The Trolley Station (1902–1924)

When the Lansing City Electric Railway Company extended its streetcar tracks onto campus in 1897, the College built a small waiting room at the terminus north of Faculty Row № 6. It was a necessary expedient but woefully undersized, particularly when the streetcar service saw its ridership rapidly increase thanks to its improved convenience for students.

The “Post Office and Trolley Station”—not be confused with Station Terrace, which stood nearby—was built in 1902 to specifications made by Architect Bowd. It replaced the original waiting room and was built, in part, using materials recycled from a woodshed that had stood behind Howard Terrace. The structure was eventually expanded to both the north and south, and what started as a little utility building (and today is all but forgotten) ended up serving a wide range of purposes during its twenty-two-year lifetime:

• The waiting room for the streetcar line, apparently for its entire existence. For a great many students, this was the first building they encountered upon arrival to campus.
• The campus post office, from 1902 until that service moved to Station Terrace in 1910.
• The M.A.C. Book Buying Association, a cooperative bookstore first organized by Wilbur O. Hedrick in 1896, from 1903 until 1919.
• Around 1916, Harvey’s Photo Shop. Earl Munn Harvey (M.A.C. ’15, M.S. ’16) was also the proprietor of the short-lived Elmac Theatre.
• The alumni association office (1916–1922).
• The “Flower Pot Tea Room,” a small restaurant operated by alumnae of the Home Economics department (1921–1923) which began its existence in a tool shed behind the Horticultural Laboratory (hence its name).^†
• Finally, following the closure of the tea room, in the fall of 1923 was “utilized by the class in institutional management to conduct a training table for the football squad.”

When a new, formal boulevard was built in 1924 (now Abbot Entrance), the short railway loop and the trolley station were removed along with several other buildings. An idea was floated to re-purpose the trolley station as a canoe shelter near the Red Cedar River, and while such a building was erected during the summer of 1924, it is not clear whether the old depot served that need. It more likely was demolished. On its former site now stands Louise H. Campbell Hall.

Sources:
Minutes, 30 Oct 1902, pp. 97–98; 16 Jun 1915, p. 206; 13 Jul 1917, p. 265.
MAC Record, 16(26), 21 Mar 1911, p. 3; 21(25), 4 Apr 1916, p. 4; 22(9), 21 Nov 1916, p. 1; 25(1), 19 Sep 1919, p. 3; 29(3), 8 Oct 1923, p. 7; 29(30), 19 May 1924, p. 11; 30(2), 29 Sep 1924, p. 20.

1. † An interesting article in the MSU CAP blog was the first to clue in this author as to this use, and discusses its context within the early days of the institutional management program. Unfortunately that article contains two notable errors: the tool shed was behind the Hort Lab, not “Old Horticulture” (which was not built until 1924), and the tea room moved from the shed into the trolley station, not Station Terrace.↩︎