The Architects

The earliest years of the Michigan Agricultural College were marked by a slow rate of construction, its buildings designed by several different architects. The original trio of buildings—College Hall, Saints’ Rest, the brick horse barn, all 1856—are generally attributed to John C. Holmes. These were followed in 1857 by a quartet of professors’ residences by Scott & Bunnell of Toledo, Ohio. (This author assumes that President Williams, having recently moved from Toledo, is the reason for this out-of-state firm having been chosen.) For the next dozen years, only utility buildings—barns and a farm house—were added, all from faculty or vernacular designs and often built using student labor.

A new era of construction began in 1869, and with it a shift toward established architects. Williams Hall was designed by William Henry Mallory of Ann Arbor. Mallory is fairly obscure today but following a move to southern Ontario circa 1873 (or 1867, or 1877—sources vary) he became quite prolific and the patriarch of a three-generation family of architects.

The Chemical Laboratory of 1871 was by Dr. Kedzie, whose field was chemistry rather than architecture. The result was a fairly vernacular appearance but a professional functionality.

In 1874, the College hired Elijah E. Myers, fresh off his Michigan State Capitol commission, to design three residences on Faculty Row including the President’s home. There is a bit of intrigue here, although the Minutes never seem to face it head-on. All three houses had their share of issues, such as interior walls needing to be recalcimined due to “unslaked lime in the mortar.” There was some contentiousness from Myers too; he billed the College for additional expenses in supervising their construction, and he seems also to have balked at the fact that the College bought two designs but built three houses (as № 2 and № 3 were identical) without paying commission for the third. Negotiations were protracted, and complicated by the fact that Myers’ offices were at Detroit in a pre-telephone era. At one point board member Franklin Wells traveled to Detroit by train to resolve their differences, only to find Mr. Myers “absent from the city.” Given the travel conditions of the time this must have been a multi-day trip for naught. It took more than two years after the dwellings were completed before the contracts were finally closed.¹

Following this, and perhaps as a reaction to the difficulty of working with such distant firms, the Board began to look toward Lansing-based talent. The first of these was the firm of George Watkins and Ernest W. Arnold. Watkins & Arnold created three commissions over four years: the first Wells Hall, Faculty Row № 8, and the original Botany Lab.

Next came William P. Appleyard, born March 17, 1857, at Canandaigua, New York. His father, James Appleyard, moved the family to Lansing in 1872 when he was appointed as the general construction supervisor of the State Capitol building. Young William briefly attended Notre Dame but left without a degree. His first job upon returning to Lansing in 1874 was to design the flag walks at the Capitol, “undoubtedly a commission awarded by his father.” In 1881 Appleyard served as supervising architect on the M.A.C. Library–Museum, and for the next eight years he was the College’s architect of choice, as all major constructions either came from his hand or were built under his supervision: Faculty Row № 9 and № 10, Armory, Veterinary Lab, Mechanical Shops (as consultant on Carpenter’s plans), Abbot Hall, Howard Terrace, and Horticulture Lab. Three of these remain standing today.²

Appleyard left the field of architecture in 1890 to enter the railroad industry, joining the Pullman Company of Chicago as Mechanical Inspector. A few years later he moved to the New Haven Railroad and rose to the rank of Master Car Builder, developing a line of “curious” if not “radical” copper-sheathed passenger cars, said to increase cleanliness and reduce the amount of time a car spent in the paint shop. Appleyard returned to Pullman in 1904 as Superintendent of Equipment, but died the following year at age 49 when he was struck by a train at the Illinois Central’s 63rd Street Station in Chicago. Tragically, the train he was rushing to meet was carrying his wife Mary who was returning home after a trip to Lansing.

Before his untimely passing, and before he left the field of architecture, Appleyard had occasion to work for a time with the central figure in this tale, a man who was the single most important architect of the Michigan Agricultural College.

Edwyn A. Bowd

Edwyn Alfred Spencer Bowd was born November 11, 1865, at Cheltenham, England. He emigrated with his mother to Detroit in 1882 and started his career with architect Gordon W. Lloyd. After a few years Bowd moved to Saginaw, and around 1887 he arrived at Lansing where he associated with William Appleyard.

That same year of 1887, Appleyard and Bowd participated in a competition for designs of low-priced schoolhouses held by the New York State Department of Public Instruction. There were six size classes in the competition, ranging from a modest one-room schoolhouse to a five-room model with space for 250 students. Appleyard and Bowd submitted plans for three classes, and won first place in all three by unanimous decision.^†

Appleyard sold his share in the Lansing practice to Bowd in 1888, and after Appleyard changed his profession, the College’s next commissions, Old Botany and Station Terrace, went to Bowd. Although he would not contribute another building to the College for the next ten years, this was the start of a long and mutually beneficial partnership between Bowd and the College.^††

On January 1, 1902, Bowd was appointed College Architect on an annual retainer of $1500.³ As a result he was the principal architect for the vast majority of campus buildings for the next four decades until his death in 1940, including:

