Category: Significant Structures
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Hillcrest Village Apartments, 540 Glenmoor Rd. (1937)
Significant as the first multiple-building apartment complex within East Lansing (the site was annexed to the city in the same year as its construction), Hillcrest Village was built in two phases as a collection of tidy, red-brick, Colonial Revival row houses. The site’s arrangement, contrary to most apartment complexes’ broad parking lots and anonymous entryways,…
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Edward Porter Kinney House, 829 E. Grand River Ave. (c. 1903 – c. 1987)
Edward Porter Kinney (1867–1955) founded the Capitol Electric Supply and National Coil Company in 1895, later known as the Capitol Electric Engineering Company. “As proprietor and president of this company, Kinney supervised many electrical engineering jobs throughout the Lansing area including work on the Capitol and on the Michigan Agricultural College campus. E. P. Kinney married Wilhelmina…
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Linda E. Landon House, 447 Grove St. (c. 1918)
Linda Eoline (Vought) Landon (1856–1942) was born May 9, 1856, at Niles. In 1877 she married Rufus Wharton Landon, a man 41 years her senior, and together they had two sons, Rufus Jr and Lee. Her husband died in 1886, and at some point Linda taught for two years in the public schools of Kalamazoo.…
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Michigan State Medical Society Building, 120 W. Saginaw Hwy. (1961)
The Michigan State Medical Society was established in 1866 “to elevate professional and medical education and to cultivate the advancement of medical science.” Among its early presidents was Professor Robert C. Kedzie. After nearly a century of itinerant existence in various rental properties at Detroit and (later) Lansing, in 1959 the society commissioned famed architect Minoru…
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Justice William W. Potter House, 334 Evergreen Ave. (1909—2021)
William W. Potter (1869–1940) had a distinguished, forty-year career in Michigan politics, having been state senator, gubernatorial candidate, and attorney general. From 1927 to 1931 he was president of the Michigan State Bank at East Lansing. In 1928 he was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court, and served a term as Chief Justice in 1935.…
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Rollo May House, 202 Collingwood (1922)
Rollo May (1909–1994) is considered by some to be one of the most influential American existential psychoanalysts of the twentieth century. However, the College did not have anywhere near as high regard for him during the brief period that he resided in this house. As an undergraduate at M.S.C. (1926–1928), “he created and co-edited a…
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Gov. George Romney House, 1045 Rosewood Ave. (1945)
George W. Romney (1907–1995) became the 43rd Governor of Michigan on January 1, 1963, following his win in the 1962 election. Romney and his wife Lenore made their home in Bloomfield Hills, and at that time the state had not yet established an official governor’s mansion, so they rented this house in order to live…
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E. J. Rugg House, 319 Grove St. (1903)
This house formerly stood at 201 E. Grand River, due south of its current location, next door to the Dickson house. It has been a rental property for nearly its entire existence, such as housing the Phylean Literary Society for the 1915–16 school year.† In its last year or two on Grand River, the Rugg house was home to…
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Jacob Schepers House, 335 Hillcrest Ave. (1905)
Jacob Schepers (1876–1955) was an accountant, banker, real estate agent, insurance man, and politician, and while his name may not be widely known today he played an integral role in East Lansing’s growth for decades. Schepers was born at Lafayette, Indiana, and attended Hope College and the Ferris Institute. In 1901 he married Henrietta Baker…