Abandoned Detroit Cooley High School with The Proper People

Urban Exploring the Abandoned Detroit Cooley High School with The Proper People

In this adventure I travel to Detroit Michigan, this will be my fifth visit to explore the many abandoned places in the city of Detroit.

Todays trip however is a special one as I am finally meeting up with my friends Bryan and Michael from The Proper People, Bryan and Micheal were on a cross country tour of the United States and the closest they would be to me is in Detroit, so it was a perfect opportunity for us to finally meet in person.

For those who don’t know, The Proper People are two friends, Bryan and Michael, who take as along on their adventures as they explore some of the coolest abandoned places around the world. They run a very popular YouTube channel where they feature very high quality videos of their abandoned adventures.

Filmed, edited and narrated by both of them and featuring beautiful cinematic scenes mixed in with raw exploring footage, The Proper People’s YouTube videos are by far the best on YouTube and I highly recommend you subscribe to them using the link in the video description.

Once we met, got acquainted and had breakfast it was time to explore, with a robust map between the three of us, we had many options of locations to choose from. Our first location was an abandoned hospital, one that I had never seen before.

We managed to get inside and see the power building but we were unable to get access to the main hospital.

Our next location was one that I had attempted in the summer of 2018 but when we arrived, the school had been freshly sealed off with a new form of deterrent, thick plexiglass covering every window.

In 2018 RiddimRyder Photography and I stopped by here on our trip to Detroit and arrived to find that every window and door had been freshly sealed with a very thick plexi-glass material to keep vandals and scrappers out. We also learned that just a few days before a womans body was found beaten to death behind the old school.

Fast Forward now to the spring of 2019 and it was looking like things had not changed, every window and door was well sealed with plexiglass. We had just about given up and moved on when all three of us spotted a very small opening and we quickly made our way inside.

Built in 1927 and closed in 2010 this the abandoned Detroit Cooley High School has been a must see for curious explorers and abandoned enthusiasts ever since its closure.

In 1927, even as the school was under construction the district realized that enrolment would far outstrip the designed capacity of 1,500 students, and additional units were being planned.

The first unit of this school was completed and opened in September of 1928 a cost of $753,270.

The school was an architectural masterpiece, designed by the firm of Donaldson & Meier in the Spanish Baroque style with orange Flemish-bond brick and ornamental terracotta features. Cooley’s floor plan, which followed an E-shape that put the classrooms in outer wings that connected to a central core that housed the auditorium, library, offices, and athletic facilities was duplicated in other high schools built throughout the city.

Thomas M. Cooley, the school’s namesake, had been chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court Justice from 1864 to 1885.

In 2010, DPS announced that it would be closing 42 schools due to low enrolment and high maintenance costs. Cooley High School was on the list. Despite renovations just a few years’ prior, the 83-year old school had significant maintenance problems. Enrolment was barely 1,000 students in a building designed for 3,400. Over the protests of students and alumni, who offered to revamp the school, Cooley was closed in June of 2010.