Chester D. Woodbury was a Lansing businessman and one of the developers of the Oakwood subdivision. When Woodbury and his wife May lived in this residence, it was located at 292 Grand River Avenue (later renumbered to 110 West Grand River), on a double lot between Abbot Road and Evergreen Avenue. It was designed by noted Lansing architect Darius B. Moon, one of three homes designed by Moon for the Woodburys.1
In 1911 the Woodburys sold the house to the Hesperian Society, a local fraternity, which used it until 1926, when it was sold to the East Lansing Development Corporation so that the site could be redeveloped as the Abbott commercial building and State Theatre. The house was moved to 323 Ann Street where it was renamed “The Eldon” and used as a women’s dormitory annex until the construction of Mary Mayo Hall on campus in 1931. In 1948 it became Howland House, an independent student cooperative.2
In 1984 the former Woodbury house was again in the path of redevelopment, this time on the large lot bordered by M.A.C. and Albert Avenues, Ann and Charles Streets—now the University Place hotel complex. Preservation advocates suggested relocating it, but skeptics doubted that such a large structure could be moved and demolition seemed likely. Fortunately the historical record showed that the house had already been relocated once before, and it was moved to its present location at 415 M.A.C. Avenue. Its neighbor, the gambrel-roofed 427 M.A.C. (visible on the right of the above photograph), was moved from 343 Albert on the same day. One witness described the two houses’ slow progress through the East Lansing downtown as “a short but impressive parade.”
As an aside: 343 Albert Avenue, built 1930 as the Fleck Apartments and used since the 1950s as a fraternity house, was in the late-’60s the home of the New Community student co-op, which at the time was a haven for students espousing progressive (and sometimes radical) social change. Among the contributions of its members were the formation of the Student Housing Cooperative, and what is now the oldest operating crisis center in the nation, The Listening Ear. The building, now at 427 M.A.C. and currently a sorority house, arguably has significance in East Lansing history, but is not listed among its Significant Structures.3
When the Woodbury house stood in Oakwood, it was even more dramatic and decorative than it is today. A wraparound porch extended partway down the right-side elevation, capped by a small second-floor porch. The main porch had siding that flared at its base on all sides and echoed the flared edges that may still be seen along the eaves and between the first and second floor. The porch was truncated long before the house arrived on M.A.C. Avenue. In addition, the first floor of the house originally had a brick veneer, rather than the wood siding seen today; this appears to have changed during the 1926 move to Ann Street. Iron cresting with finials at each gable end, a typical Darius Moon decorative touch, have also been lost.4
Nevertheless, many of its most distinctive elements remain: a curved bay window that extends through the eave to a similarly shaped dormer, “which gives the illusion of a tower, especially since the dormer is covered by a false conical roof;” a recessed third-floor porch in the gable, now facing south; the oval window in the front façade, similar to those Moon used on the lamented and long-demolished R. E. Olds mansion. Even in its modified state, and after more than a century as student housing, the house remains “one of the architectural ornaments of East Lansing.”5
Today this house is one of the last examples of several large, stately homes built in East Lansing in the first decade of the twentieth century. It also is a rare existing design by the prolific Darius Moon, on a list of his surviving buildings that is now altogether too short.
The C. D. Woodbury House is listed on the state historic register and is an East Lansing Landmark Structure.
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