History of Von Steuben Elementary School

Von Steuben was a elementary school on the east side of Detroit, that was built in 1929 and followed a Art Deco Architecture style. The school was built for a anticipated population boom in the neighborhood due to expansions to nearby Gratiot Ave. in 1924. The orginal building was able to hold 260 students, and later two additions were built onto Von Steuben in 1944 and 1959, and would follow the same Art Deco style, to this day it remains one of the most impressive examples of a Art Deco School in Detroit. The school gets its named from Prussian born military officer Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben who volunteered to train the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. During the years of operation of Von Steuben many students on the east side of Detroit that knew students that went to Von Steuben would nickname the school “Von Stupid”, a cleaver play on words by kids. The school was a major anchor in the neighborhood of the same name, and remains the oldest school in the area. Later schools would be built around Von Steuben in its later years. Osborn High School was built in 1957, and Fleming Elementary in 1962. In 2008 Von Steuben was closed due to poor Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind Act. However it would not sit vacant for long and would be repurposed as Turning Point academy, not even a year later. Though in most school repurposings in Detroit the school becomes a charter school, in this rare case due to the what the Turning Point program was meant to accomplish it actually was classified as a normal public school. Turning Point is a program that serves K-12 and was day treatment program that helped students with severe learning disabilities. Together Osborn, Fleming, the newly built 2003 build of the Brenda Scott Academy, and Turning Point created a very strong mix of schools in the neighborhood. However Turning Point would only use the former Von Steuben building until around 2017 or 2018, by 2016 the school was showing it’s age and many improvements were needed, from when the school was originally closed in 2008. The building received many citations from city inspectors in 2016, and the Turning Point program was moved into the much newer Fleming Elementary school located on a nearby parcel of land. Since around 2018 the school has remained abandoned up until around 2020 the school remained in great shape, however due to the neighborhood it has been the target of extensive scrapping and vandalism.