{"id":1470,"date":"2024-04-26T20:11:49","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T20:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/?p=1470"},"modified":"2024-04-26T20:14:08","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T20:14:08","slug":"ayrs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/ayrs\/","title":{"rendered":"Orvil J. Ayrs House, 320 M.A.C. Ave. (1915)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
O. J. Ayrs House, November\u00a02003. Photo by Kevin S. Forsyth.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Orvil James Ayrs (1882\u20131964) was a local developer, an Alderman (council member) of the City during the 1920s and a board member of the\u00a0East Lansing State Bank<\/a>. He served as Grand Master of the nearby\u00a0Masonic Lodge<\/a>\u00a0in 1938. Ayrs was a \u201cmaster carpenter and plumber and worked personally on every house built under his name. These houses were\u2014and are\u2014all wood frame, modest by today\u2019s standards, but fine family houses with oak flooring, tall gables, and clapboard or shingle siding. In the late 1920s the claim was made that O. J. Ayrs had built half of the young city.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to building this house, Ayrs lived at 134 Center Street, known to the East Lansing Historic Commission as the\u00a0Butterfield\u2013Ayers House<\/a>. Other nearby houses attributed to Ayrs are 406, 426, 501, and 525 M.A.C. Avenue, and 316 Elizabeth Street.\u00a0501 M.A.C. was built in 1910 on the northeast corner of M.A.C. and Grand River Avenues as a rooming house called the \u201dCampus Club.\u201d For most of the 1920s it housed the Trimoira Literary Society.†<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0It was moved to 501 M.A.C. in July 1954 and has been owned by the Student Housing Cooperative since 1973.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n

  1. Kestenbaum<\/a>, p.\u00a025. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. LSJ<\/a>, 21\u00a0Jul\u00a01954, p.\u00a036; 27\u00a0Jul\u00a01954, p.\u00a012. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>
    1. † For more on the literary societies and their evolution into fraternities and sororities, see the\u00a0Union Literary Society House<\/a>.\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Orvil James Ayrs (1882\u20131964) was a local developer, an Alderman (council member) of the City during the 1920s and a board member of the\u00a0East Lansing State Bank. He served as Grand Master of the nearby\u00a0Masonic Lodge\u00a0in 1938. Ayrs was a \u201cmaster carpenter and plumber and worked personally on every house built under his name. These […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"Kestenbaum<\/a>, p.\u00a025.\",\"id\":\"00296142-6d2a-4c60-b505-44993f2dc22d\"},{\"content\":\"LSJ<\/a>, 21\u00a0Jul\u00a01954, p.\u00a036; 27\u00a0Jul\u00a01954, p.\u00a012.\",\"id\":\"23122575-03f2-43a7-bf99-567d2cad06d9\"}]"},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-significant-structures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1471,"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1470\/revisions\/1471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}