Faculty Row № 9, 217 Beech St. (1884)

The community that is now East Lansing began on the campus of the Michigan Agricultural College, in its “Faculty Row.” Number 9, designed by William Appleyard and built in 1884, was the home of the Professor of Horticulture. Its first resident was Liberty Hyde Bailey.¹

After Professor Eustace resigned in 1919, the house was removed from Faculty Row. It was moved due north from its original position to the edge of the College grounds, and turned to face Grand River Avenue at a spot opposite the original Peoples Church. There it was “used as a music building with offices for the director and rooms for various musical clubs of the campus.” During the winter of 1920 it was also briefly conscripted as one of several quarantined “pest houses” to combat a campus outbreak of the worldwide influenza pandemic.²

In 1924, as the boulevard was built along Grand River Avenue (see The Elms), several buildings were in the path of the bulldozer. While most were torn down, Number 9 was moved a second time, to its present location on Beech Street. One of its early residents at this location was Jean Krueger, Dean of Home Economics 1924–1929, who lived in an apartment in the Women’s Building, and then at Faculty Row № 3, before moving here in 1929. Since 1979 it has been owned by Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority as an annex.³

Of the ten houses on Faculty Row, only two remain: Number 7 (in its original location but much modified as Cowles House, the President’s residence) and Number 9. Though its form is much the same, including a distinctive triangular dormer above the front porch and decorative bargeboards in the projecting gables, the clapboard siding is not original—photographs taken on campus show № 9 was veneered with brick, as specified by the Board.⁴

Faculty Row № 9 is an East Lansing Landmark Structure.

1. Minutes, 30 Dec 1884, p. 460. ↩︎
2. MAC Record, 25(4), 17 Oct 1919, p. 3; 25(22), 5 Mar 1920, p. 3. ↩︎
3. MAC Record, 29(30), 19 May 1924, p. 11. LCD (1928), p. 460; 1929) p. 394. ↩︎
4. Minutes, 11 Jun 1883, pp. 435–436. ↩︎