 | CENTRAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH The first recorded Methodist meeting in Lansing was held in 1845 when the Reverend Lewis Coburn preached in the log cabin of Joab Page of North Lansing. In 1850 a Methodist class (congregation) was formed in what is now central Lansing. Its first leader was Reverend Resin Sapp, chaplain of the Michigan legislature. Services were held at Representative Hall in the old state capitol. The same year, the state deeded land at the corner of Washington Avenue and Ottawa Street to the First Methodist Episcopal Church under Public Act No. 231 of 1848. That land was subsequently turned over to the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, which built its first building in 1863. The present Romanesque-style edifice was erected in 1888-89 and is perhaps the only church designed by Elijah E. Myers, architect of the State Capitol.
215 North Capitol Avenue Central Methodist Episcopal Church (Central United Methodist Church); L790A; March 19, 1980; 1981 |
| CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION On June 15, 1922, the Most Reverend Michael J. Gallagher, bishop of Detroit, sent Father John A. Gabriels to Lansing to establish a Catholic parish east of the Pere Marquette railroad tracks that would include East Lansing, Okemos, and Haslett. Father Gabriels named the parish Resurrection, because he believed this was the most important event in Christ’s life and the cornerstone of Christianity. He celebrated the first Mass on Christmas morning 1922 in the basement church, which would become a school. In 1926 two stories were added with classrooms for eight grades. Five Dominican sisters were the first teachers. Parishioners worshipped in the basement church until the present church was built in 1952 |
| MONSIGNOR JOHN A. GABRIELS In 1906 John A. Gabriels (1881-1960) was ordained a Catholic priest. In 1922 he came from Detroit to establish a new parish and become chaplain of the Boys Vocational School. He became a highly respected citizen of Lansing. He was chaplain of the Michigan State Police, a member of the Knights of Columbus, Chamber of Commerce, a popular Old Newsboy, and established Father John’s Fund for Needy Children. In 1934 he delivered Lansing’s first radio-broadcasted mass. The programs became weekly in 1937. Father Gabriels was bestowed the title Right Reverend Monsignor in 1944. In 1956 he was honored at a testimonial banquet by many civic leaders including the governor of Michigan. Father John loved and served all people. He was well-known as a leader, story teller, radio preacher, and convert maker.
1529 East Michigan Avenue Church of the Resurrection and School (Church of the Resurrection School); L1632A; March 16, 1989; 1991 |
| FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH This church, Lansing’s first congregation to affiliate nationally (with the Marshall Presbytery), was founded on December 17, 1847. It was organized by the Reverend Calvin Clark, an agent for the American Home Missionary Society. There were four members. The first pastor, the Reverend W. W. Atterbury, served from 1848 until May 1854. The congregation held its early services in a school, the legislative chambers of Lansing’s first capitol, an inn and a storage building called “God’s Barn”. It built its first permanent home, Lansing’s first church edifice, in 1852. SIDE TWO The congregation’s first church, at the intersection of Genesee Street and Washington Avenue, housed the first bell in Lansing in its fifty-five-foot tower. The bell was purchased with money raised by church women and was installed in 1856. For years it awakened Lansing, announced noon hour and curfew, and alerted firemen. The congregation’s second church, at the intersection of Capitol Avenue and Allegan Street, was built in 1889. The church on this site, begun in 1947, was completed in 1953. The Molly Grove Chapel was added in 1984.
211 North Chestnut Street at Ottawa Street First Presbyterian Church; L1471C; October 23, 1987; 1987 |
 | GEORGE E. PALMER George E. Palmer (1862-1944) served Lansing as a truant officer, police officer, and superintendent of buildings for the Lansing Public Schools. Beginning in 1900 as a truant officer Palmer worked with students who were not attending school. He determined that absenteeism was often caused not from disinterest, but because children lacked proper footwear. Around 1910 Palmer founded a charity with his own salary; the next donation was a fifty dollar gift from Metta Olds, wife of automobile entrepreneur Ransom Olds. Mrs. Olds later became the president of the Palmer Shoe Fund. Schoolchildren also contributed nickels and dimes to purchase shoes for their needy schoolmates. Shoes were distributed to children upon the recommendation of teachers. |
 | OLD NEWSBOYS The Lansing tradition of raising money to provide shoes and boots for needy schoolchildren began around 1910 when truant officer George E. Palmer established the Palmer Shoe Fund. In 1924 the Old Newsboys Association, led by its first president R. Guy Brownson, was organized to assist in the efforts begun by Palmer. The Old Newsboys cooperated with the State Journal and the Lansing Capital News to publish and sell a spoof newspaper during a one-day fund-raising drive. Clergy, educators, businessmen, politicians and other citizens joined the effort. Since 1932 The State Journal has printed the humorous tabloid annually hawked by Old Newsboys on area streets. During the 1990s the paper’s one-day circulation reached over one hundred thousand copies. The Old Newsboys’ mission remains to provide shoes and boots for needy schoolchildren.
NE corner of Washington and Michigan Avenues Palmer, George E./Old Newsboys Commemorative Designation; L1908C; February 17, 1994; 1994 |
| GRAND TRUNK DEPOT Constructed in 1902, this castle-like building with its square tower was the Lansing station for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad until 1971. For decades passengers streamed through its doors. Here servicemen left for and returned from military duty. Children and adults alike associated this depot with the excitement of travel and vacations. The city’s joys and sorrows were reflected in this rail station; greetings and goodbyes were its most vital ingredients. But gradually rail travel ebbed. Renovated as a restaurant in 1972, the building’s exterior remains unchanged. Gerald R. Ford from Michigan, the thirty-eighth President of the United States, dined here during a “whistle stop” campaign tour on May 15, 1976.
