Cedar Banks — the women’s prison that never was

A variation of this article, in tweet-thread form, was originally published in November 2018.

Tucked away in the woods southeast of Okemos, on a roughly hundred-acre lot next to the Red Cedar River, stands the transmitter antenna of Michigan State University’s WKAR-TV and WKAR-FM radio.

It is not odd for M.S.U. to own a piece of land so close to, yet separate from, the main body of campus. After all, the Agricultural College received many pieces of government-controlled land in the 1855 and 1862 land grants. An 1859 map shows more than a dozen parcels totalling over 1,000 acres in Meridian Township alone, not including campus itself.¹

This, however, is not one of those parcels. This particular piece of land came to be owned by Michigan State in a unique way.

In 1917, the state legislature enacted a law to establish the “Michigan State Training School for Women.” The name was, to be frank, both optimistic and euphemistic: it was in fact a reformatory, a model women’s prison. As its proponents explained, “the aim will be to train women who have been convicted of crime, in suitable industrial arts, farming, domestic science, etc., for the purpose of reclaiming them and making them self-supporting.”²

In short, it was intended to provide vocational training as a form of rehabilitation. Yet the “Act establishing the Michigan State Training School for Women” had no official mention of what it meant to be a “training school,” and no provision for such facilities—which seems a particularly significant detail to omit.³

Governor Albert Sleeper signed the bill into law in April 1917, but waited until December of that year to appoint a five-member board of control, three of whom were women. All five were Republicans like Sleeper, and active in the party:

• Chairman Homer E. Buck, “pioneer businessman” of Bay City
• Secretary Emma Nichols Wanty, M.D., physician and longtime member of the Grand Rapids Board of Education
• Anna Thompson Dodge, of Detroit, wife of Horace Elgin Dodge, younger of the Dodge Brothers^†
• Susan M. Ogg, of Detroit, wife of former state senator Robert Young Ogg
• Samuel S. Riley, of Lansing, photographer

Governor Sleeper then asked the board to defer any action until after World War One was concluded, which is one reason why they did not come to a decision on a location for the prison until December 1918, a full year after their appointments. The site, a 95-acre tract that easily satisfied the act’s specification “not to exceed 160 acres,” was in Meridian Township and straddled the Red Cedar River, which led to it being known colloquially as “Cedar Banks.”^††4

Located in the rich farmland south of Okemos, the site was chosen in part because its bucolic setting was hoped to “provide wholesome surroundings for the rehabilitation of wayward women.” The grounds would have vegetable gardens and fruit orchards, to be tended by the inmates who were to be carefully selected from the populations of other correctional facilities on the basis of good behavior.⁵

The prison was to be what we might call minimum-security: for example, no bars on the windows. Its buildings were designed by none other than Edwyn Bowd to include an administration building, three dormitory buildings, a power house for steam heat and electric lighting, and a laundry. Although some sources claimed there would also be facilities for recreation—not to mention the training school itself—these did not appear in the initial request for construction bids in May 1919.⁶

Also among the planned facilities was a nursery. Children less than 12 months old could accompany their inmate mothers, which sounds nice until we get to the ominous line in the law, “until such time as… [the child] may be properly removed therefrom and be taken care of elsewhere.” Nevertheless, Cedar Banks was seen as a “wonder prison,” intended to be the most advanced penal institution in the state if not the nation, and the embodiment of the latest thinking in prison reform during the late Progressive Era.⁷

The state’s contractors began to build the power house, and erected a bridge over the river to provide access from Dobie Road. Meanwhile the Pere Marquette railroad, which ran along the south edge of the property, was reported to have broken ground on a spur and siding for delivery of supplies and building materials, with a station to follow. Construction of the remaining prison buildings was expected to be completed by October 1, 1919.⁸

However, it was not to be. At first, the project had strong support. The 1917 and 1919 legislatures appropriated more than $615,000 toward it. But the next legislative session, in 1921, not only stopped appropriations on the project but “wiped out the balance of the original fund” which put all work on hold. At that point, nearly $135,000 had already been spent on land acquisition, construction, and architects’ fees—about $1.65 million in today’s dollars.⁹

Governor Alex J. Groesbeck tried to convince the 1923 legislature to provide more funding but could not get traction. The project even lost the support of the same women’s groups that had first backed it. They feared it was too near to the Agricultural College campus, that somehow it “could be extremely detrimental to developing young minds at the growing state college.” This despite the fact that the site was more than two miles from campus as the crow flies, nearly five via existing roads.¹⁰

Groesbeck tried again in 1926 and found a sponsor in the state senate, but the bill failed to pass a house vote. His successor in 1927, Fred W. Green, appointed a special committee to review the project; the six-member group split evenly between completion and abandonment. Governor Green swiftly pulled the plug.¹¹

In the 1930s a Works Progress Administration class from Michigan State College dynamited the power house smokestack. The steel-and-concrete bridge across the river was also demolished as a WPA project.

At some point, the state transferred the land to M.S.U. The transmitter equipment house was built in 1954, designed by the late Bowd’s former partner, Orlie Munson.

A 1965 Lansing State Journal article, which mistakenly credits a different architect for the prison’s design, surveyed the leftover ruins: chunks of concrete from the power house walls and the bridge abutments, dripping with vines and moss, resembling the “remains of an ancient temple.” Today, very little sign of the training school project remains.¹²

Disclaimer: This article is not intended in any way to suggest that anyone should visit or enter this property without express authorization. The site is fenced off, “no trespassing” signs are clearly posted, and access is tightly restricted. Besides, there is nothing to see anyway beyond some raw woodland and transmitter towers. Better to stand at this (virtual) distance and imagine what almost was.

1. Geil & Co. map of Ingham and Livingston Counties (1859) [LOC] ↩︎
2. Detroit Free Press, 26 Feb 1917 p. 8. ↩︎
3. Michigan Public Act 259 (1917). ↩︎
4. LSJ, 4 Jan 1919, p. 1. ↩︎
5. LSJ, 19 Sep 1965, p. 49. ↩︎
6. Detroit Free Press, 23 May 1919, p. 3. ↩︎
7. Mich. P.A. 259 (1917), Sec. 13. LSJ, 19 Sep 1965, p. 49. ↩︎
8. Detroit Free Press, 18 May 1919, p. 50. ↩︎
9. Ironwood Daily Globe, 13 Aug 1921, p. 3. ↩︎
10. Benton Harbor News-Palladium, 19 Dec 1922, p. 3. Detroit Free Press, 30 Sep 1923, p. 13. LSJ, 19 Sep 1965, p. 49. ↩︎
11. Battle Creek Moon-Journal, 3 Mar 1926, p. 1. Detroit Free Press, 5 Mar 1926, p. 2; 28 Apr 1927, p. 9. LSJ, 6 Mar 1926, p. 1. ↩︎
12. LSJ, 19 Sep 1965, p. 49. ↩︎

1. † Anna Thompson Dodge and her sister-in-law Matilda Rausch Dodge would inherit their husbands’ automobile company when both brothers died in 1920; when they sold it in 1925 they became two of the richest women in the world.↩︎
2. †† Not to be confused with “Cedar Bank,” the subdivision platted in 1900 by the Harrison family on part of what is now the Brody Neighborhood at M.S.U.↩︎