Major Sources

William J. Beal. History of the Michigan Agricultural College; and biographical sketches of trustees and professors. 1915.

Indispensable but flawed account of the college’s early years. While it benefits from contemporaneous, first-hand experience with its era, its author’s personal biases and animosities lead to omissions and subtle deprecations. Limited printing of only 3,000 copies included an insert of Newman’s 1915 map (see below).

Thomas C. Blaisdell, Ph. D., ed. Semi-Centennial Celebration of Michigan State Agricultural College. 1908. Available online from the MSU Library Digital Collection.

The complete program of the 1907 commemoration of the school’s first fifty years, including the full text of Theodore Roosevelt’s commencement address and many others.

Paul L. Dressel. College to University: The Hannah Years at Michigan State, 1935–1969. 1987. Available from Amazon.com.

A bit post-era for the purposes of this web site, but contains an interesting opening chapter about the college’s formative years.

Justin L. Kestenbaum, ed. At the Campus Gate: A History of East Lansing. 1976.

A quality coffee table overview, albeit occasionally anecdotal, written for the Bicentennial’s seemingly inexhaustible demand for American history both national and local. Now hard to find, as the first edition printing was limited to only 1,000 copies. The M.S.U. Library’s copy has been vandalized and is missing several pages, but the Circulation department has a spare photocopy of the lacuna that it will duplicate by request.

Madison Kuhn. Michigan State: The First Hundred Years, 1855–1955. 1955. Available from Amazon.com.

Madison Kuhn, Professor of History and later Graduate Chairman of the College of Arts and Letters, served Michigan State for forty-two years, 1937–1979. In 1943 President John A. Hannah appointed him as College (later University) Historian. This definitive work was published in commemoration of the school’s transition from College to University.

Harold W. Lautner. From an Oak Opening: A Record of the Development of the Campus Park of Michigan State University, 1855–1969. 1978.

Harold Lautner (1902–1992, M.A.C. ’25) was appointed Professor of Landscape Architecture in 1946 and was Director of Campus Parks and Planning through 1959. As Professor and Director Emeritus he combed through his own records and the archived minutes of the governing Board to compile this excellent two-volume reference work. Written from the viewpoint of site use and landscape architecture, it provides a comprehensive overview of how the campus park developed to become, in the words of Frederick Law Olmsted Jr, “probably the best example of the type of landscape characteristic of the American University.”

M.A.C. Association, et al. The M.A.C. Record / Michigan State College Record / The Record.

Between 1896 and 1955 this magazine was a weekly (later monthly, and in some years quarterly) compilation of campus event announcements, athletics results, feature articles, and alumni news. Early volumes were published by the College itself, later years by the alumni association. Madison Kuhn was a frequent contributor.

Michigan State Board of Agriculture. Annual Report[s] of the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Michigan. 1861–1925.

The annual reports provided as required by statute to the Governor of Michigan by the officers of the College. The first report was issued in 1861, the year of reorganization under the Board of Agriculture. Experiment Station reports and bulletins are included.

Michigan State Board of Agriculture (or Education)/Michigan State University Board of Trustees. Minutes of the Meeting[s].... 1855–2008.

The official record of the school’s administrative meetings, dating back to the very founding. The early years are handwritten and occasionally quite candid; later volumes are typewritten and more matter-of-fact.

Whitney Miller. East Lansing: Collegeville Revisited. 2002. Available from Amazon.com.

A slim paperback in the “Images of America” series, filled with a myriad of excellent black-and-white photos of the city, campus, and famous figures, 1855 to present day. The author is a certified archivist with University Archives and Historical Collections.

Linda O. Stanford and C. Kurt Dewhurst. M.S.U. Campus—Buildings, Places, Spaces: Architecture and the Campus Park of Michigan State University. 2002. Available from Amazon.com.

A beautiful coffee table book of large black-and-white photos and interesting tidbits about the University’s buildings and grounds. Though many of the buildings of the John Hannah era fall into a school of design appropriately called “Brutalist,” the authors do not shy away from including the more significant and interesting examples of the style on campus. Moreover, they do many of those buildings justice for their progressive ideals.

James DeLoss Towar. History of the City of East Lansing. 1933.

