College Grove (1903)

Edward Parmelee was an early Lansing manufacturer who owned a sawmill and woolen factory in north Lansing. Among his assets, by 1859 he owned a 97-acre piece of farmland which fronted on Grand River Avenue and extended north to the section line, now Burcham Drive, and from the township line (Abbot Road) east to near the present Bailey Street. Although Parmelee is not believed to have worked the farm himself, a clapboard house for his tenants stood near what today is the northeast corner of M.A.C. Avenue and Grand River Avenue.¹

Horace B. and Clara E. Angell purchased the Parmelee farm in May 1901. They soon copartnered in the venture with Charles H. Chase, a friend since boyhood of Horace’s who owned and published a newspaper in Ithaca. On May 8, 1903, the Angells platted a southwest portion of the farm into “College Grove.” Chase was not listed in the plat documents.²

College Grove “offered the first opportunity for the development of a business district.” The promoters provided the plat with water and sewer service, making it the first with community systems independent of the College. “A six-inch rock well near M.A.C. Avenue on the alley between Grand River Avenue and Albert Street supplied the water… until the city water supply was installed. Sewage… was conducted to a large septic tank near the alley on Charles Street between Albert Avenue and Grand River Avenue, [and from there to] an underground drain crossing the campus to the [Red] Cedar River.”³

Albert Street was named for Angell’s father, and Anna Street (later shortened to “Ann”) for his and Clara’s daughter; Charles and Elizabeth Streets were named for Chase and his wife, Mary Elizabeth. The east side of Abbot Road was called Wildwood Avenue in the plat, but that name only lasted for a few years after the city was chartered. Grand River Avenue was named “The Elms” along the south side of the plat, in honor of the double row of elms across the way. The short block of M.A.C. Avenue from Grand River to Albert was called Summit Place, a grandiose name considering its distinct lack of elevation change.⁴

The first commercial building in College Grove was the two-story, two-storefront Chase Block, built by Charles Chase in 1903–1904 on Grand River Avenue, just east of Abbot Road. Its initial businesses (a grocery and an ice cream parlor) quickly failed, but around 1908 Anton Bauer and Edwin Higgs opened the College Drug Store and Grocery, advertised “with good cafe in connection.” The College Cafe, operated by Higgs and his family, lasted until about 1924. “College Drug” gradually expanded and was a popular student hangout and eatery for several decades afterward.⁵

In 1915, Chase expanded the building to the west and north, adding six storefronts facing Abbot Road from Grand River Avenue to the alley. The brick addition was designed by College Architect Edwyn Bowd. One of the first businesses to move in was East Lansing’s first theatre, the Elmac, operated by Earl M. Harvey (M.A.C. ’15, M.S. ’16). The theatre closed after a few years, and he soon moved his other venture, the Harvey Photo Shop, into the space. The East Lansing State Bank was another early tenant. Charles and Elizabeth Chase lived in an apartment on the second floor of the new Chase Block until his death in 1931. The single-story south half of the new block, and all of the old block on Grand River Avenue, were razed in 1939 and replaced with the Goodspeed Building, which remains (as does the two-story portion of the Chase Block—the former Elmac theatre building—at 210 Abbot Road).⁶

Today College Grove is the very core of the city, yet the Angell–Chase partnership that started it was surprisingly short-lived. Only two years after the plat was filed, a disagreement led Chase to sue Angell for dissolution of their partnership. Angell denied that an official partnership ever existed, given that the Angells had purchased the land and that Chase’s name did not appear on the title deed or the documents of the College Grove plat filing. Chase’s role, while by all accounts materially substantial, seems to have been based on a handshake agreement. However that was enough for the circuit court, which determined that the relation existed and decreed for an equitable division of the land assets. Both sides took exception to the ruling on various grounds and the case went all the way to the state Supreme Court in 1906. In the end, the decision was upheld and the unsold lots of College Grove were split evenly between Angell and Chase, including two larger lots numbered 78 and 79. These were split into a patchwork of large parcels (see map above) which provided a framework for the streets and lots that were later platted, including the appropriately named Division Street.⁷

Among the parcels apportioned to Angell was the entirety of Lot 80, the area west of Grove Street and north of Albert Avenue, which remained a pristine native woods. Angell and Chase had made a verbal agreement to exclude it from their business dealings so that it might be used as a public park. After the partnership dissolved, Angell platted the wood lot into twenty-four “large lots facing Abbot and Grove and running back to the middle of the wooded area. Failing to attract buyers, he replatted it into its present form” of ninety-eight much smaller lots, clearing the timber for lumber. Park Lane, despite its seemingly innocuous and prosaic name, is a somewhat cynical reminder of what could have existed here.⁸

E. J. Rugg House, 319 Grove St. (1903)
C. D. Woodbury Mansion, 415 M.A.C. Ave. (1903) SR
C. M. Dickson House, 505 Albert St. (1909)
A. B. Krentel House, 709 Grove St. (c. 1910)
H. A. Childs House, 343 M.A.C. Ave. (1911)
Orvil J. Ayrs House, 320 M.A.C. Ave. (1915)
Harry Harvey House, 527 Elizabeth St. (1915)
Masonic Temple, 314 M.A.C. Ave. (1916) NR
Taft House, 446 Grove St. (1921)
Linda E. Landon House, 447 Grove St. (c. 1918)
Newell A. McCune House, 504 Abbot Rd. (1919)
H. K. Vedder House, 447 Charles St. (1922)
Faculty Row № 9, 217 Beech St. (1884)
Gov. Wilber M. Brucker House, 621 M.A.C. Ave. (c. 1925 – c. 1999)
Sanford Farness House, 730 Grove St. (1964)

Next: Fairview

1. Geil & Co. (1859). Beers, p. 51. MAC Record, 26(30), 20 May 1921, p. 8. ↩︎
2. Chase v. Angell, 148 Mich 1 (1906). ↩︎
3. Towar, p. 47. ↩︎
4. Towar, pp. 95–96. LCD (1919) p. 276. Sanborn (1913) p. 105. ↩︎
5. Towar, pp. 46–47. MAC Record, 16(2), 27 Sep 1910, p. 4. LCD (1910), p. 221; (1919) pp. 216, 289, 537. ↩︎
6. American Contractor, Vol. 36(40) (1915) p. 62. Miller, pp. 25, 69. Kestenbaum, p. 12. ↩︎
7. Kestenbaum, p. 13. Chase v. Angell, 148 Mich 1 (1906). ↩︎
8. Towar, p. 47. Chase v. Angell, 148 Mich 1 (1906). ↩︎