The Women’s Cooperative Houses (1936—1956)

Enrollment at Michigan State grew stratospherically during the era 1920–1950. Especially fulsome was the growth in number of female students, as the Division of Home Economics (established 1896 and commonly called the “Women’s Course”) reached maturity. A dedicated Home Economics building in 1924 improved the classroom and laboratory plant, which contributed to increased enrollment: from 537 female students in 1925, the total rose to 1,003 by 1930, and over 2,600 by 1940. In the decade that followed (1940–1950) women’s enrollment grew by an average of 275 students every year.[MSU Registrar’s Office, Historical Enrollment and Term End Reports]

Housing stock to satisfy this growth was slow in coming, and without it the College was unable to accept as many students as wanted to enroll. Several options were pursued, none of them very satisfactory. The instructors’ residence Howard Terrace was reassigned as a women’s dormitory in 1914 but only stood until 1922. As early as 1915, several off-campus houses including the Dickson house were rented as women’s dormitory annexes, with College-employed matrons living at each. Most of these houses lacked in-house dining options, so the students instead had to take their meals at one of the boarding clubs, either in Morrill Hall or in “College Residence,” one of the annexes that housed sixteen students at 218 Albert Street. In 1920 women returned to Abbot Hall, kicking the men out and igniting a major exodus of male students to off-campus housing.[MAC Record, 21(1), 21 Sep 1915, p. 6; 27(4), 21 Oct 1921, pp. 11–12]

218 Albert Street looked like an ordinary foursquare from the front, but was uncommonly deep. After more than a decade as the “College Residence” dormitory annex, it was home to Phi Chi Alpha (a local society), as seen here circa 1930. It was the original location of Elsworth cooperative house, which owned it 1940–50. It was demolished for a parking lot. Image Credit: Wolverine (1930), p. 264.

The Board’s decision in 1923 to allow sororities to establish off-campus houses—and the chartering of several new sororities during the mid-1920s—helped somewhat, but “women could only live off campus at a sorority house if it was their second term and they had a C average or better.” The former Woodbury and Hagadorn houses, known by then as “Eldon House” and “Waterbury House,” were used as dormitory annexes for a few years, but these held barely two dozen each. A few Faculty Row houses were converted as well, usually as Home Economics practice houses. Meanwhile students from Lansing, East Lansing, and other nearby towns were required to commute from home, rather than live in closer proximity to their classmates, to save room for those who came from farther away.[Minutes, 18 Jul 1923, p. 573. UAHC Tales, p. 121. Wolverine (1927), p. 292]

Of course, new campus dormitories were constructed, a total of six between 1931 and 1947. The first new dormitory since Morrill Hall in 1900, Mary Mayo Hall was completed in 1931 and housed 246 women—of the 1,029 that were enrolled. This was not nearly enough, and even as the College worked for funding to build “Dormitory #2” (Sarah Langdon Williams Hall, completed 1937) it looked for alternative housing solutions.

One alternative was found in 1936, when the College purchased the Campus Hotel at 215–217 Louis Court. Also known as the Campus Apartments, it had been built in 1922 by local developer and businesswoman Mary E. Champe as a “modern apartment house, arranged to care for transients as well as family trade.” The College renamed it “North Hall Dormitory” and housed ninety-two women there, along with a married couple (initially Mr. and Mrs. Curtis Beachum, who had previously operated the hotel) as commons manager and house mother respectively. North Hall remained in operation until 1950, when it was sold. It is no longer standing.[MAC Record, 28(11), 4 Dec 1922, p. 7. Minutes, 2 Jul 1936, p. 1258; 16 Mar 1950, p. 2326]

North Hall dormitory in winter, circa 1940. Image Credit: Wolverine (1940), p. 376.

The Union Memorial Building had a dormitory for a while. In 1936 it was planned to co-opt the classroom spaces of the new WPA-funded addition to house seventy students. This notion seems to have been discarded, but some form of a dormitory did exist on the second, third, and fourth floors. Whether it was in the original building’s upstairs living spaces, built to welcome returning alumni and distinguished guests, or elsewhere is not clear. What is certain is that Stella McDaniel was appointed as “Hostess in the Union Dormitory” from September 1937 until she was transferred to Louise Hathaway Campbell Hall (“Dormitory #3”) upon its opening two years later, when the Union ceased to be used “for girls’ dormitory purposes.”[Minutes, 19 Sep 1935, p. 1193; 29 Jan 1937, p. 1302; 9 Sep 1937, p. 1338; 20 Apr 1939, p. 1507; 6 Jul 1939, p. 1526. Faculty and Student Directory (1936), p. 1]

So, with funding for dormitory construction at a premium and requiring a legislative appropriation, with no nearby apartment buildings to rent or buy, and with the Works Progress Administration keeping at least as close a watch on its grants as the Legislature did its appropriations, the Board of Agriculture was running out of options. After all, they could not simply allow women to live off-campus in unsanctioned, unchaperoned rental housing. This was the era of in loco parentis. That freedom was still decades away.

