Category: M.A.C. Buildings

Alongside the hallowed halls of College Hall and Saints’ Rest, this modest, 28-by-40-foot barn was constructed in 1856–57 of the same locally produced bricks. It stabled the college’s horses until a much larger “New” Horse Barn was completed in 1872, after which it was used as a carpentry shop. Like its two contemporaries, the building suffered from the…

When the Agricultural College opened its doors in 1857, its farm buildings consisted of one simple, brick horse barn. Out of convenience, it was placed about midway between College Hall and the centerline of the farm (soon to be Farm Lane). The next barn of record was not completed until after the Reorganization of 1861. The first cattle barn (1862)…

The student body of the Michigan Agricultural College grew rapidly in the first years of the twentieth century. From an enrollment totalling 652 students in 1900, the College had more than 1,700 in 1911. The main lecture hall in College Hall had become far too small for seminars. Meanwhile, although the College library’s growth “had not kept…

This building, the oldest on campus that survives in essentially its original form, was constructed in 1881 under the supervision of architect William P. Appleyard. It was designed by the Detroit firm of Marsh & Arnold in the Romanesque style popular during that era, and its elaborate façade with details in buff Indiana limestone and Michigan fieldstone…

For the first few decades of the Michigan Agricultural College, the daily life of the student was, to put it mildly, rustic. The first dormitory buildings Saints’ Rest, Williams Hall, Wells Hall, and Abbot Hall had no indoor plumbing. They relied on surface wells for their water supply with, one presumes, conscripted freshmen to haul the water. These wells occasionally…

Military service was a factor in the life of every student in the early years of the College for the obvious reason: the Civil War of 1861–65. The first M.A.C. graduating class, ’61, was excused from classes two weeks early so that its members could enlist in the Union army. (One of the seven seniors,…

As the student population of the College steadily grew, a third dormitory was built in 1888 to ease the burden of Williams and Wells halls. The hall was named for Theophilus Capen Abbot (1826–1892). Dr. Abbot joined M.A.C. as Professor of English in 1858, then taught Civil Engineering prior to the Reorganization of 1861. In 1866 he became acting Secretary…

When the Michigan Agricultural College was founded in 1855, its primary purpose was to provide an education in scientific agriculture. Yet at the time, the field of scientific agriculture barely existed even as a concept. The College’s early years were marked by rudimentary experimentation and, occasionally, a steep learning curve. A famous example is the…

This modest building was designed by Professor Samuel Johnson and constructed under the supervision of Professor Rolla Carpenter as the first agricultural laboratory at M.A.C. Considering that the College’s main focus was agriculture, the laboratory was probably undersized even when it opened. Its lack of space was compounded by a well-intentioned Board of Agriculture that had, in…