Redford Township District No. 5 School

The Redford District No. 5 School's importance is that it is a rare, intact example of early twentieth-century rural schools that were built according to standard plans provided by the state superintendent of public instruction. The school is the third built on the present site. In 1842 John and Margaret Maiden sold forty acres of land to Martin Maiden, except for one quarter acre that was previously leased by James Fisher to school district no. 5. A log schoolhouse served students of district no. 5 until the 1870s when a wood-frame school was built. The third schoolhouse, commonly known as the Beech Road School, was built in 1920-21. The annual reports of the school districts of Redford Township to the state Department of Education indicate that from 1917 to 1920 the number of pupils attending the district no. 5 school increased from forty-seven to seventy-six. This enrollment growth was directly related to the suburbanization of Redford Township. Within a few years much of the once rural township was annexed by the city of Detroit. The school's burgeoning enrollment probably was the reason for constructing a new school building. The annual school reports are the only source of information for the school's date of construction. The report for the 1919-20 school year (ending July 12, 1920) indicates that the district spent $6022.79 for improvements --a tiny note next to the figure appears to read 'site.' The report for the year ending July 11, 1921 lists expenditures of $16,917.39, presumably for the school building itself. In 1915 the Michigan legislature passed Public Act 17 requiring for the first time that plans for all public school buildings or additions costing more than $300 be submitted to the state superintendent of public instruction and approved before construction could proceed. Because rural school districts rarely had the funds to retain architects to design their schools, the Department of Public Instruction prepared a series of designs -- ten in all -- for one- and two-room school buildings for which it would provide free sets of plans and specifications upon request. The designs were published in the 1915-16 annual report. The Beech Road School closely followed Design No. 9, a design for a two-room school for a site where the building's front would face east or west. Surveys as well as weekend wanderings around Michigan have revealed a number of examples of school buildings apparently constructed from the department's standard plans in the years after 1915, but most of these buildings have been substantially altered and put to new uses. The Redford Township District No. 5 School is an unusual survival in that it is still owned by the school district and retains a high degree of integrity. Six Redford school districts, including district no. 5, consolidated into Union School District No. 1 in 1923. The Beech Road School, with a seven-classroom annex constructed in the later 1950s behind the older building, operated as an elementary school until 1961, when the complex became the board of education headquarters. The 1920-21 building housed a conference center and offices until 1982. It currently houses the district's instructional materials center.

The Redford Township District No. 5 School is a broad-fronted one-story hip-roof building located on the west side of Beech Road south of Seven Mile Road on the southwest corner of Margareta. Constructed in 1920-21, the school was built according to a stock plan prepared for the state and featured in the 1915-16 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. As recommended in the plan, the school faces east. The red brick school has masonry load-bearing walls with a concrete foundation and a raised basement. The hipped roof is topped by a Georgian Revival belfry having, in each face, an arched opening flanked by paired square-plan piers. The building's front is symmetrical with a projecting pedimented main entrance vestibule flanked on either side by a bank of three six-over-one double-hung windows. The north and south facades each originally had a single window; however, they have been boarded over. The west facade has a central chimney and banks of five four-over-four double-hung windows. The basement windows have all been boarded over. The building's ornamentation is limited to a beltcourse created by a single soldier course of bricks separating the basement and main story and to vertical brick 'piers' in the front and side walls built of single stretcher bricks laid atop one another. All of the brickwork is laid flush. The interior of the school is comprised of two classrooms on the main floor and a two-room basement. A 1950s one-story annex containing seven classrooms stands nearby to the west of but completely separate from the school and is not included in this nomination.