The John Lynch Elementary School was built in 1914 near Van Dyke Avenue and Lynch Road on the city’s east side. Today, that area is known as the Airport Sub neighborhood, but at the time the school was built, the land was in Hamtramck Township.
The school was named in honor of John Lynch, who was instrumental in getting the school built. Lynch was born in Detroit in 1852, and at the age of 2, moved with his family to a farm on the northwest corner of Lynch Road and Centerline Road, which would later be renamed Van Dyke Avenue. He would live in Hamtramck Township for 60 years, and served as township treasurer when it included everything to the east of East Grand Boulevard and south to the Detroit River. He also served as the director of the township's school district for 30 years. He died of heart disease on June 10, 1921.
Just three years after the Lynch School opened, this area would be annexed by the City of Detroit, and the school would become part of the Detroit school system. The original school building - designed in the Arts & Crafts style by architect Louis W. Klei - had eight classrooms, with four in each corner on the two floors. The building had load-bearing brick walls and wood joists - a fact that would later doom the school.
The school abutted Forest Lawn Memorial Park, a 90-acre cemetery established in 1881 that sits immediately to the north of where Lynch once stood. Because of the school’s location in what was Hamtramck - a Polish enclave - Lynch’s student population remained mostly Polish-American into the 1960s.
In 1922, the Detroit Board of Education built a two-story addition to Lynch that added room for 340 more students in six more classrooms, plus a kindergarten. This first addition - built in a reserved Collegiate Gothic style - was connected to the original school building by a two-level passageway. A small auditorium of about 30 feet by 30 feet was also added at this time; this space would later be converted into a library.
During the 1930s, Lynch served about 650 children in kindergarten through sixth grade.
As a stop gap, two portable classroom buildings were added in 1928 at 13100 Gilbo to serve students who lived in that part of the school's boundaries. Though they weren't located on Lynch's property, they were run by the school. Nicknamed "The Trix" for reasons that aren't clear, they were used until being destroyed by fire in the mid-1940s. After the fire, Trix students were bused to the main Lynch School.
In 1954, the school was given a face-lift, with fluorescent lighting and new window treatments added, in addition to fresh coats of paint and varnish. A year later, a kiln for pottery was purchased using funds raised from a fair, offering students an opportunity to dabble in art. Both of Lynch's playgrounds also got overhauls around this time. In 1957, two classes for foreign-born students were added but soon dropped because of low enrollment.
By the 1960s, Lynch was heading into uncertain times. A large chunks of homes that the school served were demolished in 1961 to allow for City Airport to be expanded, and there was talk of taking more of the neighborhood for further expansion. In 1955, the neighborhood lost two streets for Forest Lawn cemetery to be expanded. The rise of white flight also bled the community of residents.
Nevertheless, in 1975, a second addition was tacked onto Lynch, which included a kitchen and a combined cafeteria-auditorium-gym facility. This structure was basically a single-story modern brick box that extended off the west entrance of the 1922 addition. When completed, the addition brought Lynch’s footprint to 41,200 square feet.
Amid a wave of school closures in 2002-03, students from the severely undercapacity Rowan Elementary were sent to Lynch. Just two years later, however, Lynch would be closed, too, and sit abandoned for 19 years.
Lynch was among 57 closed Detroit Public Schools (DPS) properties given to the City of Detroit in exchange for forgiving millions of dollars in DPS' unpaid electrical bills.
As part of a city effort to sell vacant former schools, the City of Detroit released in 2021 an architectural and engineering assessment and feasibility study of Lynch. From the outside, the school appeared to be in good condition, but it was determined that there was considerable masonry issues with the two oldest sections of Lynch. The load-bearing brick walls were also an issue because the school’s basement was severely flooded, and during the winter, the solid mass of ice was pushing on the building’s foundation. A renovation was conservatively estimated at $10 million, though could have been far higher. Given the low density and high poverty in the neighborhood, it is little surprise that the school did not find a buyer.
As part of a citywide effort to eliminate blight, the Duggan administration announced in the summer of 2023 that Lynch would be one of more than 20 former Detroit schools to be torn down. Lynch fell to the wrecking ball in 2024.