Protecting Michigan State's Material Culture
Earlier this summer, the Campus Archaeology team surveyed the green spaces behind Jenison Fieldhouse, next to the Red Cedar. We weren’t finding much, just the occasional nail or piece of glass, but regardless, we still wanted to know more about the building and the land …
Hey everyone, guess who’s back! Yep, after six weeks of field school in Belize, I’m back in East Lansing, working with Campus Archaeology to unearth the past couple of hundred years of Michigan State University. While I was away, the rest of the Campus Archaeology …
This summer CAP has the opportunity to again look for the site of the Faculty Row buildings located where Landon Hall currently is as well as artifacts that might give us insights into early student life. Cowles House is the only building left of the Faculty Row buildings that ran along West Circle Drive from almost the beginning of MSU to the 1930s-40s. Landon Hall was built in 1947-1948 on the site of two of the Faculty Row buildings. As former Campus Archaeologist Terry Brock stated in an earlier CAP blog post from 2009: “Previous archaeological work done by CAP has investigated the sites of the other Faculty Row buildings, located where Landon and Campbell Hall are now located, but there were no intact archaeological deposits.” With the removal of asphalt and concrete behind Landon Hall this summer to renovate and enlarge Landon’s dining hall, CAP will again have a chance to investigate this area that has been so important to the development of Michigan State University.
The dorms that make up West Circle Dormitory complex are all name for women that have made important contributions to MSU. Landon Hall was named for Linda Eoline Landon the first female instructor and the first female librarian at MSU. According to the Board of Trustees minutes from 1891, Linda’s first salary as a librarian was for $500 a year. This was during the time that the library was in Linton Hall which was also the administration building. Linda oversaw the library from its time in Linton to when it was in the current MSU Museum. For 30 years Linda was also the person that put the ribbons on diplomas. She was beloved by her students which is shown in the 1912 yearbook which was dedicated to her for “tutoring thousands of students in the art of appreciating, loving, and valuing these true friends in life – books”.
Landon Hall has a particular personal interest to me as my mother Karen Moon Schaefer (known as a student by her maiden name Karen Moon) lived in Landon as a student from 1966 till her graduation in 1969. She served as Landon Hall’s President in 1969 and therefore sat on the Women’s Inter-residence Council which was made up of all of the presidents of the women’s residence halls.
Landon Hall has four floors and an “H” shape to it with the east wing smaller than the west wing and the middle hall extending slightly beyond both the west and east wings. In the center of the building on the ground floor is the cafeteria that is being expanded this summer. In the cafeteria there are terra cotta reliefs that where created by Professor Leonard Jungwirth who also created Sparty (Standford and Dewhurst 2002:67). Landon was a female only dorm but now is co-ed. My mother told me stories that during her time there if a boy was in the dorm on her floor the girls would yell out “Boy on the floor!” to the rest of the girls so the girls would know not to leave their rooms in robes, curlers or other states of undress that they wouldn’t want a boy to see.
My own personal connection to Landon Hall drove me to volunteer to investigate the history of Landon for CAPs when it was offered. What I found makes me hopeful that our investigation this summer will be successful. As well I am proud to be a student at a university that from its beginning has recognized the women that have been a cornerstone of its success.
References
Brock, Terry. September 9, 2009 Survey Spot: Cowles House. CAP Blog, https://campusarch.msu.edu/?p=158
Stanford, Linda and C. Kurt Dewhurst. 2002 MSU Campus: Buildings, Places, Spaces. The Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, MI
Author: Marie Schaefer
Casual Wednesday night, I was sitting at my friend’s house scrolling through twitter on my iPhone (can you say 21st century girl?) when I saw that the State News had tweeted that Morrill Hall was on fire. I was out of the door and …
This academic year has been enlightening and challenging for me. I dove into continuing a specific project that explores the heart of campus at MSU. I used archival evidence to glean the social, structural and spacial landscape of campus throughout the four time periods of …
I spent my year working on the sustainability project with a specific focus on using University Archives materials to understand food and transportation on the historic campus. Through pamphlets, diaries, newspaper clippings, photos, reports, and ledgers, I pieced together information about early student experience in MSU’s beginning years. Much of the archives research required locating documents that were tangentially related to the project in order to track changes over time.
For instance, I looked through years of brochures from the early 1900s advertising the annual state farmers’ meetings held on campus. In each of these, food, housing, and transportation options for visitors would be listed. As the years went by, food options on campus expanded to include mentions of restaurants on Grand River Avenue. Boarding choices in the earlier years were limited to home stays or college dorms, whereas later years referenced hotels available on the trolley route from Lansing to East Lansing. Transportation prices rose slightly to accomodate, presumably, the growing dependence on trolley cars. From ledgers kept by the agriculture and dairy departments, it is possible to document changes in food prices (and demand for food types) through time. Fortunately, Dr. Manly Miles kept a thorough ledger noting all sales and expenditures for the agricultural college from 1867-1877.
