The Michigan Avenue “Battle of the Boulevard” (1925—1928)

A portion of the Michigan Avenue boulevard and environs circa 1934. With the exception of Harrison Road, all of the streets seen here south of Michigan Avenue (including Cedar Bank and a street named for Church) were later vacated and no trace of them exists today. The colors are from a federal “desirability” study that contributed to redlining in East Lansing. Map source: Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, available online from the MSU Library.

The cities of Lansing and East Lansing today are contiguous with each other, but in the 1920s their city limits were separated by a distance of almost a mile along Michigan Avenue—roughly from Mifflin Avenue on the west to Highland Avenue on the east. The state highway department held the responsibility for this major thoroughfare and conducted traffic studies which found that it was one of the busiest state roads in Michigan, second only to Woodward Avenue between Detroit and Royal Oak.[LSJ, 11 Aug 1928, p. 1]

Because of this traffic volume and an expectation of future growth, and with the support of both cities, state highway commissioner Frank F. Rogers (M.A.C. ’83) was determined to make that stretch of Michigan Avenue into a “super-highway.” Nowadays this term implies a high-speed, limited access expressway, but in 1925 it meant a multi-lane road divided by a landscaped median. In other words, a boulevard.[LSJ, 25 Jun 1925, p. 1. MAC Record, 30(35), 31 Aug 1925, p. 575]

State Highway Commissioner Frank F. Rogers, date unknown.
Photo Credit: MDOT

In the state’s design, a new third lane would be added to the original lanes of Michigan Avenue to become the westbound lanes, and a new easement to the south would contain the median (including the streetcar tracks) and three eastbound lanes. At its eastern end at Harrison Road, the highway would connect to the boulevard that had recently been completed by the City of East Lansing along the northern perimeter of the College (see The Elms).

Its total width was 200 feet, identical to the boulevard that the state created on Woodward Avenue around that same time between Six Mile and Ten Mile Roads. To gain this broad right-of-way, the state used judicial condemnation to take the needed property, compensating the various owners for the loss of their houses and land. Most of the owners along the right-of-way begrudgingly accepted the state’s terms which were, in aggregate, about one-fourth of what the owners had asked. One owner, however, refused.[LSJ, 16 Apr 1926, p. 1; 15 Sep 1927, p. 1]

Frank E. Church, circa 1928.
Photo Credit: Lansing State Journal, 31 Mar 1928, p. 2.

Frank E. and Bertha L. (Waterbury) Church had purchased the Harrison family home from Lois Montgomery in 1906. By the time the state began the boulevard project, they had lived in the house for twenty years. Frank Church was in real estate, insurance, and banking, and by all appearances was fairly well connected. He was executor of the estate of one of Lansing’s most famous benefactors, Edward W. Sparrow; president of the Lansing Real Estate board; on the board of directors of a state bank whose president was William W. Potter (at the time, the state’s attorney general); and partner in at least one real estate venture with another famous Lansingite, J. Henry Moores (namesake of Moores Park and Moores River Drive).[LSJ, 13 Jun 1914, p. 12]

The Harrison family home was built in the 1860s facing the unpaved lane that became Michigan Avenue. In the 1920s it was owned by Frank and Bertha Church and stood in the path of the highway department’s bulldozers. Photo Credit: City of East Lansing, reprinted in Miller, p. 24.

It is, perhaps, due to this prominence that the state did not immediately enter into condemnation proceedings against Church like it did with all of his neighbors. Instead, Rogers opened negotiations—but the two sides were worlds apart. The state offered $20,000 for the property; Church wanted $72,000. Later Church lowered his figure to $60,000, but the state would not budge.[LSJ, 19 Jun 1926, p. 1]

Negotiations dragged on fitfully for months and the impasse became what was known, at the Lansing State Journal news desk if nowhere else, as the “Battle of the Boulevard.” The newspaper reported as front-page news every twist, turn, and court filing along the way, frequently enough that a simple mention of “the Church property” was sufficient to provide context. Its Letters to the Editor section also gave Frank Church plenty of opportunity to expound on his opinion that a 200-foot-wide roadway was not truly necessary and 100 feet would suffice (a measurement that conveniently put his house out of the way).[LSJ, 2 Jan 1964, p. 8]

Meanwhile, construction on the boulevard—originally planned to be finished in 1926—finally got underway from the Lansing end in July 1927, and by autumn it had been completed right up to the Church property. It was open to traffic so that eastbound drivers would see the side of the old house directly in front of them as they tootled down the road. When they reached the end of the new roadway they were forced to take a sharp left turn, cross the median and streetcar tracks, and then turn right onto one of the original lanes to reach Harrison Road. The state “installed elaborate warning signals to prevent accidents at the detour which crossed the street railway tracks.” This hazardous situation persisted for several months.[MSC Record, 32(11), Jul 1927, p. 8. LSJ, 15 Dec 1927, p. 1; 31 Mar 1928, p. 1]

The Michigan Avenue detour, circa 1927–1928, facing east toward the Church property and the former Harrison home. Photo Credit: Lansing State Journal, 14 Apr 1928, p. 3.

