Lansing’s Walter H. French School: 100 Years Old and Counting
Many of us have driven past this building hundreds of times. Many people know it, and many people don’t.
Although it’s been renamed a few times, it’s still fondly called the Walter H. French School, located at the corner of Mount Hope and Cedar in Lansing.
Thanks to the automobile industry, which continued to grow-grow-grow to impressive proportions during the 1910s, it meant a fast-moving, expanding population growth for Lansing. More people, more families meant more kids....so more schools were needed.
1924: Construction began for a new school.
1925: School construction is completed and classes begin.
1950: The school was converted into solely a junior high school.
1957: Construction and addition of a new wing.
1981: Thanks to the falling number of students, the school had no choice but to close.
1983: School is sold to the Edye Company.
1996: It turns into the Walter French Academy of Business and Technology.
Middle and high schools are combined.
2000: The school becomes the "first local public school to offer kindergarten through 12th grade under one roof."
2004: School closes down due to budget problems.
2016: Fire breaks out on August 5, with cause and/or perpetrators unknown.
2018: Building is donated to Capital Area Housing.
In closing, just who the heck was Walter H. French in the first place?
French was born in 1862 in the state of New York, As an adult, he lived in Michigan and was Professor of Public Education at Michigan Agricultural College (later known as MSU) in East Lansing, where he was admired for his agricultural curriculum reforms.
According to www.eherg.com, French emphasized “making better farmers and better farming, and brought agricultural education into over a dozen Michigan high schools, including those in Lansing.”
In 2014, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places