March of the Hammers

May, 2006.

Along the Grand River corridor on the fringes of what could be considered the Woodbridge neighborhood of Detroit sat the Wilbur Wright School at 4333 Rosa Parks, at the corner of Calumet. It was built in 1929, opened in 1930, closed in 2005, and demolished in 2010. I have heard a few different names that this school originally went by: "Wilbur Wright Cooperative School of Trades," "Wilbur Wright Vocational School," "Wilbur Wright High School," and the "Wilbur Wright Trade School."


The building seemed a little weird due to the fact that it faced into the neighborhood instead of out toward Grand River Avenue, so driving by it always seemed like you were only looking at the back of it, but I imagine that's because there used to be some other building on the corner that has been demolished:


Most recently this building served as the home of the "Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts" (also known as Detroit School of Arts, or "DSA") according to a sign out front. Detroitfunk observed that this school was fully functioning c.2004, but that it was transformed into this blighted mess less than a year later. When the DSA moved out of this school, they took up residence in a modern building much more suited to their needs, at 123 Selden, behind Orchestra Hall.

Inexplicably, when it was closed all ground-level doors and windows were boarded up, while the windows from the upper floors were all removed and left open to the elements, almost as if the Detroit Public Schools was attempting to demolish the school "by neglect" (as the saying goes around here). In the case of DPS however, I think it might just as likely be a case of "demolition by stupidity."


For what it's worth, the building was still in very good shape before they closed it. Dragonball-Z murals notwithstanding...


Downstairs we found the fallout shelter, replete with its fully intact stash of Civil Defense rations, still waiting for that nuclear war with whoever...


If only they had figured out some sort of Civil Defense contingency that would have protected Detroit against a more practical threat...you know, like poverty or urban collapse—or corrupt politicians.



Annnnnnyway, speaking of Civil Defense, the Wilbur Wright School actually helped play a huge part in national defense during World War II, according to a book published in 1943 by a few Detroit Public Schools teachers.

The book was a biography about former Superintendent Frank Cody, but it mentioned how both Cass Tech and Wilbur Wright School had fully-outfitted machine shops with the latest equipment and most highly-skilled teachers to train the young ranks that would rise to the task of national defense. Even in the regular high and intermediate schools across the entire city, shop teachers were put on overtime at federal expense to train more boys for the war effort, who would in turn disseminate their knowledge as leaders in their field.


A quote from the book describes the dramatic atmosphere as the "total war" years dawned on Detroit:
A third story mushrooms atop Wilbur Wright Vocational High School. The emergency is sprung in the midst of summer vacations: wires go out recalling industrial arts teachers from Yellowstone, Palm Beach, Lake Louise, Hollywood, and Fish Lake. Overboard goes the fishing tackle, and home they come.
An article in TIME Magazine for December 22, 1941 called Detroit the "busiest educational center;" the Detroit Public Schools became, according to the book, "the arsenal for the arsenal of democracy." You have to admit that neither they nor TIME Magazine seem to have missed a beat here—the smoke was still clearing from Pearl Harbor when that statement was printed.


Upstairs was quite a surprise...a treasure trove of old vintage machine tools! [Tim Allen grunt]


According to the Board of Education's 1946 Annual Report, Wilbur Wright was organized as a cooperative training environment and was open to boys who had completed the ninth grade. "At the Wilbur Wright and the Aero Mechanics schools the cooperative program calls for two weeks of employment and two weeks of schooling during eleven months of the year," the report read, and "Practically all of the graduates of this school enter industry by way of organized apprenticeship."


Like Cass Tech, Wilbur Wright was an elite school, where students were expected to meet and maintain certain standards of excellence in order to attend. If their performance dipped below the bar, they were sent back to their regular neighborhood high school. One commenter on Detroitfunk's post, who was a Class of '61 graduate, claimed that as a result of this academic standard the school was extremely diverse, "with all races, religions, cultures co-existing in a very interesting way."

