East Lansing High School, 819 Abbot Rd. (1926)

East Lansing High School (Hannah Community Center) viewed from the east, November 2003. The newer additions on either side have been cropped out of frame. Photo Credit: Kevin S. Forsyth

As enrollment at the Michigan Agricultural College grew rapidly in the early twentieth century, so too did the City of East Lansing. By 1922, the year Bailey School was built, “there were 1,341 adults in East Lansing, fifty-two percent of them connected in some way with the College. About five hundred students were enrolled” in the school district. Central School served as the high school, while both Central and Bailey handled the lower grade levels. Yet even with the newfound elbow room of Bailey School, “the school system’s greatest problem was sheer numbers.”[Kestenbaum, pp. 98–99]

The first action toward adding a new, modern high school building in the district was taken in late 1923, and two years later a $200,000 bond issuance provided the needed funding. A tract of approximately ten acres was purchased for $25,000 on the west side of Abbot Road, adjacent to but just outside the city limits. (At the time Burcham Drive retained its original name, North Street, so named because it was literally the northern boundary of the City.) To explain why that land was not yet part of the City takes a brief aside.[Towar, pp. 54–55]

Map of the forty acres once known as the Valleau farm, excerpted from City of East Lansing Use Districts, 1926. The southeast quarter is the site of the High School building, with dotted lines for an extension of Evergreen Avenue that would have passed immediately in front of the school. Note how the dash-dotted line of the city limits only encompasses the western half of this map, thanks to the 1920–21 annexation dispute.

These ten acres, comprising the southeast quarter of what was once known as the Valleau farm (and prior to that had been owned by Manly Miles), had been the subject of an annexation vote in 1920 which attempted to incorporate the whole of the forty-acre tract within the city limits. The annexation was “strenuously opposed” by Walter and Edna Reuling (he was Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering 1916–1945), who owned at least four acres of that southeast quarter and intended to use it “for a country home.” The Reulings were very active in the community and were among the founding families of Peoples Church. Edna Reuling in particular worked to organize the opposition, and “made a very thorough canvass of the voters in the township.” The vote on May 29, 1920, was defeated; a revised vote one year later annexed only the western half of the farm, platted as the Krentel Brothers’ “Ridgely Park.” However by 1925, it seems that Professor and Mrs. Reuling had realized that the encroaching city put their “country home” not so far out in the country, so they sold the tract to the school district. Their house, addressed at 701 Forest Street, is no longer evident.[LSJ, 27 May 1920, p. 2; 27 May 1921, p. 1; 12 Jan 1974, p. 2. LCD (1924) p. 817]

The new High School building was designed by Lansing architect Judson N. Churchill (1871–1933), who “was involved in the design of many residential, commercial, fraternal, and religious buildings located throughout the state. He became especially well-known for his design of school buildings in Lansing and throughout southern Michigan. His work was so well regarded by the Lansing Board of Education that the board hired him to serve as their resident architect.” Among his non-scholastic works, J. N. Churchill designed a temple for the International Order of Odd Fellows at 1100 North Washington Avenue, in 1914; today it is the home of a beloved and venerable Lansing institution, Elderly Instruments.[NRHP, p. 14]

This era of the mid-1920s was surely the peak of Churchill’s career. In addition to Bailey School (1922), he designed Lansing’s Eastern (later Pattengill) and West Junior High Schools (both 1922), Walnut Street School (c.1924), and Walter French Junior High School (1925); Fremont High School (1926); Milford Rural Agricultural School (1926, razed 1995); and Cass City High School (1927, razed 1997). The Walter French, Fremont, and Milford buildings have all been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Churchill’s school designs tended toward a combination of modern interior layouts and cost-effective exterior ornamentation. They were usually constructed of steel and reinforced concrete wrapped by brick and tile curtain walls, often with Arts-and-Crafts styling that used “bricks in different hues and in intricate designs to enliven the exteriors of otherwise relatively simple and unadorned buildings.” Although these brickwork designs were readily available in commercial pattern books of the time, they became “something of a Churchill trademark.”[NRHP, pp. 19, 21]

Walter French School is perhaps the exemplar of this style, with stone escutcheons and castellations on its parapet walls, decorative brick spandrels between the window rows, and end-wall panels in a multi-hued diamond pattern called “diapering.” These same diapered panels can be found on the more modestly ornamented East Lansing High School, on the building’s north and south ends, although they do not stand out to a ground-level observer today since they have been substantially obscured by later additions to the building. Polychromatic brick patterns along the parapet walls and a formal, Tudor-style entryway are other highlights of this Churchill design.[NRHP, p. 6]

East Lansing High School around the time of its completion, 1926. This grainy third-hand scan only hints at the intricate panels on the south façade, at left. Photo Credit: City of East Lansing, reprinted in Miller, p. 37.

The building was constructed between June and September 1926 by the Reniger Company of Lansing, with the project running about $35,000 over budget. It was officially opened in May 1927, touted as “a showpiece for the community with large, modern classrooms and athletic facilities,” but before long the continued growth of the community left the high school undersized. An addition to the north side of the building in 1936 gave the school a 483-seat auditorium and provided classroom space for the seventh and eighth grades, making it the “Junior–Senior High School.” When the current high school was completed in late 1956, this building became the Junior High School.[Miller, p. 36. Kestenbaum, pp.99–103. Towar, pp. 54–55. Sanborn (1951), v. 2 p. 280]

C. E. MacDonald Middle School opened in 1968, and all seventh and eighth grade students went there while the older building received a major renovation. A year later, “the city’s approximately 380 sixth graders left their grade schools and entered the two middle schools.” In January 1971 the building was rededicated in honor of John A. Hannah (M.A.C. ’23), President of Michigan State University 1941–1969.[Kestenbaum, p. 105]

John A. Hannah in front of another namesake, M.S.U.’s Hannah Administration Building, date unknown. Photo Credit: M.S.U. Archives.

Hannah Middle School was closed in 1997. It reopened as the Hannah Community Center in 2001, and is still in that multi-use role today. Due to limited funds its third floor was not renovated for the community center, and as of 2020 that space remains unused.[ELi, 13 Feb 2018]