Famous people's places / Detroit – East Side
Jared W. Finney High School
Closed – archive entry · 2009
A northeast Detroit public high school, open from 1962 to 2009 and later demolished, where opera singer Maria Ewing sang in the chorus in the 1960s.
01 / The story of this place
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Detroit Public Schools opened a building at 17200 Southampton Street on the city's northeast side, near the Grosse Pointes, as an elementary school in 1928, converting it into Finney High School in 1962. The school was named for Jared Warner Finney, a member of the first graduating class of Detroit High School in 1861 who went on to serve as a US Commissioner and US Attorney; his father, Seymour Finney, had been a prominent Detroit conductor on the Underground Railroad, hiding freedom seekers in his barn downtown. Opera soprano Maria Ewing sang alto in Finney's chorus as a student there in the 1960s before a career that took her to the world's leading opera houses. Despite a $2.5 million bond investment shortly before its closure, Detroit Public Schools shut Finney in 2009 amid falling enrollment and merged it with Crockett High School to form East English Village Preparatory Academy, and the old Finney building was demolished in 2011, with the new school built on its former site.
- Opened as an elementary school in 1928, became a high school in 1962
- Named for Jared Warner Finney, whose father hid freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad
- Opera singer Maria Ewing sang in the chorus here in the 1960s
- Closed in 2009 and demolished in 2011
Famous Detroiters
Famous people tied to this place 2
Lexicon entries for the people who lived, worked, performed or liked to spend time here.
- Maria Ewing 1950–2022 · opera singer (mezzo-soprano and soprano)
Studied here
East side Detroit high school where she sang alto in the chorus.
- Earl Cureton 1957–2024 · basketball forward and center
Studied here
His east-side Detroit high school; the Detroit Public Schools building is no longer in use.
Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.
03 / Events
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