History of Burgess/Detroit Open School

Burgess Elementary School was built in 1924 by the Redford Union School District.The original construction housed a kindergarten and three classrooms. Today, the area where the school sits is in the Five Points Neighborhood of Detroit, which the City of Detroit annexed in 1926 along with many other western neighborhoods. Burgess continued under the ownership of Detroit Public Schools. In 1949, as the City of Detroit reached its near its peak population of almost 2 million residents, Detroit Public Schools received a special millage from voters, that provided $50,000,000 to the Detroit Board of Education so it could update and expand its facilities to support a projected enrollment increase of 40,000 students between 1955 and 1963. During this building campaign, the Detroit Board of Education erected 119 new school buildings and additions to existing buildings, including a large addition to Burgess Elementary School in 1954-1955. The 14-room Burgess addition boasted a capacity of 525 pupils (grades K-8),officially making it an Elementary and Middle School combo, and was erected at a cost of $758,282. It housed a multi-purpose room, kitchen, auditorium, industrial arts room, homemaking room, library, office, and several additional classrooms. The new addition also included a heating plant/boiler room, and the lighting within the original 1924-1925 unit was modernized. The exterior stone cladding of the original four-room unit was also refaced with brick due to its poor condition. As the baby boom of the 50s hit the City of Detroit hard, Burgess's capacity was quickly surpassed by a student population of 700 in 1957. This led the district to organize the school day into a 14-section platoon schedule. The Detroit Public School system's first alternative education program was initiated in 1972 within the district and was located in various school buildings prior to its permanent establishment in Burgess in 1978. That year, Burgess included 230 students, six full-time teachers, and one part-time teacher. The school was renamed the Detroit Open School the same year as the program grew to occupy the entire building. Because of this program, Detroit Open became a very academically successful school. However, with the declining population of Detroit seen throughout the 70s leading to declining enrollment inside the district, as seen throughout the district into the 2000s, Charter Schools began to take over Detroit's Public School student pool, and aging buildings in the district led to many closures, including Detroit Open in 2009. The school was secured well with metal VPS boards after closing. In 2015, the school was sold to the City of Detroit, and in a 2021 study of vacant schools in Detroit, Detroit Open was listed as 13 of 39 schools in the best condition.