World War I and the Twenties
With the entrance of the United States into World War I in 1917, work ceased on many projects in the Pointes. The terrible influenza epidemic, so much a part of that war, prompted the Neighborhood Club to set up a hospital in one of the cottages on Oak Street, now Muir Road. Thus began Cottage Hospital.
In 1927, a "Grosse Pointe Park Protective Association" was organized to prod the Park council into passing a zoning ordinance, to stop a heavily endowed project for "aged persons of refinement." During the next year, the other Grosse Pointes also passed zoning codes.
Village councilmen and school trustees struggled with the emergence from rural status. It was no longer practical for all electors to vote on routine matters and village boards gradually acquired more power. No serious attempt to merge the villages appears to have been made, but the little school districts did elect to consolidate.
Grosse Pointe Rural Agricultural
School District No. 1
In 1922, six local school districts were consolidated: Cadieux, which had two buildings; Kerby; Hanstein (later deeded to Detroit); Trombly, which was a frame building at Beaconsfield and Jefferson; Cook School; and the "new" Vernier ("Grosse Pointe Rural Agricultural District No. 1" would keep that name until 1956). A year after the consolidation, the new district bought a Reo car to transport Cook pupils to Kerby, leaving only Vernier in the north part of the district. For two years, the district paid bus fare and tuition for students to finish high school in Detroit; beginning in the fall of 1924, the Cadieux School provided for grades 7 through 12.
Early lending libraries were started by the Grosse Pointe Memorial Church and the Neighborhood Club. In 1922, service became available from Wayne County. In 1929, the libraries became a division of the Grosse Pointe Public School System.
All school voting was done at "School Meeting." When a new high school was proposed, to be built on Grosse Pointe Boulevard, considerable opposition developed. Some citizens insisted that so large a building never would be needed; others hoped that the reputable Detroit system soon would assimilate the local schools; still others argued that the planned facility was too luxurious or in the wrong location. There was a lawsuit to halt construction, but Grosse Pointe High School prevailed, opening in 1928.
The Detroit-Windsor "Funnel." Passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and of the Volstead Act, prohibited sale of alcoholic beverages, although the Pointes had their share of "speak easies." Smuggling of illegal beverages went on along the shoreline, since Canada remained "wet." Gangland warfare was sometimes too close for comfort, as when two Park policemen, investigating a hit-and-run accident, were slain by bootleggers in front of their police station.