Another commenter said that in the 1980s Wilbur Wright actually served in the opposite role, as a "last chance" sort of school for the "bad kids." In fact it was this school where the "Wright" part of Murray-Wright High School's name comes from—the two used to be tied together as part of a joint program; they would take regular classes at Murray, and vocational classes at Wilbur Wright. It was also the reason why Murray-Wright's mascot was the "Pilots," referring of course to the fact that Wilbur Wright was one of the pioneers of modern aviation (the reader should note that the Wright Brothers' workshop now resides in Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, having been purchased and moved there in the 1930s by Henry Ford himself).


According to the book American Automobile Workers, 1900-1933, Wilbur Wright was the only Detroit school where students spent some of their day being trained in actual factory work. However, until 1937 the school system refused to admit black children into Wilbur Wright on the grounds that the factories that the school's program cooperated with would never accept blacks into skilled positions.

I'm guessing that the reason for the change in 1937 had something to do with the fact that that was the year the UAW successfully struck for the right to bargain with the big Detroit automakers.


As it turns out, this racial exclusion was not necessarily because the companies or plant owners were actively racist—it was more often because the white workers in the plants would protest if a black man was promoted to equal or higher status than a white man.


And they did indeed strike over it at the Packard Plant in 1943, a highly contentious event that interrupted war production and which is said to have been a precipitating factor to the city-wide 1943 Riot. Even though the UAW publicly supported workplace integration, the men on the line didn't necessarily follow suit...it was during the Packard strike that the infamous phrase “I’d rather see Hitler and Hirohito win than work next to a Ni**er” was uttered by a strike organizer with a bullhorn.


Noted baseball hall of famer and Detroit Tigers pitcher Hal Newhouser attended Wilbur Wright School in those days. After graduation he went straight into the big leagues, and played on the Tigers from 1939 to 1953. He had a heart condition that made him ineligible for military service in WWII, and he subsequently became one of the best baseball pitchers of the day.


This trove of old-timey machine shop goodness included mostly engine lathes and a few mills, and a few surface grinders as well.


Most of the machines here are belt-driven, which dates them to the 1940s and '50s, some even as far back as the 1930s.


Looks like this machine may have even dated to the WWII production days itself:


The Milwaukee Model-H was a horizontal milling machine...


The Motch & Merryweather Machinery Co. was started in Cleveland, with branches in eastern Michigan. They rebuilt machine tools prior to WWII, and after the war they started building their own.


The tag in this next photo seems to indicate that this particular machine, an OD grinder, was released from the Budd Wheel stamping plant on Conner Avenue as surplus, most likely donated to Detroit Public Schools as an educational tool...


...the date on the tag is September 15th, 1975.


A search for "Majestic Tool & Machine Co., Detroit" doesn't bring up any decisive hits, though a company by that name seems to exist in Solon, Ohio.


In another room was a pile of fiberglass stocks to old Junior-ROTC drill rifles. Dummy rifles were used to teach marching and military drills (as well as fancy stunts) to ROTC students. Because what good is simply educating a young populace on how to become a cog in a vast industrial machine unless you also teach them how to march with a rifle, and obey orders? Heh...


These stocks happened to go to Springfield 03-A3 type rifles, the same kind that my school had. The stocks were made out of fiberglass because these things tend to get dropped on the ground a lot. I wonder if the machinist-trained kids in this school ever swiped one of the dummy rifles and used their skills to turn it back into a functioning weapon? Of course, back then there was no fear of kids "going Columbine"...

And here is a map of the remaining Detroit Public Schools as of August 2002, with a handy key at the bottom breaking it down by "constellation," or in other words the geographical territories covered by the still-operating high schools:


Why I didn't re-appropriate that map to my own collection is still a mystery. I added the broken hammer for artistic effect by the way, hope you like it. Actually, that's not true—I put it there to hold the map in place for the photo so the wind wouldn't blow it away. And to make a political statement about industrial education.


More hallway murals:


A large classroom with vast windows for bringing in wonderful spills of natural light:


There are a few historic photos of Wilbur Wright School in Wayne State University's online Virtual Motor City Collection: 1234, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11


This riser may have been added by the Detroit School of Arts, for choir class?


One of my readers says this was the drama classroom, known as the "Black Box":


A cafeteria on the top floor, if I recall correctly:


To the roof? Yeah, why not. It was a rather hot and muggy summer evening.


