This Southwest Detroit elementary school was named after Detroit Congressman and Mayor William Cotter Maybury, and would open two years after his death.
Construction of the school, however, was not without its controversy. Indeed, the battle to get it erected would see everything from protests from angry residents to a mayoral veto to that mayor’s veto being overridden by the Board of Education. Maybury School also would see the community successfully fight to keep it from being closed.
Maybury, the man
Mayor was born in Detroit on Nov. 20, 1848, and attended city schools, graduating from the old Capitol High School in 1866. He went on to the University of Michigan, graduating in 1871 and then launched a law practice that same year. In 1881 and 1882, he served as a professor of jurisprudence at the Michigan College of Medicine.
Maybury would serve as Detroit's city attorney from 1875 to 1880, and was then elected to Congress in 1882 and again in 1884. The Democrat served Michigan's First Congressional District, which then included Detroit. Maybury served on the House Judiciary and Ways and Means committees and introduced the bill in Congress allowing for the construction of the Belle Isle Bridge.
After the end of his second term in Congress, Maybury returned to Detroit, deciding not to seek re-election, and began practicing law again. In 1896, Mayor Hazen S. Pingree, was elected governor of Michigan. When a state Supreme Court ruling the following March came down saying that Pingree couldn't serve as mayor and governor at the same time, Pingree resigned as mayor. Maybury threw his hat into the ring to finish out his term. Pingree and Maybury, it should be noted, were mortal enemies; “they hated, detested, loathed each other,” the Free Press wrote Nov. 30, 1941.
On April 10, 1897, Maybury easily trumped Pingree's handpicked successor, Capt. Albert E. Stewart, and served the rest of Pingree's mayoral term. The following November, he was re-elected to a full two-year term. Maybury ran to succeed Pingree as governor in 1900, but lost to Aaron T. Bliss. He would continue to serve as Detroit’s mayor until 1904.
After his death on May 6, 1909, at age 60, the William Cotter Maybury Monument in Grand Circus Park downtown was erected in his honor.
The battle to build a school
Detroit had about 286,000 people in 1900, good for 13th largest city in the country. But by 1910, it had grown to nearly 466,000 - an increase of 63 percent in just 10 years. With all those newly minted Detroiters came a need for more schools, and the west side was in dire need of a public elementary school.
In 1909, the Detroit Board of Education announced that it was looking to buy land at Clark Avenue and Porter Street to erect a new elementary school for the community. Usually in Detroit at this time, that would be met with elation from parents, but this time, not everyone was thrilled with the idea. That May, 24 residents of Clark Avenue signed a protest letter, kicking off a monthslong battle.
"Inspector Shivers of the Sixteenth Ward says the protest against the purchase of the (school) site was made because the residents do not want the children around," the Detroit Free Press reported May 14, 1909.
The Free Press quoted an unnamed neighbor in its May 15, 1909, issue as saying, “Children are just like cattle: They make too much noise, and they spoil the lawns. That is the reason the people along Clark Park do not want a school here."
The Rev. V. F. Tresselt, the pastor of the Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church, which had a parochial school on McKinstry Avenue directly behind the proposed Maybury site, also opposed it, citing the competition that having a public school next door would bring.
The Board of Education voted May 13, 1909, to buy the site for the school despite the grumpy neighbors' protests. That same day, the board approved school inspector Simpson C. Leonard’s suggestion to name the school after Maybury.
The neighbors took their opposition to Mayor Philip Breitmeyer the next day, urging him to veto the board's action. Initially, he decided not to interfere and indicated that he was leaning toward approving the purchase of the site.
"You gentlemen find a better site in that district that can be purchased as cheaply as this, and I will recommend to the board to consider the matter further," Breitmeyer was quoted in the May 21, 1909, edition of the Free Press as saying to the opponents of the school's location. "Otherwise, I am afraid I shall not see any way clear to interfere."
On May 21, 1909, Breitmeyer surprised most everyone by issuing a veto, which the Board of Education promptly overrode six days later. The residents refused to give up, however, and were preparing to seek an injunction. This led the school board to try to advance Maybury as fast as it could. Malcomson & Higginbotham submitted the plans for the school at the June 8, 1909, meeting of the Board of Education, and bids for construction opened June 12 with a deadline of June 24 to submit proposals.
Then the seller of the property said he changed his mind because he didn't want to upset the neighbors. On Aug. 11, 1909, the Free Press reported that the contracts for building Maybury would likely be held up for a year, but eventually, the school would be built.
Because the Maybury School occupied the entire lot and there was no room for a playground, the board asked for another $10,500 to buy more land in January 1910.
Maybury, the school
The Maybury School officially opened for classes on April 17, 1911. However, newspaper articles from the time seemed to indicate that some students moved in before it was completed. Yet, The Detroit News reported April 16, 1911, that “it is expected that the school will open with an enrollment of about 250 pupils for the remaining 10 weeks of the year,” so that might be inaccurate.
