Detroit Public Schools. According to the building’s National Register of Historic Places registration form, the Doty School is Detroit’s oldest Arts and Crafts-style school building and likely one of the oldest in the state.
The building now houses University Prep, a Detroit charter school.
Halfway Schoolhouse
15500 E. Nine Mile Road, Eastpointe
The structure was a schoolhouse for children in Erin and Warren townships from 1872 to 1921, according to the Michigan
Department of Natural Resources. The building, owned by the East Detroit Historical Society, has seen multiple restoration efforts over the years.
The schoolhouse more recently has been used as a history lesson for children, to learn about what education was like in the late 1800s.
Central School
101 E. Pike St., Pontiac
The Central School in Pontiac, a brick building with a looming bell tower, was built in 1893, with additions built in 1917 and 1957. It is the oldest remaining school building in Pontiac, ac
cording to its National Register of Historic Places form. It was built in the Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style.
The school was used as a school until 1982 and remains vacant. With nearly 32,000 square feet of space, it is listed as for sale for $2.9 million.
Nellie Leland School
1395 Antietam Ave., Detroit
Now lofts going for hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit, the Nellie Leland School started across town at the intersection of Vermont and Marquette avenues as an open-air school for students with tuberculosis, “where pale little children grow rosy,” read one Free Press headline from 1913. Outdoor schools then were thought to be particularly beneficial for children experiencing a range of illness. At the original Leland school, students bathed upon arriving, nurses took students’ temperatures, and then the children dined on hot milk or cocoa with crackers before going outside.
The structure that stands now on Antietam off of Gratiot Avenue was built in 1918 and opened in 1919, when the idea was transformed for a broader mission, to serve students with physical disabilities. Unlike many schools at the time, the building was designed to accommodate students more comfortably, with a ramp to the school’s second floor rather than stairs.
Redford Township District. No. 5 School
18499 Beech Daly Road, Redford
A few structures have stood where the Redford Township District No. 5 School stands, starting with a log building around 1842, according to Redford Union Schools. Then came a wooden schoolhouse. And sometime between 1916 and 1921, the building that now stands was built. At the time, the brick school building was meant to serve as a modern schoolhouse and commonly referred to as the Beech Road School, according to the Redford Township Historical Commission.
The school was built to adhere to the architectural design featured in a 1915-16 state superintendent report, and the building today remains nearly as it was when it was originally erected. The school building is no longer used, but is being renovated with school bond money from 2021, according to Miles Tomasaitis, the school district’s buildings director.
Fordson High School
13800 Ford Rd, Dearborn
Fordson High School turned 100 last year. The school is still open, with about 2,400 students who attend, according to state data.
Fordson can trace its roots to 1922, when the school, then called Springwells High, first opened. In 1926, ground was broken on the Gothic-style building that Fordson High now calls home, according to the school district. The school building — an ambitious structure that cost $2.5 million and took two years to construct — is located on land that had been part of Fordson, a town that merged with Dearborn in 1929. The Fordson name came from Henry Ford, who donated money for renovations.
Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.