I noticed that all of the cornice stones along the roofline had been pulled back so that the copper flashing underneath could be harvested...


You can bet that the Feast of A Thousand Crack Rocks was had that night...


The Maccabees Building and Wayne State University:


Here's the old Detroit Police 8th Precinct station house, once abandoned but now restored, and the Motor City Casino under construction in the distance:


From this side the school ironically resembles a factory, further underscoring the fact that it was built for the industrial education of an industrial people, in an industrial city:





References:
Frank Cody: A Realist in Education, by Detroit Public School Staff, p. 324, 325, 513
Annual Report of the Detroit Public Schools, 1930, p. 53
http://detroitfunk.com/wilbur-wright/
Auto Mechanics: Technology and Expertise in Twentieth-Century America, by Kevin L. Borg
They Earned Their Stripes: The Detroit Tigers' All-Time Team, by Alan Whitt, p. 93
American Automobile Workers, 1900-1933, by Joyce Shaw Peterson, p. 28
Detroit Public Schools / Board of Education Annual Report, 1946, p. 13 & 18
http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=MC7
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2009/05/06/ooh-another-photo-archive-the-auto-related-photos-of-the-virtual-motor-city-project/
http://www.wright-brothers.org/Adventure_Wing/Expeditions/Dearborn_Michigan/Dearborn_Michigan.htm
http://kohrman.blogspot.com/2007/01/exchange-student.html

Water, Water, Everywhere...and Not a Pot to Piss In

Photos from March 2006 and later.

One of the many raggedy buildings that populates the fringes of Detroit's Eastern Market is a fairly modern structure that used to serve as a depot for the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD).


It's not far away from the silos of the Koenig Coal Co.:


According to the Sanborn map, this parcel of land at the corner of Orleans and Erskine was owned by the Detroit Board of Water Commissioners at least as far back as the 1920s, and started out as a complex of several smaller, older buildings that I imagine were demolished and replaced with this one at some point, probably the 1960s.


The Sanborn map shows the various buildings to be labeled as things like storage yard, garage / vehicle repair shop, lumber storage, carpenter shop, meter testing & storage, wagon shed, and an office. There was also a railroad spur coming right into the parcel from the Dequindre Cut, which I imagine is how they took their deliveries of bulk lumber and pipe.

As far as why the water department might need supplies of lumber, I can only speculate that they may have used it to build forms for pouring concrete when building new sewers or drains.


There isn't really jack #@$% in here other than a bunch of trash, but thankfully the walls being mostly coated in some pretty decent graffiti (in most cases) saves this building from being a total bore.


Something about Eastern Market seems to attract good graffiti...probably the fact that there has always been so many big, wide-open buildings with plenty of open wall space, as well as the Dequindre Cut for those who prefer to paint outdoors. The fact that CCS is close-by no doubt is a contributing factor as well.


It's gone now, but when I first walked into this building in 2005 or so, there was a partially disassembled old Detroit Fire Department rig parked in here:


It's a 1940s Seagrave I'd guess.


The Detroit Firemen's Fund subsequently restored a 1939 Seagrave for use as a hearse, and for a long time I assumed this one was the same vehicle because it disappeared not too long before I began seeing the restored one around, but now I am pretty sure that's not the case.


It could be however that they used this one to scavenge spare parts off of, hence its appearance of having been picked at. It is worth noting that the Detroit Fire Dept.'s repair shop is kitty-corner from this building, on Russell Street.


Yeah, not a lot else to say about this place, just a lot of graffiti. I feel pretty comfortable in asserting that nothing historical ever happened here.


Even the history of the DWSD itself seems rather prosaic, as outlined on the department's own webpage. They hearken back to the days when Detroit's water system consisted of a series of hollowed-out wooden logs buried under the streets (which still sometimes pop up during excavation projects from time to time), before fast-forwarding to the modern days of huge million-gallon pumps and massive million-dollar facilities.


According to another page on the website, The DWSD had its origins in 1836 and was put under a Board of Trustees in 1852. Just how big and bloated is Detroit's magnificent water system, crowning jewel of what all municipal water systems have aspired to since civilization began? Well, for starters, the Water Board had their own fancy skyscraper built to house their bureaucracy in 1928, which rises 23 stories above downtown.

