Cooley High School, designed by Donaldson & Meier, opened in 1928. It is one of the few remaining grand, ornate high schools left in the city, but faces an uncertain future.

The school was named after former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas McIntyre Cooley (1824-1898). A mural of him in the school library says he was "one who enunciated the principle of law under which it has been possible to have free high schools in this state."

It was constructed at a cost of $758,270 (the equivalent in purchasing power to about $13.9 million in 2024) to meet the educational needs of a rapidly growing area of Detroit.

Despite its historical significance, Cooley High School was closed in June 2010 and has remained vacant since then.

On Oct. 1, 2017, a blaze destroyed much of the auditorium of the abandoned school.

After sitting abandoned for a decade, and with vandals and Mother Nature alike taking a toll on the building, the nonprofit Life Remodeled stepped up and offered to buy Cooley from the cash-strapped district and turn it into a community resource hub. The organization had already done something similar with the former Durfee School. After more than three years of negotiations, the group offered $1 million for Cooley, but the school board rejected the offer in March 2023 because it said the deal lacked claw-back provisions and profit-sharing clauses.

Cooley would continue to rot, making preservation not only more expensive as time went on, but also more difficult.

Finally, in early May 2025, the Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) announced a $25 million plan to redevelop the Cooley site into a sports facility for not only the school district, but the community. DPSCD said the new complex would help close the opportunity gap when competing for athletic college scholarships.

The $25 million project had already been allocated $15 million from the State of Michigan, and the school district's fund-raising arm was working on securing the other $10 million. DPSCD said at the time of the announcement that it would be completed in 2026.

“Ever since Cooley High School closed in 2010, the community has wanted us to do something special with this legendary site,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in a news release. “We are laser-focused on honoring this commitment with an exciting new complex that builds on Cooley’s legacy and creates equitable sports opportunities for Detroit student athletes and the community.”

Unfortunately, the plan also calls for the partial demolition of historic Cooley.

"The plan is to preserve a part of the building for the locker room, a museum for the alumni and meeting location," Chrystal Wilson, a DPSCD spokeswoman, told Crain's Detroit Business for a May 3, 2025, story on the plan.

More about Cooley High School coming soon.