Miller, Sidney D., Junior High and High School

Sidney D. Miller Junior High School is locally significant under Criterion A as a rare survivor of the City of Detroit's Black Bottom neighborhood, almost all of which was razed in the 1950s and 1960s to make way for 'urban renewal' projects such as the Walter P. Chrysler Freeway and the residential developments of Lafayette Park and Elmwood Park. By the late 1920s, due to housing discrimination and other forms of de-facto segregation, this neighborhood had become predominantly African American. In addition to its tenure as an intermediate school, Miller served as a high school from 1933 to 1957, and discrimination on the part of the Detroit Board of Education ensured that this school was almost exclusively African American while white students from the area attended high school elsewhere. Under Criterion C, Miller Junior High School is significant as an earlier example of Malcomson & Higginbotham's work in the Collegiate Gothic style, unique due to the asymmetry of its massing.

Sidney D. Miller Junior High School is located about one mile northeast of downtown Detroit. Completed in 1921, Miller School is one of the only remaining buildings associated with the city's Black Bottom neighborhood, in which it occupies a full, rectangular city block. The western two-thirds of this block are occupied by the school building which, with several additions, occupies a rectangular footprint and encloses a central courtyard. The flat-roofed, Collegiate Gothic brick building varies between one and two and a half stories in height. The eastern third of the block, formerly occupied by the building's playfield, now contains a parking lot. The building is vacant, but in good condition and retains a high degree of historic integrity.