The Great Depression
By the time the depression hit in 1929, the Park, Village and the Farms were substantially "built up." Much of the skilled construction was done by craftsmen of Belgian extraction, who by then were a sizable bilingual group in the Park. As the depression deepened, some houses stood unfinished and others under construction were scaled down in size. Village councils granted numerous licenses for selling eggs, wood and other farm or garden produce door-to-door, as people struggled to remain self-supporting.
In 1933, attempting to bring order out of chaos, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered banks to be closed. An immediate cash crisis confronted individuals, businesses and public employers. A councilman lent money to meet a village payroll. The superintendent of schools, Samuel Brownell, dispatched cars to the north of Grosse Pointe, and, in a three-way arrangement, secured produce from farmers who had indebtedness at their local banks. These foodstuffs, heavy on potatoes and onions, were given to employees of the school system to feed their families during the weeks of missed paychecks, according to Board of Education minutes. Mary McElroy, Board of Education secretary during all her working life, stated, "We signed off on one or two paychecks but, other than that, we eventually received all our pay."
The decade of the 1930s saw the federal Civil Works Administration provide about 20% of the funds to build Maire School in 1936 and Pierce Junior High School in 1939. That year, the name of the Village of Lochmoor was changed to Grosse Pointe Woods, and Bon Secours Hospital opened as a convalescent facility. The Grosse Pointe News began publishing its weekly newspaper in 1940. During the 1930s and 40s, many church denominations organized here. Most of them were unable to build until after World War II.
World War II
From 1941 to 1945, the war affected every phase of life, and many Pointe people assumed demanding responsibilities in wartime industry, govemment or the military. Women filled a wider range of roles than ever before. One of them was Alice M. Scheaffer, elected to the Board of Education. She served from 1942 until 1954. In 1950, at the dedication of Alger House as the War Memorial Center, a plaque listed names of 120 men who had lost their lives, among the 3,600 Grosse Pointe men and women who had served their nation in the armed forces.
