September 4, 1928 - June 18, 2010
Cooley High School, 15055 Hubbell, is located at the corner of Chalfonte and Hubbell, just south of Fenkell (5 Mile) in Northwest Detroit. That's Calvary United Methodist Church on the other side of Hubbell facing Cooley.
The view from the north.
There's really no information about Cooley except the page from
Wikipedia which is virtually the same as the pages from
Mashpedia and
Citizendia.
The school's architecture has been described as Mediterranean Revival but elsewhere it was said to be Spanish Revival or Moorish Revival.
Cooley High School was designed
by the architectural firm of Donaldson and Meier, who were also the architects for the David Stott building, at the corner of Griswold and State, in downtown Detroit.
The view below is looking from across the street in front of the church.
Love the detail.
Years ago it was mentioned during a Red Wings game that Mike Ilitch, founder of Little Caesar's Pizza and owner of the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers was a graduate of Cooley. The Wiki page said the same, and also that Ilitch played shortstop for the school baseball team.
Jimmy Hoffa's son James was also a graduate, so the Hoffas must have lived in the neighborhood.
Cooley High School will probably come down in the near future. On the way back from taking these photos, I drove by the rubble that used to be Redford High School on 6 Mile (McNichols) and Grand River.
I don't expect Cooley to be saved - it's inside a neighborhood that's at about the middle of its decline, though the area could come back if enough homeowners stick with it.
Detroit's Cooley High School - Part 2 has photos of the parking lot side and rear of the school.
I lived here on Custer in Clawson, MI from the age of 1 to 7, then we moved to Detroit. During my first year, I was on a small farm somewhere in SE Michigan.
I lived in the upstairs apartment of this building on the corner of Main St. and Farnum in Royal Oak, MI for about 6 months or so in the late 1970s. Today there's a pet store below, back then it was a custom, picture frame shop. I don't remember if a photographer went along with it.
And this apartment is about a mile north of the site of the 1991 fatal shootings at the Royal Oak, MI post office, the third of the postal shootings that led to the term - Going Postal. I used to do some bulk-mail drop off at this post office.
I lived here on the extreme Northwest side of Detroit on Wormer for a few years in the early 1980s. This house is in that small section of Detroit west of Telegraph where a lot of Detroit police and firefighters lived. Bounded on the south by Puritan, the west by Five Points, and the north by 8 Mile, it used to be a nice little neighborhood. And the beginning of the downward spiral for this area probably came in 1999 when the residency requirement was lifted for Detroit city workers. By 2011, more than half the police had moved beyond Detroit's city limits.
