Cooley, Thomas M., High School

Thomas M. Cooley High School is locally significant under National Register Criterion A as the first of several large high schools of similar form built by the Detroit Board of Education in the late 1920s and 1930s in response to the drastic increase in the number of high school students in the city at that time. Cooley High School, with its modern layout and amenities, is an example of the new class of facilities that were constructed to meet this demand. The Cooley High School floor plan was also used for several other schools that would follow in the coming years: MacKenzie High School (1928), Denby High School (1930), Pershing High School (1930), and somewhat later, Mumford High School (1948). Cooley High School is unique in the City of Detroit, and possibly in the State of Michigan, for its exotic Spanish Baroque styling, and, for that reason, is significant in a statewide context under National Register Criterion C.

Thomas M. Cooley High School faces east onto Hubbell Avenue, off of Fenkell Avenue on the northwest side of Detroit. Its site occupies most of a large city block, with the exception of a row of commercial buildings along the north end of the block along Fenkell Avenue. The school building, opened in 1928, occupies the eastern third of the site, while the western two-thirds are devoted to athletic fields and a parking lot. This large, three-story, flat-roofed building is similar in floor plan to other Detroit high schools, such as Denby and Pershing, but differs from these examples in its elaborate Spanish Baroque inspired architecture. A modern two-story addition dating from 1971 extends this building to the north. This addition extends around a freestanding boiler house (contributing), enclosing it in a courtyard.