The Henry Clay School is the oldest surviving school building in the city, having opened in 1888.
The school was built to serve the growing community north of downtown. It replaced an older Clay School that stood on the same site, located on what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, just west of Cass Avenue. The land - 100 by 190 feet - was purchased by the Detroit Board of Education in 1873 for $4,000, about $106,000 in 2024, when adjusted for inflation.
This first school - a two-story, four-croom clapboard building with a small bell tower - opened in September 1873 in order to relieve crowding at the nearby Cass Union School. At the time, MLK Boulevard was known as Pitcher Street. The street would later be renamed Stimson and later to Myrtle Avenue.
On Sept. 1, 1873, the Board of Education voted to name the new school after American statesman Henry Clay.
The Great Pacificator
Clay was a popular national political figure who had absolutely no ties to Detroit or Michigan. He was born April 12, 1777, in Hanover County, Virginia, and was the son of a Baptist clergyman. In 1779, he married Lucretia Hart, and the couple would have a whopping 11 children. After studying law in Richmond, Va., the Clays moved to Lexington, Ky., in 1797, where Clay started a law practice.
Two years later, Clay got involved in politics, and was elected to the Kentucky House in 1803 as a Democratic Republican. He was then elected to the U.S. Senate in 1806 to fill a vacancy left by the resignation of U.S. Sen. John Adair - even though Clay didn’t meet the constitutionally required age of 30. After finishing out Adair’s term, Clay returned to the Kentucky Legislature in 1808, but two years later, it was back to the U.S. Senate to fill yet another vacancy, this time finishing out the term of Sen. Buckner Thruston, who had resigned to take a judicial position. In 1810, Clay was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and chosen to serve as speaker. He would be House speaker from 1811-14, 1815-20 and 1823-25.
From 1825-29, he served as secretary of state under President John Quincy Adams. He then was re-elected to the U.S. Senate twice, serving from 1831 to 1842, and again from 1849 to 1852. After he died in office on June 29, 1852, in Washington, D.C., he became the first person to be honored with a funeral ceremony in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
Beyond his half century in American politics, Clay was known for helping guide the fragile union in the run-up to the Civil War as a peacemaker between the North and South. Indeed, for finding solutions for a number of controversies between the soon-to-be warring factions, Clay was dubbed “the Great Pacificator” and “the Great Compromiser.” Likewise, he helped negotiate a peace treaty with Britain following the War of 1812.
Clay also was known for promoting the “American System” of a strong federal central government, high protective tariffs and investing heavily in national infrastructure, such as a series of canals to facilitate the economy. Despite his national popularity, he lost all three of his bids for the presidency, in 1824 (as the nominee of the Democratic Republican Party; Adams was the victor), in 1832 (for the National Republican Party, when Clay was trounced by his arch-rival, Andrew Jackson) and in 1844 (as a Whig, losing to James K. Polk).
Known for sticking to his beliefs rather than sacrificing them to curry public favor, Clay famously said, “I’d rather be right than president.”
Sculpting a new Clay
In April 1888, it was proposed to replace the wooden frame Clay School with a larger brick one. The measure was approved, and in August 1888, W.H. Hollands & Son was awarded the contract to build it.
The new Clay School was designed by J.B. Tarleton, a draftsman who had worked for architect Mortimer L. Smith from 1880 to 1884. At that point, he took a job as the architect for the Detroit school board, serving from 1884 to 1890, when he moved to Tacoma, Wash. During his stint with the Board of Education, Tarleton designed 10 schools; the Clay School is the only one still standing.
Tarleton designed the school with two floors, each containing four classrooms with adjoining coat rooms, and then a high basement that is half below street level that held the boiler room and bathrooms. The school is about 72 feet by 80 feet. Its exterior originally had a short brick tower topped by a wooden cupola, not terribly dissimilar from the first Clay School. The building has a flat-decked hipped roof and round arched entries on the north, west and east sides of the building.
The original plan called for physically moving the old school building back on the property and allow students to continue attending classes there until the new one was finished. Then, the first Clay was to be physically moved to the city’s northwest side to be used there.
Several sources - including the school’s nomination for the National Register of Historic Places and the book “Histories of the Public Schools of Detroit” - say that this happened, with the old Clay being moved to the northeast corner of McGraw and Eighteenth streets and renamed the Hickey School. However, news reports from the time contradict that.
"Owing to the demolition of the old Clay School building on Pitcher Street, a temporary arrangement has had to be made for the pupils formerly belonging there," the Detroit Free Press reported Sept. 2, 1888. Two rooms were fitted up in the basement of the Irving School on Willis Avenue, and the Clay School students attended half-days there until the new building was completed. It was hoped that the new school would be ready by November.
An unsigned letter to the editor in the Free Press published Sept. 2, 1888, further indicates that the relocation of the school did not happen: "I would like to ask the Board of Education why the old wooden building known as the Clay School has been demolished. I know that a brick building for school purposes is in course of construction on its site, but the old building was moved to the rear of the lot with a view, as was understood, of accommodating the children until the new building was ready for occupancy. The old building remained until a few days since, the superstructure of the new having in the meantime been erected, but just as school is about to open (for the school year), it is torn down. I heard the excuse given today that it had to be torn down to make room for the new building, but this is arrant nonsense, as the work which it might possibly interfere with was done before it was taken down. The result of this proceeding on the part of the board is that children attached to the Clay School district are to be chucked into the basement of the Irving, where two rooms have been fitted up, or, rather, are in process of being fitted up, the work not having been completed this evening at 6:30 o’clock. They are to have half-day school, and I suppose if there is more children than room, a coal hole can be found for them somewhere. The contract for the new building on Pitcher Street, I am informed, calls for its completion in October. The school authorities say it will be ready in November, I was in the building today and do not believe it will be finished this year, and am of the opinion that it will not be safely habitable for school children before next April. Meantime, the children can go into basements (half the day) if there is room for them. If the old building had been left, the school could have been kept intact. It seems to me a case of inexcusable mismanagement involving an utter disregard of the interests of the children.”