Towar’s comprehensive, if occasionally desultory, history was written at the behest of the East Lansing Public Library, and covers the years from the earliest pioneer days to 1933. The M.S.U. Library’s reference copy is a hard-bound 8½x11 mimeograph of the typewritten original.

Keith R. Widder. Michigan Agricultural College: The Evolution of a Land-Grant Philosophy, 1855–1925. 2005. Available from Amazon.com.

The first in a trilogy of large volumes published by the Michigan State University Press in celebration of the M.S.U. Sesquicentennial, this book combines a broad overview of the college’s development with an in-depth study of the intellectual forces that led to its creation and growth. Fascinating images from the M.S.U. Archives abound.

 

Map Sources

F. W. Beers and Company. County Atlas of Ingham, Michigan. 1874. <historicmapworks.com>

C. W. Chadwick. Farm Atlas of Ingham County, Michigan. 1914. <historicmapworks.com>

Chace Newman. Map of East Lansing, City. 1913. Edition of November 1915.

This exquisitely rendered map includes every structure erected in the young city, a directory of some sixty-five buildings on the M.A.C. campus, and an explanation of Newman’s house numbering system devised in 1911 (but revised in 1920 to its present form). The East Lansing Public Library has an original printing. Given the wealth of information contained in the map, one only wishes that Newman had continued to issue updates in subsequent years.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Various years. Available online at the Library of Congress.

A terrific resource for building-level detail. The editions available online from the Library of Congress are centered on Lansing, which has the quirky drawback of always being a little behind the curve of development in East Lansing; for example, the 1913 edition omits College Delta (by then fifteen years old and fully built out) with an edge-of-map notation “some frame dwellings beyond.”

 

Other Sources

T. C. Abbot. The Earlier History of the [Michigan State Agricultural] College up to Its Reorganization in 1861. 1883.

Chilson, McKinley & Co. Lansing City Directory. Various years.

Blanche B. Coggan. Out of the Past—Into the Future: A Pageant of the Growth of a Historic Michigan Community. 1956.

East Lansing Historic Commission. “Final Report: Thematic Fraternity and Sorority Historic Districts.” 25 March 2008. Online PDF.

East Lansing Historic Commission. “Landmark Walking Tour.” Pamphlet. May 1991.

Mark Grebner. Grading the Profs, 7th Ed. 1988.

George W. Hilton and John F. Due. The Electric Interurban Railways in America. 1960. Stanford University Press. Available from Amazon.com.

Lawrence Kestenbaum. Political Graveyard. <politicalgraveyard.com>

Lansing State Journal. Started as the Lansing Republican in 1855, it merged with its rival Lansing Journal in 1911 to become what is today the sole daily newspaper published in metropolitan Lansing.

James MacLean. Darius B. Moon: The History of a Michigan Architect, 1880–1910. 2015. Available from Amazon.com.

James MacLean. Lansing’s Young Architects: William Appleyard, R. Arthur Bailey, and Frederick Thoman. 2019. Available from Amazon.com.

James MacLean, Craig A. Whitford. Lansing, City on the Grand: 1836–1939. 2003. Available from Amazon.com.

J. Bruce McCristal. The Spirit of Michigan State. 2004. Available from Amazon.com.

Michigan Agricultural College. Faculty and Student Directory. 1903 et seq. Many issues available from MSU Archives.

Mark Nixon, editor. Journal of Our Times: 150 Years in the Life of Greater Lansing. 2004.

Evelyn Huber Raphael. A History of the Haslett–Lake Lansing Area: Meridian Township, Ingham County, Michigan. 1975. Online PDF.

David A. Thomas. Michigan State College: John Hannah and the Creation of a World University, 1926-1969. 2008. Available from Amazon.com.

Elida Yakeley, et al. Michigan Agricultural College: Catalogue of Officers and Graduates. 1900, 1911, 1916.

M.S.U. Archives and Historical Collections. Tales from the Archives, Volume 1: Campus and Traditions. 2017. Available from the Archives’ store front.

M.S.U. Physical Plant. Building Data Book. 2002, 2004.

M.S.U. Physical Plant. “Michigan State College Properties Survey – 1934.” <no longer online>