In addition, the dormitory annexes had an economic shortcoming. Where a handful of College employees could operate a dormitory to shelter two hundred or more, it was simply not economical to provide the same level of staffing in a house of no more than two dozen. Hence the reason for the boarding clubs that aggregated meal service in a few locations.

With all of this in mind, in April 1936 the Board of Agriculture formed a Dormitory Committee which recommended a solution that provided more housing without new construction, with a minimum of strings attached, and without the overhead of a dormitory annex: a “cooperative house for girls.” The plan made a lot of sense. Residents would share a division of labor in cooking, cleaning, and management of the house. They would budget, plan, and cook all their meals, keep the kitchen and rooms tidy, and perform routine maintenance. In return they would receive a moderate discount on their room and board fees, as well as a daily practicum in home economics (although by the 1930s only about half of women students were majoring in that division). Like a dormitory annex, the College would cover the cost of leasing the property, but its staffing cost would be limited to the salary for one resident hostess. It was a win-win for the students and the College.[Minutes, 23 Apr 1936, p. 1236; 15 Jun 1936, pp. 1246–1250; 18 Feb 1937, p. 1307. MSC Record, 42(2), 25 Feb 1937, p. 9]

The first cooperative house opened for the 1936–37 school year and was named “Concord House.” (This author likes to think this was in honor of Concordia, the Roman goddess of harmony and social agreement.) It stood at 129 Division Street and was leased from Leon and Pauline Meriam for a term of three years at $1,320 per year. The Meriams soon offered to sell the property to the College but were rebuffed. While other houses in the program would come and go, Concord House would continue—with one relocation—throughout the co-op era.[Minutes, 15 Jun 1936, p. 1251; 18 Feb 1937, p. 1307]

129 Division Street in 1930, its final year as the Sigma Kappa sorority house. Six years later it would become Concord House. One of the houses in the background, 419 Albert Street, is still standing; the rest in this photo are all gone. Image Credit: Wolverine (1930), p. 304.

One factor of the cooperative houses, previously alluded to, was that each was appointed with a resident Hostess. These were generally older women, usually married and quite often widowed, and they were there—at least in part—to act as constant chaperones. (Although “hostess” soon became the standard—if euphemistic—job title, in the early years of off-campus housing that term was used interchangeably with matron, housemother, or chaperone.) Della C. Lamb was the first “chaperone” of Concord House, but she was replaced within a couple of months by “hostess” Mollie H. Cole. The College paid their salaries, a meager $10 per month, along with room and board within the houses. It employed similar staffers in the dormitories, sorority houses, and even the fraternities.[Minutes, 27 Jul 1936, p. 1261; 10 Sep 1936, p. 1262]

An M.S.C. Record article from February 1937 illustrates life at Concord House, with (to modern eyes) a dismissively sexist tone that is all too typical of the era. Image Credit: M.S.U. Archives, which has a scan of the complete issue.

Concord House was the prototype for the experiment, and a second test house was added for the 1937–38 year: “Rochdale House,” named for the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, an early consumer cooperative founded in England in 1844 that was the basis for the modern cooperative movement. Rochdale stands at 406 M.A.C. Avenue and was owned by O. J. Ayrs, who leased it on a three year term at $800 per year. Rochdale also remained in the co-op system for the duration, is still standing and is (apparently) completely intact.[Minutes, 20 May 1937, p. 1325]

Concord and Rochdale were complete successes—so much so that even as Sarah Williams Hall added space for 260 occupants in 1937 (much of it, however, in replacement for Morrill Hall’s conversion to academic use), the co-op housing system ramped up quickly, adding five more houses for the 1938–39 school year, making seven total. The following year the College added another co-op house to replace one that had closed, but did not need to lease it: after the College Hospital vacated Faculty Row № 1 for the new Olin Health Center, the old president’s house was converted to become “Cowles House.” This co-op was named for Alice B. Cowles, daughter of Albert Cowles (one of the College’s first students in 1857) and mother of Frederick Cowles Jenison (M.A.C. w/’07) who had recently died having bequeathed his sizable estate to the College. № 1 had housed female students previously, as a dormitory annex from 1915 to 1924. (The “Cowles House” name has since been reapplied to Faculty Row № 7.)