I believe the most interesting finding was in the local and state reaction to the college in the early years. Since the university is so entrenched in the community now (and because I only have the experience of a modern student), I assumed that the college had always been supported by the local and state population. Through diaries and personal accounts, I learned that state farmers and government leaders had been quite wary of the institution, even at times hoping for and predicting its eventual downfall. The hard work of the early students and professors who split their time between academics and manual labor ensured the success of the college. As wars took their toll on college-aged men, the university adapted to national needs and supported the war effort.
The sustainability project has allowed me to pursue many leads at the University Archives, sometimes resulting in exponential research questions. As I try to reign it all in, I have found that the most relevant source material are personal accounts. Reading handwritten documents from MSU’s first students has been a thrill and I look forward to continuing this project.
Author: Amy Michael
This summer, Campus Archaeology is going to be very busy doing archaeological surveys and monitoring various construction projects. There are eight different projects occurring over the summer that we will be a part of in some manner. Over the past couple months we’ve been meeting …
Carefully look at this map of MSU’s campus from the 1880’s. There is a dark black line running from East Grand River Road into the Sacred Space, and then it turns into a squiggly line that goes all the way into the Red Cedar River. …
I am still working on the sustainability project which seems to have generated endless research questions. As I try to reign it all in, I have been writing about a category that I have blandly termed “Student Life” in my draft. This is the catch-all portion for the interesting factoids I come across in the University Archives. Somehow I will assimilate this information into a working draft, but for now I will share what I have learned below:
In the early days of the college, all students attending the college were required to split their days between labor and academics (T. Gunson, 1940). Through manual labor in the gardens and farms, as well as clearing land for buildings and roads, the student body effectively constructed the foundations of the institution while receiving their education.
In 1871, student Henry Haigh reported a fee of $29.95 for boarding at Saint’s Rest. Haigh journaled about the atmosphere in the dining halls which were structured by assigned seating. He mentioned the presence of women in the halls, though the ratio of men to women was still quite unequal at this time.
During October 1871, the year of the Great Chicago Fire, there were numerous raging fires in the woods around the new campus and across Michigan. Students were dispatched to fight the blazes along with seminal faculty members, Dr. Miles and Dr. Kedzie. Many people lost their lives and homes, especially in the thumb region of the state, but the college was spared due to the management of the students and their vigilance against the fires. Drs. Miles and Kedzie would divide students into groups to battle the blazes through the night, a task compounded by the water shortage from an ongoing drought. Classes were largely cancelled for a week while students joined with neighboring farmers to keep watch over the advancement of the fires. Haigh noted that many students knew how to combat fires and dense smoke, having experience with managing agricultural lands on their family properties. (Sidenote: if anyone has any information about the fire outbreaks during this time period, please share! I am curious as to why there were so many fires in Michigan at this time, though I presume it is due to dry environment).
Faced with declining enrollment numbers, President Snyder (1896-1915) personally corresponded with potential students and advocated the incorporation of promotional literature and calendars into the college’s recruitment plans. As a result, student enrollment increased during his presidency (though the onset of World War I drew students to combat soon after he stepped down). President Snyder encouraged the training of women at the college through a series of short course programs. During his term, Snyder also helped initiate summer courses and railroad institutes. All of these programs lended the college credibility in the eyes of the state population, as MAC faculty members traveled to rural areas of Michigan to give lectures and perform demonstrations for farmers. In an effort to appear relevant and indispensible to the state, the college also enacted county extension programs.
Frank Kedzie, President of the college from 1916-1921 during the turbulent war years, resigned in the wake of weak post-war enrollment growth. A change in leadership was thought to be needed to reignite admissions, so leadership was passed to President Friday in 1921. Friday was an economist and agriculturalist hired to solve the issues stemming from the national war effort. State farmers were suffering during the post-WWI depression. During his administration, Friday endorsed more liberal education programs, allowing engineering students to pursue liberal arts courses in place of some more technical class requirements. President Friday spearheaded the effort to grant PhDs, with the first degree conferred in 1925.
Author: Amy Michael
Well today is officially the second day of Spring despite the snow. We are currently preparing for our summer archaeological work, which includes surveys and monitoring on at least 7 different construction projects! Its going to be a balancing act- but hopefully by doing lots …