Denby, Edwin, High School

About this property

The Edwin C. Denby High School is a public secondary education school located at 12800 Kelly Road in northeastern Detroit, Michigan, United States. Denby High opened in 1930, and the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. It is a part of Detroit Public Schools Community District. The school was named for Edwin C. Denby, an attorney and former Michigan legislator. Mr. Denby served as Secretary of the Navy during the administration of Warren G. Harding. Denby was forced to resign his position and narrowly avoided criminal indictment for his role in what came to be known as the Teapot Dome scandal. Denby died in 1929, and the Detroit School Board quickly voted to name a new high school after him "at the earliest opportunity." Later in 1929, the school board authorized the construction of this school and hired the firm of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls to design it. The building cost $351,649, with an additional $145,991 for the land the school is sited on. The first unit of the school, containing 19 classrooms, two study halls, and an office, opened in 1930 with about 1000 students and 38 teachers. However, only two months after the school opened, work began on a major addition. The addition, costing $338,121 and containing sixteen additional classrooms and four study halls, was completed in 1931. Enrollment soared to 2600 in 1931, and by 1934, Denby adopted double sessions to relieve the overcrowding. A third unit of the school was planned in 1938 and completed in 1939 at a cost of $893,000. This unit contained seventeen additional classrooms, art and music rooms, "domestic science" classrooms, two machine shops, an auditorium which seated 2,230, a large gymnasium with an indoor track, and a swimming pool. The third unit gave Denby a capacity of 2875 students. In 1942, 830 students graduated from the high school, and over 800 graduated each year from 1946 through 1960. The school converted to a three-year high school in 1960, with ninth graders moved to junior high schools. The school still averaged about 800 graduates per year through 1975, but the number of students graduating declined sharply in the late 1970s to a low of only 269 in 1980. On March 11, 1997, 21-year-old Allen Lane Griffin shot 23-year-old Eric Skalnek in the face with a shotgun as Skalnek neared the entrance of Denby High School's outdoor running track. Skalnek, an aspiring police officer, was preparing to use the track in order to train for upcoming admissions testing at the Detroit Police Academy. Skalnek lost a third of his face from the blast, but survived. After shooting Skalnek, Griffin traveled to a Comerica bank where he killed three people and injured one person before he was fatally shot by police.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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