Cranbrook Educational Community - Schools at Cranbrook

Schools At Cranbrook

Cranbrook Schools today comprise a co-educational day and boarding college preparatory "upper" school; a middle school, and Brookside Lower School.

The first school to open on the Cranbrook grounds was the Bloomfield Hills School in 1915. Founded by George Booth, the Bloomfield Hills School was intended as the community school for local area children (of which there were then very few). The Bloomfield Hills School ultimately evolved into Brookside School. Following completion of the Bloomfield Hills School, Booth looked forward to building the Cranbrook School for Boys, an all-boys College-Preparatory school which students from the Detroit area and abroad would come to reside. Booth wanted the Cranbrook School to possess an architecture reminiscent of the finest British Boarding Schools, and retained world-renowned Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen to design the campus. Cranbrook's initial phase of building was completed in 1928.

Over the years the Cranbrook School for Boys campus grew to include house Stevens Hall, Page Hall, and Coulter Hall. While primarily functioning as only residential spaces, Page Hall featured a smoking lounge as well as a shooting range. Lerchen Gymnasium, Keppel Gymnasium, and Thompson oval were also constructed on the campus. In the 1970s, Cranbrook School for Boys also constructed a state-of-the-art Science Building named Gordon Science.

Realizing that young women would also need a place of their own to learn, Booth's wife Ellen Scripps Booth pressured Booth into building a school for girls. Mr. Booth decided to let Ellen supervise the project herself which she named the Kingswood School for Girls. Unlike her husband, Ellen encouraged Saarinen to come up with a unique interior design for the campus completely on his own. Instead of the several buildings that housed the Cranbrook School for Boys, the Kingswood School for Girls was contained within one building which included all necessary features. It housed dormitories, a dining hall, auditorium, classrooms, bowling alley, lounge/common areas, and a ballroom. The education at Kingswood School for Girls was primarily viewed initially as a "finishing school" although that would change over time.

In 1986, the Cranbrook School for Boys and Kingswood School for Girls entered a joint agreement renaming the new institution the Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School.