Woodward School

606 Stuart Avenue

The Woodward School in the Stuart Neighborhood has been home to Kalamazoo students from elementary age children to high school-level. The school has always existed in one iteration or another between Stuart and Woodward Avenues, with North Avenue as its border to the north.

The first Woodward Avenue School was built in 1879-1880 by a “T. Johnson” (likely Tobias Johnson, a local mason) for roughly $10,000. The school’s first principal was Lucy A. Lovett, who was paid $400.00 a year. Miss Anna Cobb was hired as one of the school’s teachers for $370.00 a year. Students attending the new school were to derive from those areas of the city west of Rose Street, north of Main, and north of Academy Street. The original school building was located closer to Woodward Avenue than how today’s school building is situated.

This 1880 building would be added onto over the course of the next thirty years, first in 1903, when a north side addition was constructed. Five years later, a south addition was erected onto the original school.

In 1890, the school system was comprised of ten schools, 64 teachers and an enrollment of 2,949 students. The decision to erect additions to the Woodward Avenue School were largely driven by a sizable increase in the district’s student enrollment during the last decade of the 19th century. The overcrowding of schools and its negative impact on student achievement led to a building boom in the last decade of the 19th century, but it wouldn’t be until the first decade of the 20th century when Woodward’s spatial needs were addressed.

The next building project took place in 1921, when an early elementary school (K-3 grade) was constructed on the corner of Stuart and North avenues. The Kalamazoo Gazette reported on 21 June that bids for the contract to build the new elementary school were lower than the voter approved $100,000 bond. Eventually, after board discussion, the contractor O.F. Miller was awarded the building project with a bid of $63,500. Other vendors were awared contracts for plumbing and electrical work. This school building remains as of this writing, and has sometimes been referred to as the “annex.” The north side of the building prominently displays the inscription of “Woodward School” within the entablature.

In 1930, the original 1880 building and its south addition (1908) were torn down to make room for a new playground, while the north addition (1903) was retained as a junior high school. Before the Great Depression limited the board of education’s ability to spend money on new construction projects or building maintainence, the Billingham and Cobb built school was completed, housing grades 4-6. One of the more utilized architectural firms by KPS, Billingham and Cobb’s new Woodward Elementary School was designed in the “Georgian Colonial Revival” style.

“With a central portico supported by six metal Corinthian columns, each twenty-six feet high. The three doors at the entrance are topped with fanlights. Balanced by two wings decorated with pediments, the structure also contains a central tower with a working clock, repaired in 1986.”

Kalamazoo: Lost and Found, p.210

Three decades later in 1961, the last major construction project was completed, a one-story addition to the south, fashioned in an austere, modernist mode. That same year, the Junior High School building was torn down after being deemed a fire hazard. In the late 1990s, the firms Eckert Wordell and Diekkema Hamann worked on updating the interior of the building, enlarging classrooms and increasing technical capacity. In 1997, the school changed its name (Woodward School for Technology and Research) and curricular focus as the magnet school trend swept through Kalamazoo’s educational landscape.

A 7000 square foot garden was constructed on the school’s grounds in 1999, a collaborative effort between the school, the Stuart Neighborhood, local foundations, and the school’s parent-teacher organization. Named “Roots of Knowledge Community Garden,” the $30,000 landscaped area near the corner of Stuart and North avenues featured a mini-pond, a brick patio and stone arches when completed. As of this writing, the school is called the Woodward School.

Article written by Ryan Gage, Kalamazoo Public Library staff, January 2026