• Bacteriology Lab
• (2nd) Wells Hall
• Engineering Hall
• 1st addition, Old Botany
• Agriculture Hall
• 2nd addition, Chemical Lab
• (2nd) Dairy Building
• Veterinary Clinic
• Gymnasium
• Olds Hall
• M.A.C. Stadium (14,000 seat grandstand, now the oldest part of Spartan Stadium)
• Home Economics

Bowd was vastly prolific beyond campus as well, designing hundreds of buildings in a wide range of styles and for virtually every purpose, including residences, retail stores, banks, hotels, theatres, and especially civic and public structures such as churches, courthouses, libraries, hospitals, institutional buildings, and schools—more than can be adequately noted here. He designed the State of Michigan Building for the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, as well as the factories for many of the most famous names of Michigan’s industrial heyday: Olds Motor Works, REO Motors, E. Bement and Sons, Atlas Drop Forge, Peerless Motor Co., Lansing Wheelbarrow Co., Gier Pressed Steel Co., and many others.

Bowd-designed buildings from every era of his 58-year career can be found throughout the state. As a testament to their simple yet stylish design and solid construction, a great many of them still stand, including (in Lansing unless otherwise noted):

• First Baptist Church, 227 N. Capitol Ave., by Bowd & Mead (1892) [NR]
• German Methodist Episcopal Church, 221 W. Saginaw St. (1893)
• Carnegie Libraries in Lansing (210 W. Shiawassee St., 1903), Sault Ste. Marie (1908), and Owosso (1913)
• County Courthouses in Mason (Ingham Cnty., 1904), Stanton (Montcalm Cnty., 1910), and Cadillac (Wexford Cnty., 1913)
• Arbaugh’s Department Store, 401 S. Washington Ave. (1905)
• Governor Frank D. Fitzgerald House, Grand Ledge (1907)
• National Guard Armories in Ionia (1908) and Owosso (1915)
• Shiawassee Street School, Corunna (1909)
• St. Mary Cathedral, 219 Seymour Ave. (1911) and High School, 228 N. Walnut St. (1916)
• Genesee Street School, 835 W. Genesee St.(1912)
• Fay Hall, Michigan School for the Deaf, Flint (1913, renovated in 2012 as Powers Catholic High School)
• City Hall, Hillsdale (1913)
• “Old Main,” Michigan School for the Blind, 715 W. Willow St. (1915) [NR]
• Franklin Avenue Presbyterian Church, 108 W. Grand River Ave. (1916) [NR]
• Central School, East Lansing (1917, second on this site) [NR]
• Lewis Cass State Office Building, 316 S. Walnut St. (1919)
• Masonic Temple, 217 S. Capitol Ave. (1924) [NR]

In 1924, Bowd partnered with Orlie J. Munson (14 Dec 1891 – 6 Oct 1957), incorporating as Bowd–Munson in 1929. Along with many campus buildings (Library [now Museum], Old Horticulture, Wills House, Demonstration Hall, Anatomy, Abbot–Mason Halls), the duo is responsible for two of Lansing’s most distinctive and iconic buildings: the J. W. Knapp Company Building and the Ottawa Street Power Station (both 1937 and National Register entries).

After Bowd’s death in 1940, Munson continued the firm, although competition for campus commissions—especially from Ralph Calder, a former associate in the firm that had designed Kedzie Chem Lab and Mary Mayo Hall—decreased his exclusivity. Munson’s last major works for the school were Giltner Hall (1952), Anthony Hall (1955), and three additions to Spartan Stadium (1948, 1956, 1957) that increased its capacity by 52,500 seats.

1. Minutes, 17 Oct 1876, p. 307; 31 Jan 1877, p. 316; 17 Jul 1877, p. 324. ↩︎
2. LYA, p. 7. ↩︎
3. Minutes, 27 May 1902, p. 55. ↩︎

1. † Each of the Appleyard–Bowd designs included a notation—“DOTHEBOYS”— apparently in reference to Dotheboys Hall in Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby. As MacLean notes, “It is odd that this notation was added as Dotheboys Hall was not a nice place, overseen by the malicious Wackford Squeers.” [MacLean LYA, p. 122]

   No record has been found to indicate that any of the designs from this competition were ever built.↩︎

2. †† In William J. Beal’s History of the Michigan Agricultural College, architects Appleyard, Mallory, Myers, Watkins, Arnold, and even building contractors are all given credit for their work. Yet in all its 500-plus pages, Edwyn Bowd is never once mentioned by name. Given that at the time of writing Bowd was on staff as the official College Architect, and had just completed the centerpiece of the campus, its largest, grandest, and most important edifice—Agriculture Hall—it is difficult to imagine that this is anything other than a deliberate omission by Beal. This author is of the opinion that Beal held Bowd to blame for all the shortcomings of his replacement Botany Lab—even though the Board was responsible for its budget and all decisions on the matter—and slighted Bowd in his book out of spite.↩︎