Highlights - FALL 2021/WINTER 2022
8
90 YEARS ON
This school-year marks the 90th year we have occupied the iconic building on Cambridge and 7 Mile. Below is a 1931 Cub News article written by a student who was discerning “An Old Friend and a New.”
First published in Cub News on May 18, 1931. If the old saying, “even the walls have ears,” were true it is certain that the long narrow corridors of the High School building could tell many interesting and probably eye-opening stories of days gone by. June 2, 1931 marks the last day that the building on Jefferson Avenue will house the University of Detroit High School. This building was built in 1890, containing six classrooms, gymnasium and faculty offices. In 1909 an addition was made to the old structure which then made an education edifice of offices, eighteen classrooms, lunch-room, and a new and larger gymnasium. And so it has been. At first the course in this school was a combination of High School and College, covering a period of seven years. In 1915, this combination was dissolved and as a result the High School students were the sole inhabitants of the building on the north side of Jefferson Avenue. And now, even we are going to leave this land-mark of old downtown, some because of graduation, others because the New University of Detroit High School at Cambridge and Cherrylawn Avenues, will open its doors to them early in September. Sad it is that we must leave this climate of learning, where we of today, as best we can, are upholding the tradition and following precedents set by those of yester year. The wake of these traditions gathers in not only precedents of learning, but also of extra-curricular achievements, high athletic standards, rigid histrionic qualifications, supreme forensic ideals, and many more. For us who continue, going to the new school will necessitate the setting of new and even better traditions for the youth of tomorrow to follow. For the men who have attended this school in the past, it will be hard to realize the University of Detroit High School in any other location than 651 E. Jefferson Ave. The flame of sentiment that she has instilled in the hearts of her students will burn out with this migration to the “promised land,” not because of lack of enthusiasm, but because that certain quality of friendliness which comes with age will not be present next fall, when the new building is first occupied. Welcome, yes, but not that quality of “Howdy fellas, come on in.” And now as we who will be pioneers on the Seven Mile Road begin to pull in the anchor and leave this, our old school, let us start in priming ourselves, as it were, with enthusiasm, energy, and good-will, to emplant in that new building the qualities that have long existed and have been well carried out in the old school. In the closing of the Jefferson Avenue Institution, we are losing an old friend. It is up to us to gather together with pep, vigor, enthusiasm, spirit, fortitude and goodfellowship to make the new friend better than the old.
