10 historic Metro Detroit school buildings, going back to the 1800s

Michigan is home to thousands of school buildings, some of which have been shuttered, and some more than a hundred years old that are still operating.

In metro Detroit 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 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 historic school buildings in metro Detroit:

Cooley High School

15055 Hubbell Ave., Detroit

Opened in 1928, Cooley High School was designed by the architectural firm Donaldson & Meier, according to a Detroit Free Press article published in August 1928. Named after a former longtime chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, the school originally cost $758,270. Cooley High was built in a flurry of Detroit school construction to meet demand for education in what was then a "rapidly growing" area of the city.

Cooley appeared to be something of an attraction for real estate listings: Multiple listings in the Free Press in the 1920s advertise as being adjacent to Cooley High School, including a brick Dutch colonial home selling for $7,400 in 1929.

The building has remained vacant since 2010, and plans for redevelopment fizzled out in March after the Detroit Public Schools Community District's board rejected an offer from a Detroit-based nonprofit, Life Remodeled, to purchase and transform the space.

Highland Park High School

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.

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.

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, build 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, according 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.

Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 10 historic school buildings in metro Detroit