Orvil J. Ayrs House, 320 M.A.C. Ave. (1915)

Orvil James Ayrs (1882–1964) was a local developer, an Alderman (council member) of the City during the 1920s and a board member of the East Lansing State Bank. He served as Grand Master of the nearby Masonic Lodge in 1938. Ayrs was a “master carpenter and plumber and worked personally on every house built under his name. These houses were—and are—all wood frame, modest by today’s standards, but fine family houses with oak flooring, tall gables, and clapboard or shingle siding. In the late 1920s the claim was made that O. J. Ayrs had built half of the young city.”¹

Prior to building this house, Ayrs lived at 134 Center Street, known to the East Lansing Historic Commission as the Butterfield–Ayers House. Other nearby houses attributed to Ayrs are 406, 426, 501, and 525 M.A.C. Avenue, and 316 Elizabeth Street. 501 M.A.C. was built in 1910 on the northeast corner of M.A.C. and Grand River Avenues as a rooming house called the ”Campus Club.” For most of the 1920s it housed the Trimoira Literary Society.^† It was moved to 501 M.A.C. in July 1954 and has been owned by the Student Housing Cooperative since 1973.²

1. Kestenbaum, p. 25. ↩︎
2. LSJ, 21 Jul 1954, p. 36; 27 Jul 1954, p. 12. ↩︎

1. † For more on the literary societies and their evolution into fraternities and sororities, see the Union Literary Society House.↩︎