The school year resumed Sept. 3, 1888, but as expected, the new Clay School wasn’t ready to go, due to an improperly installed roof. Finally, on Nov. 26, 1888, the new Clay was opened.
But it wasn’t long before its students were causing trouble.
“One standing at the corner of Cass and Pitcher as the pupils come and go will witness from five to 15 slugging matches between the boys, who often form a ring and adopt Queensberry rules,” the Free Press reported April 3, 1889. “Aside from the fighting, wrangling and profane exclamations, they render themselves a terror to every dumb animal and destroy property with a recklessness which belongs only to a gang of toughs. The people in that neighborhood have been compelled to ask (for) police protection from the young miscreants.”
School’s in session
In 1920, the Clay building was made an annex to the nearby Burton School, which still stands on the east side of Cass Avenue, just south of MLK Boulevard. Clay served as a neighborhood elementary school, serving kindergarten through fourth grade - until 1922. Because of additions to the Burton School and falling enrollment, the Clay building was closed and sat unused for two years.
It reopened in September 1924 as a special education unit for ungraded boys, bringing male students from across the city together in one place instead of them being taught individually in schools across the district. The building had eight teachers assigned to 250 boys. This continued until June 1931, when the program was moved to the Roberts School on Adelaide Street.
During the 1931-32 school year, the Clay Building was turned into the home of the district’s psychological and medical survey clinics and the district’s Department of Special Education. The State Department of Rehabilitation also moved into the former school at that point.
By 1961, the Clay Building was still being used by the psychological clinic and Department of Special Education, but also the visiting teacher department. Because of the amassing of records and increasing staff size, the district’s medical survey clinic had moved to the Irving Building. Likewise, the State Department of Rehabilitation had moved to other quarters. The Visiting Teacher Department was established during the 1944-45 school year, and made its home in the building.
In the late 1970s, the school’s frame cupola was removed, and the brick had been painted, but otherwise the building remained mostly unaltered. Into the 1980s, it retained its beaded wainscoting in the hallways, operable transom windows over doors, molded window and door trim, decorative newel posts, hardwood floors and high baseboards. Its double-hung sash windows remain intact.
School’s out
The Detroit Board of Education sold the Clay building in 1981, and its new owners set out to convert it into office space, renaming it the Clay Office and Conference Center. SMJ Corridor Development - composed of Sharon McWhorter, Josie Aaron and Andrew Lowmax Jr. - bought the building for just under $27,000 (about $92,000 in 2025, when adjusted for inflation).
The plans called for leaving the 11.5- to 12.5-foot ceilings as they were, with only updated heating and wiring and new bathrooms to be installed.
“The building has been remarkably well-preserved,” architect Ben Tiseo told the Free Press for a July 17, 1982, article. “All the original woodwork is here and will require only stripping. At least 90 percent of the windows still work. … The old school atmosphere will be retained in both lobby and office suite areas.”
As part of that work, the new owners got it added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in order to make it eligible for historic tax credits under the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981.
On July 8, 1982, the Clay School was added to the register, due in part to it being the oldest surviving school in the city and its original architectural features inside and out.
In the early 1990s, it was home to the Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD), a support group founded in 1987 by Clementine Barfield, Vera Rucker, Betty Aikens and other mothers of slain children. Barfield’s 16-year-old son, Derick, was killed and an older son was critically wounded on July 17, 1986. Barfield would appear on “Oprah Winfrey,” “Phil Donahue,” “20/20” and other TV programs.
"They banded together to force the public to pay attention to the twin tragedies of homicide victims barely old enough to drive and gunmen too young to vote," Susan Watson wrote in the Detroit Free Press on Nov. 17, 1989. Kids "in the tug of war between drug dealers and family can find safe activities there," Watson wrote. "And Lord knows, safety is needed, particularly for young Black males. They are an endangered species. Their lives are at risk."
With the drug epidemic raging, a report at the time showed Black males in Michigan between the ages of 15 and 19 were 25 times more likely to be homicide victims than white males in that age group. From 1984 to 1986, the homicide rate for young white men in Michigan was 28.4 deaths for every 100,000; for young black men, it was 77.3 homicides for every 100,000. In 1988, more than 50 Detroit youth younger than 17 were killed.
Parents could get support and bereavement counseling at SOSAD if their child was lost to violence, or help when their child was in trouble. There was a 24-hour telephone hotline, youth leadership classes and more. SOSAD members visited schools to talk with youngsters who lost a classmate, and the group held picnics, rallies and parties for kids.
By 1993, SOSAD had left the Clay building. The nonprofit lost funding in 2003, forcing Barfield to lay off her staff of 15 counselors and grief advocates. In December 2004, unable to pay her rent, Barfield was forced out of her offices at 2441 W. Grand Blvd. It appears the nonprofit folded shortly thereafter.
In the 1990s, and until at least 2001, the Clay building was home to American Resource Training Systems Inc., which trained and recruited individuals for the auto industry. In the 2010s, the building was home to Teen Hype (Helping Youth by Providing Education). It appears to have closed around that time.
As of March 2025, the property was listed for sale for $2.5 million. “Rare opportunity for Redevelopment in The Midtown neighborhood,” the listing said. “This property is on national historic registry, but does not have any use restrictions. Building could be leveled if desired.”