Oakwood (1899)

On March 3, 1899, Chester D. Woodbury, Judge Edward Cahill, and Dr. Johnson W. Hagadorn purchased a fifty-five-acre portion of the Manly Miles farm which fronted on Grand River Avenue from Abbot Road west for a quarter mile, and north to where Burcham Drive has its western end today. Two months later they sold an undivided one-fourth interest to Arthur C. Bird (M.A.C. ’83), secretary of the State Board of Agriculture 1899–1902. They employed Professor H. K. Vedder to design “Oakwood,” comprising eighty-two lots of about one-quarter acre in size, plus two large outlots numbered 83 and 84. The plat was filed on June 17, 1899. (Lot 83, which prior to modern drainage was swampland, was partially subdivided on October 29, 1903. Its largest remaining lot is now Valley Court Park.)¹

Oakwood was named for a stand of native oak trees that stood north of the aptly named Oakhill Avenue. Most of the trees were later cleared, though one massive oak was retained, overlooking the valley. In 1976 it was estimated to be nearly 300 years old. By 1992 the tree was gone, but its huge, eight-foot-diameter stump, near 316 Oakhill, was still evident in 2019.²

Before it succumbed to its inevitable role as the main commercial axis of East Lansing, Grand River Avenue (briefly called Miles Avenue along the south side of Oakwood) was lined with an impressive trio of large houses built for three of Oakwood’s developers: Hagadorn, Woodbury, and Bird. Only one of these houses is still standing, and none of them remain along Grand River Avenue.

The first house to be supplanted by commercial construction was that of J. W. Hagadorn, whose Darius Moon-designed house was built in 1905 on the northwest corner of Grand River and Evergreen Avenue. After the East Lansing State Bank was incorporated in 1916, it constructed the first commercial building in Oakwood, at that corner; to accommodate it, the house was moved to the rear of the property and faced Evergreen. The “imposing new ‘bank block’ of dark brown and white glazed brick” was completed in 1917 and stood for one hundred years. The house was used as student housing, in various forms, for almost its entire existence until it was destroyed by fire in 1972. A restaurant later occupied part of the site.³

The Woodbury home, another Moon design, built in 1903 but owned since 1911 by the Hesperian Society, was on a double lot facing Grand River between Abbot and Evergreen. As the young city grew, this house at the very center of downtown was seen as an impediment to commercial growth. The East Lansing Development Corporation was formed in 1926 with the express purpose of acquiring the property; it soon did so and moved the house to 323 Ann Street. The Hesperians used the proceeds to build a new, fancier edifice at 810 W. Grand River, and became a chapter of Psi Upsilon in 1943, the last of the local societies to affiliate with a national fraternity.⁴

Construction soon began on “The Abbott,” a $500,000 commercial building designed by Bowd and Munson. It opened in 1927 and provided a new home for the East Lansing State Bank, retail space for several other businesses, and the movie house known as the State Theatre. The Abbott^† (sans theatre) received a modern update to its façade in 1969. It was demolished along with its neighbor to the west, the 1917 bank building, in October 2017.⁵

To the west of the Hagadorn house (and later the 1917 bank block) stood the home of A. C. Bird, who built his Queen Anne on the former site of the log house that was home to Robert Burcham, the original settler of the farmland. At the time of its construction the house faced the apex of the Delta at the eastern end of Michigan Avenue. It was purchased from Bird’s estate by the Phi Delta Society in 1912. An addition to Peoples Church replaced the house in 1965.⁶

Today, the southeast portion of Oakwood is the subject of some much-needed redevelopment. Several buildings, many of them vacant for years, have been cleared away in anticipation. The former Evergreen Arms apartments at 341–345 Evergreen Avenue and a two-story bank building at 303 Abbot Road were demolished in summer 2016. Both East Lansing State Bank buildings, the original from 1917 and the “Abbott” from 1927, were torn down in October 2017 to some fanfare and relief; they had stood vacant and blighted for about a decade.

A project called the “Park District,” calling for “a 13-story mixed-use building at 100 West Grand River Avenue, a 10-story hotel between there and Peoples Church at 130 West Grand River Avenue, and a 5-story moderate-income apartment building just north of there, at 341 Evergreen Avenue,” began in early 2018. The tallest building opened in August 2020 and was dubbed “The Abbot” after its predecessor building at that location; the Graduate Hotel was completed in spring 2021. An adjacent development, called “Park Place,” was expected to replace several buildings including two listed among the East Lansing Historic Commission’s Significant Structures: the Old Post Office at 327 Abbot Road and the Justice William W. Potter House at 334 Evergreen Avenue. The project was rejected by city council in October 2019, offering a temporary reprieve to both. However, in April 2021 workers broke ground for a new headquarters building for MSUFCU on the city’s former parking lot #4 and announced that the Potter house would be demolished to provide a staging area for construction. It was razed in August 2021.⁷

James DeLoss Towar House, 507 Abbot Rd. (1904)
Charles B. Collingwood House, 526 Sunset Lane (1905)
Babcock–Sanford House, 437 Abbot Rd. (1907)
W. O. Hedrick House, 220 Oakhill Ave. (1909)
Justice William W. Potter House, 334 Evergreen Ave. (1909–2021)
Peoples Church, 200 W. Grand River Ave. (1924)
Old Post Office, 327 Abbot Rd. (1933)

Next: College Grove

1. Towar, p. 70. ↩︎
2. Kestenbaum, p. 33. ↩︎
3. MacLean, p. 249. Kestenbaum, pp. 10, 21. ↩︎
4. MSC Record, 48(3), May 1943, p. 9. ↩︎
5. Kestenbaum, pp. 26–28. ↩︎
6. Towar, pp. 45, 70. Kestenbaum, p. 10. ↩︎
7. ELi, 19 Sep 2017, 24 Jan 2019, 26 Jan 2019, 9 Oct 2019, 12 Apr 2021. ↩︎

1. † Abbot Road is named for Theophilus C. Abbot, the college’s third President. Some time after 1915 (likely in the early 1920s when the college’s main Grand River Avenue entrance was shifted east from opposite Evergreen Avenue to become an extension of Abbot Road), the spelling of the road north of Grand River Avenue was changed to Abbott — with two “t”s. This resulted in decades of confusion. To commemorate the city’s centennial, on 2 October 2007 the East Lansing City Council enacted Ordinance No. 1179, reestablishing the Abbot Road name.↩︎