Today the DWSD has more than 1,700 employees and provides water service to almost four million people in the region, including 127 neighboring cities in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, St. Clair, Lapeer, Genesee, Washtenaw and Monroe counties.


The DWSD is "the third-largest provider of high-quality drinking water and wastewater treatment services in the United States," according to the website. Despite all of the bad press the DWSD gets for being a bloated, gravely inefficient, bureaucratic monstrosity...despite the fact that half of the grid is leaking at any given time...despite the fact that rates are often grossly unfair...what comes out of our taps on the other end is still a superior product compared to most of the rest of the world, and for that we Metro-Detroiters should be thankful.

Just ask the residents of Flint...they used to be on the DWSD supply as a matter of fact, and recently changed over to an independent system to save money, but have experienced extremely unpleasant results, you might say.


There is also the recent outcry and protests against the water shutoffs happening to Detroit residents for nonpayment of past-due bills, on the grounds that "water is a human right." My personal opinion on this is that water is not in fact a "right," if it comes from a municipal tax-funded purification system. People seem to forget that clean water doesn't just knock on your door and say "drink me!" Since the dawn of time humans have had to go find and secure their own water for survival--the only time it has ever been handed out is when a city builds a treatment plant. Those plants cost money to run, and if the money doesn't come in when the bills go out, the system goes bankrupt.

But while I disagree with the terminology of treated water being considered a "right," I still believe it is a grave injustice that half the city is having their water cut off so easily. There is no reason why we can't figure out a way to provide good water at rates that are affordable to everyone living in the city. It's the usual legacy of corruption and incompetence in Detroit, Wayne County, and state government that has caused the situation we are in now, and that has resulted in a bloated water department bureaucracy, in decrepit infrastructure, and in sky-high rates--not the citizens. Yet the citizens, as usual, are the ones being punished while the corrupt officials walk free. 


The fact that this very building is still sitting here like a bomb went off on it is yet another symbol of the gross failure and ineffectiveness of the DWSD. I wouldn't be surprised if they were still sending past-due water bill notices to this address like they have done to other businesses and homes in the city, threatening fines and shutoffs, completely unaware that the property is vacant. One hand doesn't know what the other's doing...

Anyway, enough political griping.


A more complete history of the DWSD is available in .pdf format. It indicates that there used to be a nine-million-gallon reservoir built on or adjacent to this very parcel in 1854 (it was bounded by Wilkins, Calhoun, Riopelle, and Dequindre), which at the time was considered the "extreme outskirts" of the city. I imagine that was demolished long, long ago, probably before the turn of the century. 


Lots of bay doors for the DWSD's big utility trucks and heavy equipment in this new building, and wooden-block floors:


Still not sure why they would have had these patterns of (what looked to be) acoustic tiles glued to the wall:


Lots more pretty graffiti...








Boiler room.


Metal was stolen from here...imagine that.








Old newspaper machines, no doubt brought here to be looted of their nickels and dimes:






The letters on the wall here say "Holding Area":


In a darkened area we found a complete front clip to a 1990-ish Chevy Caprice...


Kinda reminds me of that scene in the movie Tremors where the station wagon gets swallowed up in the sand, heh...


Okay, somebody even graffitied the snow...


...we might be in Detroit, Toto.


Here, in what I imagine to be the boardroom of the complex you can see Roma Cafe, Detroit's most famous Italian eatery, through the nonexistent windows:


To the south sits the Thorn Apple Valley slaughterhouse, which I covered in another post.


A view out a window with Roma Cafe, and the Detroit Fire Dept.'s Russell Yard repair shop visible:



References:
Sanborn map, Detroit Vol. 3, Sheet 39 (1921)
http://www.dwsd.org/pages_n/history.html
http://www.dwsd.org/pages_n/about_dwsd.html
http://detroit1701.org/Water%20Board%20Building.html#.VbbAhFZvb1o
http://dwsd.org/downloads_n/about_dwsd/history/complete_history.pdf