Introduction

Origins

The City

Collegeville (1887, 1895)
College Delta (1898, 1899)
Oakwood (1899)
Cedar Banks (1900)
College Grove (1903)
Fairview (1904, 1905)
College Heights (1904)

Charter of 1907

Avondale (1913)
Bungalow Knolls (1916)
Chesterfield Hills (1916)
Ardson (1919)
Ridgeley Park (1921)
Strathmore (1925)
Glen Cairn (1926)
Bailey (1927)
Touraine (1927)

The Campus

Chronology

Interactive Map

Sites on the National and State Historic Registers

Complete list of
Significant Structures

Sources

Engineering Shops (1885 — 1916, 1916 — ?)

First Engineering Shops, circa 1913. Square smokestack at left is of the first boiler house, beyond.
Photo Credit: Beal, p.148.

The Land Grant Act of 1862 had specified the teaching of "such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts," but it wasn't until 1885 that the Michigan Agricultural College initiated a two-year course in Mechanic Arts. This soon expanded into a four-year Mechanical course, which ultimately evolved into the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

To support the Mechanic Arts program, a sizable complex of Engineering Shops, also known as the Mechanical Building, was assembled. Professor R.C. Carpenter (see below) designed and supervised construction of the shops in 1885, and took part in planning the course of study for the new mechanical course. He designed the iron and wood shops "as places where students might learn by actual practice more than by demonstration," and even supervised the afternoon sessions. At first, the work had a self-stoking character: "The shops became a factory engaged primarily in the production of new tools for the shops. In the first year, students began with a few sets of hand tools, a drill, a shaper, a planer, lathes, and a twelve horse-power steam engine. In the next ten years they created larger lathes, a band saw, a dynamo to light the building, an electric motor, a traveling crane and hydraulic hoist, forges for the blacksmith shop, a twenty horse-power steam engine, and, in 1894, an 8x13x12 compound [steam] engine."[Kuhn, p.148]

The shops caught fire on 5 March, 1916, burning to the ground and taking the nearby Engineering Building (built 1907) with them. "Salvage was negligible. From the older shops a few lathes were saved. The rest was ashes and twisted metal." That same year, thanks to the generosity of Ransom E. Olds, new buildings for the Shops as well as the Forge and Foundry were built along with the new Olds Engineering Hall.[Kuhn, p.266]

Professor Rolla C. Carpenter

Professor R.C. Carpenter, with his surveyor's transit, circa 1875.
Photo Credit: Kuhn, p.20k.

In fairness, and because no campus buildings have ever been named for him, it seems appropriate to dedicate some space to Rolla Clinton Carpenter (1852-1919). Carpenter earned his BS from M.A.C. in '73, then worked for a year as civil engineer for a railroad company before the University in Ann Arbor awarded him a C.E. degree in 1875. Soon after, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Civil Engineering at M.A.C., a position he held for fifteen years. He took his MS in '76 from the Agricultural College.

Professor Carpenter taught algebra, geometry, trigonometry, mechanics, civil engineering, surveying — and French. He also taught astronomy, holding class three nights a week on the flat roof of Williams Hall until 1880, when he built the Observatory. "A brother, Louis G. Carpenter, '79, joined him in 1881 to teach algebra, geometry, and free-hand drawing. This released Rolla to teach mechanical drawing and later agricultural engineering in a shop which he fitted out in the original brick stable."[Kuhn, p.104]

Yet "for R.C. Carpenter, as for his colleagues, teaching was but one of his assignments." He not only managed the earliest football team (for a year), and supervised the manufacture of some 400,000 bricks at the College brickyard, but his keen surveyor's eye and steady draftsman's hand touched much of the early campus and city. A partial list of his engineering accomplishments follows:

• 1875: Designed the second Farm Lane bridge.
• 1877: Designed and supervised construction of a dam on the Red Cedar River (designing his own pile driver in the process).
• 1880: Designed and built an ice house near the river, and the aforementioned Observatory.
• 1883-1884: Installed fire hydrants, connected by underground wooden pipes to a three-hundred-barrel tank in the Williams Hall tower and fed by a well near the river.
• 1884: Supervised construction of the first boiler house, which generated heat for Wells, Williams, the Chemistry building, and the Library-Museum.
• 1885: Designed the Mechanical Shops (see above).
• 1887: Along with Prof. Beal, platted Collegeville, the nascent city's first subdivision.

Kuhn also credits him with designing the first Agricultural Laboratory in 1889, but the M.S.U. Physical Plant Building Data Book lists Samuel Johnson (Professor of Agriculture) as the architect. Instead, Carpenter likely supervised the building's construction. Thus, with the exception of Collegeville, none of Carpenter's local creations remain.[Kuhn, pp.105, 159. CEE website.]

In 1890, Rolla Carpenter accepted a position as Associate Professor of Experimental Engineering at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. (His replacement at M.A.C., Herman K. Vedder, was, in a nice bit of symmetry, a Cornell grad.) Relieved of the burden of constructing a rapidly-growing institution, and earning a salary at Cornell "much higher than the $1800 which was uniform for department heads here," Carpenter found the time to publish his extensive knowledge: the popular textbook Experimental Engineering and Manual for Testing in 1890;* a widely-regarded-as-definitive work, Heating and Ventilating Buildings: a Manual for Heating Engineers and Architects, in 1891; and co-author of Internal Combustion Engines: Their Theory, Construction and Operation in 1908. Each of these books saw several revised editions in subsequent years, a testament to their educational importance. (Frightfully, none of these books are in the M.S.U. Library.)[Kuhn, pp.151, 170]

Carpenter also worked as a consulting engineer for sundry portland cement companies, constructed numerous power stations for electric railways, was the patent expert in several important cases, and in 1893 served as a judge of machinery and transportation at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1907, Carpenter returned to M.A.C. for the Semicentennial commencement exercises, where the College bestowed upon him an honorary Doctorate of Laws.[Beal, p.417]

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