Charles W. Bachman Jr (1892–1985) was a collegiate football coach whose noteworthy thirty-five-year career included stints at Northwestern, Kansas State, Florida, Michigan State, and Hillsdale. As head coach at Michigan State College from 1933 to 1946, he amassed a record of 70–34–10. Famously, he outfitted his Spartans in gold and black uniforms instead of the official school colors of green and white. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1978.
Coach Bachman’s son Charles W. Bachman III (1924–2017, ELHS ’43, M.S.C. ’48) was a computer scientist and industrial software engineer who was a pioneering developer of database management systems. His “Bachman Diagrams” are ubiquitous today in database design, and during his lifetime he received numerous awards for his contributions to the science.
Charles Bachman Jr commissioned this house in 1936 from Midland-based architect Alden B. Dow (1904–1983) and it was completed the following year. It is an excellent example of the International Modern style, and is significant for being Dow’s only 1930s residential work in the greater Lansing area.
The square geometric patterns on several walls are not merely decorative, they are evidence that this house was constructed using Dow’s patented “Unit Blocks,” a ingenious system of interlocking cinder blocks whose unique shapes contribute to the structural integrity of the walls. The blocks could also be considered a form of early recycling since they were made from waste material generated by the furnaces of the Dow Chemical Company—founded in Midland by Alden’s father, Herbert Henry Dow.
The Bachman house is one of only thirteen homes (most of them in the Midland area) built using Unit Blocks between 1934 and 1940, after which Dow moved on to other building materials. He was an innovative architect and quite prolific, designing more than 560 projects during a fifty-year career—including Eastminster Presbyterian Church on Abbot Road in 1959. In his final year, Alden B. Dow was named architect laureate of the State of Michigan.
The connection between the Bachman and Dow families goes further. After earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1950, Charles Bachman III went to work for Dow Chemical in Midland. During the decade he worked there, Charles and his family lived at 1125 East Haley Street, designed by Alden Dow as “Small House № 100,” a prototype of low-cost housing for veterans returning from World War II.
The Charles W. Bachman House is an East Lansing Landmark Structure.
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