Cowles House, formerly Faculty Row № 1, c. 1940s. Photo Credit: M.S.U. Archives.

On a side note, 1939 was also the year that Hedrick House, a men’s independent student cooperative named for Professor Wilbur Hedrick, was founded at M.S.C. and rented a property at 405 Abbot Road. The fact that the College was in the vanguard of the cooperative movement, ahead of independent progressives, is seen by this author as an indication of how desperate the College was to increase its housing capacity.

The year 1941 saw the co-op system reach its peak, with eleven houses in all: nine off-campus rentals and two Faculty Row conversions including № 2, known as “Shaw House” for May Travis Shaw; she, her husband Robert and daughter Sarah had lived there during Robert Shaw’s tenure as College President. Among the nine rental properties were three houses that the East Lansing Historic Commission later rated as Significant Structures (albeit for reasons other than having been co-op houses): Taft House, Potter House, and Sanford House. This high-water mark held steady for about five years, with a few houses opened to replace others that were closed.

The last house to enter the co-op system, 118 Albert Street became the Catherine Black House in 1945. This photo is from 1925, when it was the Alpha Phi sorority house and its owner, Mrs. Black, was the house matron. Photo Credit: Wolverine (1925), p. 188.

Then in 1945–46 Cowles House and Shaw House, along with their neighbors the original International Center (F.R. № 3), № 4, and № 5, were torn down to make room for Dormitories #4, #5, and #6 (Linda Landon Hall, Elida Yakeley Hall, and Maude Gilchrist Hall respectively). Taft House on Grove Street was closed. Presumably in the expectation that dormitory accommodations would soon expand, these co-ops were not replaced, beginning the gradual decline of the system.

Potter House closed in 1949 when Mrs. Potter “notified the College that she [did] not desire to renew the lease.” In 1950 Concord House relocated one block north to 225 Division Street, and its original home was demolished for a parking lot. Benson House seems to have closed around 1951. Ewing House and Catherine Black House both closed in 1953 and were demolished. The last four houses—the pioneering Concord, its early sibling Rochdale, Robinson, and Sanford—finally closed at the end of the 1955–56 school year. (Concord and Robinson are no longer standing, but Rochdale and Sanford remain.)[Minutes, 15 Jul 1949, p. 2760; 29 Aug 1950, p. 2887. Sanborn (1951), p. 270. LSJ, 21 Jul 1953, p. 2]

Ewing House, its bones gradually being picked clean, during its demolition in 1953. It had been built in 1899 by J. D. Towar who proudly stated in his 1933 history that it “stands as the oldest modern residence in East Lansing north of Grand River Avenue.”* The house was removed to extend Albert Street west of Abbot Road. Photo Credit: Miller, p. 81.

Yet the cooperative housing system did not completely end. In June 1956 the Board convened a committee to “develop more detailed information about a possible type of housing for women students to take the place of the cooperative houses that have now been discontinued.” The result was an on-campus cooperative housing unit boasting thirty-six apartment-style residences, opened in 1957 and named Van Hoosen Hall in honor of the family of Sarah Van Hoosen Jones, former two-term member of the Board who had generously bequeathed her family’s 385-acre Centennial farm in Oakland County to Michigan State.[Minutes, 10 Aug 1956, p. 3679; 19 Apr 1957, p. 3787]

For twenty years, the women’s cooperative project served to alleviate, in a small way, some of the housing deficit of a rapidly expanding institution. From a fiscal standpoint it was a decent success, as it proved to be cost-effective and economical, especially in comparison with some of its alternatives. However this tends to elide over the larger picture of the co-ops’ place in campus life.

Many women in the houses felt that they lacked an adequate voice in campus affairs, especially when compared to the sororities and the much larger dormitories. By the 1940s, the ‘Greek’ system of fraternities and sororities dominated not just the college social scene, but also campus affairs and student governance. To a lesser extent—yet far more so than in later decades—the dormitories acted as unified groups as well, with each hall having its own representation in collegiate life.

