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Detroitderek
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Username: Detroitderek

Post Number: 87
Registered: 09-2007
Posted on Monday, December 15, 2008 - 8:58 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I passed an old abandoned school ( the sign is partially gone - what is left says: MM POS SCHOOL, BUILT 1897 ) and was curious if anyone knew anything about it ( besdies the fact that it opened in 1897 ). It is located on Van Dyke, South of Harper ( I don't remember how far though, sorry ) , on the WEST side of Van Dyke. I took a picture of the South Side of it here:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com /3127/3108082822_0b2d55b9cc_b. jpg

It appears that a new version of this school was built a few blocks North of it. Anyone know anything ( when it may have closed, etc ) about this old school? Thanks again!
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Navi
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Username: Navi

Post Number: 15
Registered: 09-2005
Posted on Monday, December 15, 2008 - 9:24 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

I believe it's called Rose Elementary, but that's all I know. I've always wondered about it too...
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Neilr
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Username: Neilr

Post Number: 670
Registered: 06-2005
Posted on Monday, December 15, 2008 - 9:44 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

This is the old Rose Elementary School. After DPS closed it in the 70's, the old Rose was sold to a Black Muslim group which opened a private school named The Clara Muhammed Academy, IIRC. It closed after a short while and the building has sat there vacant and vandalize for decades. I'm not sure of its present ownership; but it's NOT DPS.

DPS built a state-of-the-art replacement building for Rose just to the west of Kettering HS. It was designed as an open classroom school with all the classrooms opening to a large library/media center.

Several years ago, because of declining area population (check Google satellite maps) and enrollment, the new Rose was closed and the students transfered to Stephens Elementary (a Wirt Rowland's designed building, BTW) several blocks east of Van Dyke.
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Detroitderek
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Username: Detroitderek

Post Number: 88
Registered: 09-2007
Posted on Monday, December 15, 2008 - 11:07 am:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

Thanks so much everyone for the info!
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Eastsideal
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Username: Eastsideal

Post Number: 104
Registered: 10-2007
Posted on Monday, December 15, 2008 - 12:13 pm:   Edit PostDelete Post   Move Post (Moderator/Admin Only)

My father went to that school, Rose Elementary, briefly back in the mid 1930s. Love the fire stairs shown in your photo, which, along with fire slides, were added to many older schools in Detroit after several high profile school fires around the country showed how difficult it was to evacuate children quickly and safely from the upper floors on the existing staircases. I went to the old Field School (at Field and Agnes) for a year, which was built around the same time as Rose and had the old-style narrow stairways, and so still had its fire slide. The later generation of schools were built with much wider staircases, eliminating the need for those things.

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