Famous people's places / Farmington Hills
Harrison High School
Closed – archive entry · 2019
A Farmington Hills public high school that opened in 1970 and closed in 2019, where Simpsons writer Al Jean graduated before the building reopened as the city's community center, The Hawk.
01 / The story of this place
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Farmington Public Schools opened Harrison High School in September 1970, naming it for Gerald V. Harrison, the district superintendent from 1957 to 1967 who oversaw its years of rapid postwar growth. Al Jean, later a longtime writer and showrunner for The Simpsons, graduated from Harrison in the 1970s. Declining enrollment led the district to close Harrison in 2019, and in 2018 the City of Farmington Hills had already agreed to buy the roughly 245,000-square-foot building and its 45-acre grounds for $500,000. The city spent about $25 million converting the former school into a community center, adding aquatics, fitness and arts spaces while preserving much of the original structure, and reopened it in June 2021 as The Hawk, one of the region's largest municipal recreation facilities.
- Opened in September 1970, named for superintendent Gerald V. Harrison
- Al Jean of The Simpsons graduated here in the 1970s
- Closed as a school in 2019 after declining enrollment
- Reopened in June 2021 as The Hawk community center
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Famous people tied to this place 1
Lexicon entries for the people who lived, worked, performed or liked to spend time here.
- Al Jean born 1961 · television writer, producer
Studied here
Jean graduated from this public high school, which opened in 1970 and closed in 2019; the city reopened the building as The Hawk community center.
Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
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