Like about three-quarters of Detroit schools designed between 1890 and 1930, Maybury was designed by the firm Malcomson & Higginbotham. It was initially an 18-room building that could host about 700 students. The general contractor was W.H. Traves, who took out the building permit in late November 1909. The school would cost $68,000 to build, about $2.4 million in 2026, when adjusted for inflation. Interestingly, during construction, the school’s foundation had to be dug deeper than originally specced out because quicksand was discovered on the site.
The school had a number of innovations for the time, such as a central vacuum system and the integration of the kindergarten into the overall school plan, as opposed to it being a separate wing, like in most Detroit schools of the time.
The Detroit News wrote April 16, 1911, that "the Maybury School, which is now entirely completed ... is one of the handsomest in the city. ... The building graces its magnificent location opposite the park."
The school followed a similar interior layout to the one Malcomson & Higginbotham employed at their Doty School at 10225 Third Ave. The basement held large playrooms for boys and girls and domestic science and "manual training" rooms. The first floor had a large kindergarten that could be used as an auditorium when needed, as well as six classrooms and the principal's office. The second floor had a room for the seventh and eighth grades that could seat 64 students, as well as a recitation room, teachers' restroom, and six more classrooms.
The Maybury School became the 91st public school building in use in the city, with two more that were being built at the time. Maybury's construction allowed the district to do away with the half-day sessions used at McKinstry and Gillies schools because of overcrowding.
Eleanor Dessotell, the acting principal at the Franklin School, became Maybury's first principal. The teachers planned to use Clark Park across the street for not only outdoor play and recreation but also open-air classes on favorable days during the spring and summer.
A life-size portrait of Maybury was unveiled at the school on Feb. 21, 1913, and hung in the lower corridor of the school.
In 1923, the school had 625 students, still below capacity. In 1929, the largest classrooms were combined and converted into the school’s auditorium, and rooms previously used for manual training and domestic science purposes were converted into separate gyms.
On Feb.14, 1961, the Board of Education approved $110,000 to renovate the school, about $1.2 million in 2026 value.
More drama
Despite the uproar and controversy in getting it built, Maybury would lead a relatively quiet existence after opening - and yet, the school still grabbed some headlines.
On Oct. 7, 1912, spontaneous combustion in the school's coal bins was blamed for a fire. "There were about 180 tons of nut, pea and slack stored there, and it became so hot that in places, it was impossible to bear the naked hand on the masonry walls," the Detroit Free Press reported Oct. 9, 1912. The school appears to have escaped significant damage.
On Oct. 15, 1913, a truck driver hit 9-year-old Lester LaBroski as the boy was headed home from Maybury and attempting to cross Clark Avenue. In an alarming twist, classmates he was with said the driver picked up the injured Labroski and drove off with him - but not to a hospital. A search was launched to try to find the missing child. The story was, understandably, front-page news.
That night, however, the boy casually strolled into his family's home about 9 p.m. and told his distraught mother and father that he had merely been on a joy ride.
On Feb. 23, 1923, 12-year-old Maybury student Raymond Rowe was killed in a sledding accident at Howard Street and Junction Avenue. While sledding with friends, one of the sleds broke and crashed into Raymond, piercing his chest. He died minutes later at a nearby house.
In October 1938, Maybury Principal Burns Fuller was the one who found himself in detention pending an investigation into charges that he whipped a 10-year-old girl at the school. Fuller said the girl's mother asked him to whip the girl for misbehaving, and after he did, she complained to the Police Department. Citing the district's ban on corporal punishment, Fuller was suspended.
"No principal or teacher may administer corporal punishment to a pupil," Herman J. Browe, assistant superintendent in charge of elementary schools, told The Detroit News for an Oct. 14, 1938, article. "Fuller knew this."
Fight for survival
On Feb. 8, 2012, Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Roy Roberts announced that he would close nine schools the following year and convert four into charters. The move would save the cash-strapped district $7.5 million in annual operating costs. Maybury and nearby Southwestern High School were among the nine.
"Rather than continue to support buildings that are far underutilized ... we will consolidate," Roberts said at a press conference that day. "We have been using an outdated educational model that we must discard."
Maybury Elementary Principal Ellen Snedeker told the Huffington Post for a Feb. 8, 2012, story that shuttering Maybury and sending students to other schools would be a blow to the community.
"If you're dispersed over all three schools, you're not going to be able to keep that community together," Snedeker said.
Monica Parga, mother of a then 5-year-old Maybury student, told the Huffington Post that if Maybury closed, she would take her son out of the district entirely.
"If they do close us down, they don't listen to us, we're taking our kids to another city -- Lincoln Park, Romulus," Parga said, noting declining enrollment would only serve to drain more state school aid funds from the district.
Parents staged protests at Maybury and at the district’s headquarters in the Fisher Building over the announced closures. Many noted that more than 80 percent of Maybury's students were Latino, and that the school’s bilingual education program was essential to their children’s academic success.
Their voices were heard, and that May, Roberts announced that Maybury would receive a last-minute reprieve. Southwestern High, however, would still be closed. Initially, Roberts said Maybury would be given only two more years, but as of August 2026, the school remains open serving some 300 students in Pre-K through fifth grade.