By the start of 1928, Governor Fred W. Green had run out of patience and instructed Rogers to initiate the long-deferred condemnation process. This brought Church back to the negotiation table and within a few days an agreement had been worked out wherein the state would move the house to the south out of the right-of-way, re-landscape the new grounds, and pay Church $200 per month for the duration that the house was uninhabitable. Remuneration for the loss of property would be paid to Church as determined by “a board of arbitration to include three members, one appointed by Governor Green, another by Mr. Church, and the third by the two members.” Green appointed former Lansing mayor Alfred Doughty. Church appointed a lawyer, John T. Watkins. Doughty and Watkins soon met to discuss candidates for the neutral third member of the arbitration board.[LSJ, 7 Jan 1928, p. 1]

Governor Fred W. Green, circa 1927.
Photo Credit: Library of Congress.

This sounds like progress, but it was just the start of another four months of drama. In early February Church was back in court, his lawyer Harry Silsbee reiterating his argument that the state did not need a 200-foot-wide road. G. C. Dillman (M.A.C. ’13), chief engineer for the highway department, claimed that only a few items were left to be hashed out by the arbitration board, but this was clearly incorrect because a month later it was revealed that not only had the board not yet come to terms, Doughty and Watkins had not even managed to agree on a third arbitrator. They petitioned the circuit court to fill the seat, and a Lansing lawyer by the name of William C. Brown was appointed on March 22.[LSJ, 4 Feb 1928, p. 1; 19 Mar 1928, p. 1; 22 Mar 1928, p. 1. MSC Record, 31(1), 21 Sep 1925, p. 7]

Perhaps sensing that the arbitration was not going to go his way, Church tried yet again to argue his case, this time going directly to the top and meeting Governor Green at his office on Saturday, March 31. Church aired out his grievances, telling Green “that he would not move out of his house until the financial settlement is arbitrated satisfactorily,” even though the terms of the contract signed by Church and state officials in January stated that he had to vacate it by April 1, the very next day. According to a state spokesman quoted in the State Journal, he also “intimated that he might not abide by the decision” of the arbitrators. This was enough for Green, who later that day told highway commissioner Rogers that “an agreement should be signed immediately in which the state and the property owner bind themselves to stand by the arbitrators’ report.”[LSJ, 31 Mar 1928, p. 1]

Attorney General Wilber M. Brucker, circa 1930.
Photo Credit: WSU Library.

It is not clear whether such an agreement was signed, but it was moot because Wilber M. Brucker, the state’s new attorney general, intended to hold all parties to the terms of the January contract, and on April 4 the state served formal notice to Church that he had seven days to vacate the house. It took him ten, finally moving out on Saturday, April 14. That same day the highway department contracted with the Detroit-based firm of William Brune and Sons to move the house. On Monday, April 16, the contractor arrived at the site to begin preparations for the move—and the arbitration board came to its final decision, voting two-to-one (with Church’s appointee dissenting) to assign damages of $13,880.[LSJ, 4 Apr 1928, p. 1; 14 Apr 1928, p. 1; 16 Apr 1928, p. 1]

Within weeks, the house was out of the way. The boulevard was swiftly completed using fast-hardening concrete to hurry the build along. On Thursday, August 16, 1928, the Michigan Avenue super-highway was fully opened to the public.[LSJ, 3 May 1928, p. 1; 11 Aug 1928, p. 1; 17 Aug 1928, p. 28]

Frank and Bertha Church do not seem to have returned to their former home, instead moving for a few years into a brick-veneered duplex near Durant Park in Lansing, followed by a large frame house in East Lansing’s Chesterfield Hills. Church would later contend that he never received his payment from the state, and that the move caused irreparable damage to the house: “If it could have been left on its original foundations it would no doubt [have] lasted for perhaps a thousand years, the moving however made changes to the building that can never be corrected.”[LCD (1930), p. 162; (1932), p. 105. Sanborn (1913), p. 8. LSJ, 18 Jun 1932, p. 2; 16 Aug 1935, p. 26]

The Harrison–Church house was purchased in 1932 by Lansing’s assistant postmaster, Severance E. Bellows. Over the years it passed through a few other owners including Mrs. Nellie Zimmerman, a lifelong Lansing resident, real estate mogul, and daughter of one of Lansing’s earliest pioneers; she bought the house for sentimental reasons since her father had been a close friend of Almond Harrison. The house stood for about thirty-five years after its move until, worn and dilapidated—and zoned for commercial development—it was demolished in the last days of 1963.[LSJ, 2 Jan 1964, p. 8]

The Michigan Avenue boulevard still offers what it was anticipated to become, “an impressive entrance to the Capital City,” and it remains a state highway now designated M-143. It has seen a wave of new development in recent years. That said, its traffic volume today is little more than twice that of 1928 and it is now far from contention as one of Michigan’s busiest roads.[LSJ, 24 Jun 1925, p. 11. MDOT 2019 Traffic Volumes]