The women’s co-ops found themselves on the outside looking in. Each house was too small—generally between twelve and twenty residents—to have much influence on its own. As a result the Women’s Cooperative League was formed in 1945 to provide unified representation in campus affairs. Every co-op resident was automatically made a member of the league, and each house elected a representative to the W.C.L. Council. The league provided functional coordination to the houses, gave cooperative women a voice in student government, and sponsored social activities such as intra-house dinners and term parties. In this way “the W.C.L. has taken its place beside other groups in campus responsibilities and social life.”[Wolverine (1947), p. 450]

Yet despite its utility as a unified voice for cooperative women, the W.C.L. was late to the party, appearing nearly a decade after the project’s onset as the project was starting its decline in size, and likely only lasting until its end in 1956. By the time of the 1955 Wolverine yearbook, with the number of houses down to four, the league must have been on the wane. Indicative of this, the yearbook writer 1) omits the official Women’s Cooperative League name; 2) states the age of the entire co-op project as that of the league alone; and 3) misrepresents even the most basic information about the co-op system.[Wolverine (1955), p. 539]

At any rate, with the completion of Van Hoosen Hall, the Cooperative Housing program was no longer needed by the mid-1950s. A fraction of that cooperative spirit carried over into Van Hoosen, apparently, although it is also unclear how long that residence hall was operated as a true cooperative, as opposed to becoming simply an apartment-style dormitory. That early designation seems to be quietly forgotten both in the Minutes of the Board and in anything other than passing when discussing the hall’s history. Otherwise this successful twenty-year-long economic expedient was allowed to fade quietly away.

Map of the women’s cooperative houses. Green signifies those listed as Significant Structures. Those in yellow are still standing but not listed. Those in black have been demolished. The red marker is Potter House, a Significant Structure that stood for 112 years before its demolition in August 2021.

A complete list of the cooperative houses with their locations, namesakes, years in use, and current status*

• Concord House, 129 Division Street. Named (perhaps) for Concordia, Roman goddess of harmony and social agreement. 1936–1950. Demolished. Second location, 225 Division Street. 1950–1956. Demolished.
• Rochdale House, 406 M.A.C. Avenue. Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. 1937–1956. Still standing.
• Benson House, 321 M.A.C. Avenue. Owner, Otie F. Benson. 1938–c.1951. Demolished.
• Robinson House, 123 Albert Street. Owner, Ella M. Robinson. 1938–1956. Demolished.
• Grove Street House, 428 Grove Street. 1938–1941. Still standing.
• Robinson (II) House, 262 W. Grand River Avenue. Also owned by the Robinsons. 1938–c.1939. Demolished.
• Bennett House, 512 W. Michigan Avenue. Owner, Dorothy E. Bennett. 1938–1940. Demolished.
• Cowles House, Faculty Row № 1. Alice B. Cowles, mother of Frederick Cowles Jenison (M.A.C. w/’07). 1939–1946. Demolished.
• Taft House, 446 Grove Street. Former owner, Ella Taft. 1940–1946. Significant Structure.
• Potter House, 334 Evergreen Avenue. Owner, Margaret D. Potter. 1940–1949. Significant Structure, demolished in August 2021.
• Ewing House, 307 Abbot Road. Owner, Meta Myrtle Ewing (M.A.C. ’21, MS Mathematics ’27), part-time Instructor in Mathematics at M.S.C. before a long career teaching math at Bay City Central High School. 1941–1953. Demolished.
• Sanford House, 437 Abbot Road. Owner, Cara Sanford. 1941–1956. Significant Structure.
• Shaw House, Faculty Row № 2. May Travis Shaw, former resident, wife of one President and mother-in-law of another. 1941–1946. Demolished.
• Bailey Street House, 214 Bailey Street. 1941–1942. Still standing.
• Fern Street House, 117 Fern Street. 1942–1946. Demolished.
• Catherine Black House, 118 Albert Street. Owned by Margaret Fabian but named for prior owner Catherine Black, who had been a student housing matron for the College since at least the early 1920s. 1945–1953. Demolished.

Editorial: In this author’s opinion, given its history as the oldest remaining women’s cooperative house, and its long standing within the program (nineteen out of twenty years), Rochdale House at 406 M.A.C. Avenue belongs on the East Lansing Historic Commission’s list of Landmark Structures.

Correction: This page originally stated that M.S.C. rented 129 Division Street “throughout the co-op era.” This author has since discovered that Concord House changed locations in 1950, meaning that today not one but two houses known as “Concord” are no longer standing.