1203 South Washington Avenue (displayed inside building), south of Main Street Grand Trunk Western Rail Station, Lansing Depot; L521A; April 11, 1977; 1978 |
| JOHN T. HERRMANN HOUSE This English Tudor house was built in 1893 for John T. Herrmann, a Lansing tailor. Herrmann immigrated to Lansing from Bernsberg, Germany, in 1872 with his wife, Katharine, and two children, Henry and Christian. In 1878 John Herrmann opened the Herrmann Merchant Tailor Shop. After Herrmann’s death in 1898, his sons took over the business. Designed by Lansing architect J. Arthur Bailey, this house remained in the Herrmann family until Lansing Community College purchased it in 1966 and renamed it the Herrmann Conference Center.
520 North Capitol Avenue, campus of Lansing Community College Herrmann, John T., House (Herrmann Conference Center); L1430A; July 23, 1987; 1987 |
| THE KERNS HOTEL FIRE At 5:30 A.M. on December 11, 1934, the fire alarm outside the Kerns Hotel sounded. The 211-room, four-story brick hotel that stood on this site had 215 registered guests. Before the last embers of the fire were extinguished, thirty-two people were known dead and forty-four, including fourteen firemen, had been injured. Two of the injured people died later. Among the dead were seven Michigan legislators and five unidentified people. Many guests escaped by descending four fire ladders, and eight people jumped into life nets. However, the fire spread through the hotel’s wooden interior so rapidly that many people were trapped in their rooms. Seventy-two members of the ninety-seven-man Lansing fire force fought the fire using eight of the force’s eleven pieces of fire apparatus. |
| THE BOX 23 CLUB The firemen who fought the Kerns Hotel fire were aided by the Lansing and Michigan State Police, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Volunteers of America, and citizen volunteers, who brought the firemen hot drinks and dry gloves. Some of those volunteers later decided to form a club to support the work of the Lansing Fire Department. The club took its name from Fire Alarm Box 23, at Ottawa and Grand, from which the first alarm for the Kerns Hotel fire was sounded. The Box 23 Club was formally organized on December 11, 1937, the third anniversary of the fire. Its membership, which is limited to twenty-three people, pledges to support the Lansing Fire Department and to provide aid at fires when requested to do so by the fire department officer in charge of the fire.
East side of Grand Avenue between Michigan Avenue and Ottawa Street Hotel Kerns Informational Site; L1468C; October 23, 1987; 1987 |
| LANSING BECOMES THE CAPITAL CITY The territorial courthouse that served as Michigan’s first state capitol was completed in Detroit in 1828. However, Michigan’s first constitution made Detroit a temporary capital and said that a permanent site should be chosen by 1847. As the deadline approached, nearly every town in Michigan was proposed. James Seymour, a land speculator with a mill in what is now North Lansing, campaigned for Lansing Township, pointing out its location equidistant from Detroit, Monroe, Mount Clemens and the mouths of the Grand and Kalamazoo Rivers. The house voted on thirteen sites before selecting Lansing; and the senate voted fifty-one times before it accepted the house’s recommendation that the wilderness township with less than one hundred people become the new state capital. |
| LANSING’S FIRST CAPITOL BUILDING Early in 1847 three commissioners were appointed to select an appropriate site for the capitol in Lansing. The contract for construction was awarded on June 3, 1847. Building materials were shipped by boat on the Grand River, or by rail from Detroit to Jackson and by wagon on cut trails through the woods to Lansing. Gradually, the capitol rose on this site. It was described as “a churchlike little structure of wood, painted white.” The building measured sixty feet by one hundred feet, was two stories high and had a cupola. A white picket fence set it off from the surrounding forest. It contained legislative and supreme court chambers, an office for the governor, a few other offices and a library. Completed in late 1847, it was used until the present capitol was completed in 1879.
South Washington Square, on the boulevard between Allegan and Washtenaw Streets First Capitol in Lansing Informational Site; S587C; March 19, 1987; 1987 |
| LANSING CITY MARKET Dancing and fiddling heralded the opening of the Lansing City Market on August 25, 1938. Built by the Granger Construction Company, and partly financed by the Works Progress Administration and the Public Works Administration, the market typifies depression-era municipal projects. The first city-sponsored market opened at North Grand Avenue and East Shiawassee Street in 1909 after the North Side Commercial Club blocked off Turner Street twice a week and showed the city council that a farmers’ market could succeed.
333 North Cedar Street inside the west entrance Lansing Municipal Market (Lansing City Market); L1517A; May 19, 1988; 1988 |
| LANSING COMMUNITY COLLEGE Lansing Community College was established on April 8, 1957, by the Lansing Public Schools. It opened that fall with 425 students and sixteen faculty members. It offered civil, mechanical and electronic technologies, as well as practical nursing and apprenticeship programs. In 1961 the college began year-round operation. The Lansing Community College District was formed by a vote of area citizens in 1964. The Board of Trustees was organized and six members were elected at that time. The first off-campus learning center was established in 1971. In its thirtieth year of operation, the college provided lifelong education and training in more than two hundred academic programs to a student body numbering over forty-three thousand.
419 North Capitol Avenue Lansing Community College (Lansing Community College); L1449C; August 21, 1987; 1987 |
| LANSING FIRE STATION NO. 8 Lansing architects Bowd-Munson Company designed Fire Station No. 8, which opened in June 1931. The firehall was built by the H. G. Christman Company. Firefighters lived in the upper two floors, and the community used a large room in the basement for weddings, meetings and voting. In 1977 the city sold the building to the Lansing Civic Players Guild. The troupe renovated the structure that year, in time for its forty-ninth season.
2300 East Michigan Avenue, SE corner of Hayford Street Lansing Fire Station No. 8 (Lansing Civic Players Headquarters); L864; January 8, 1981; 1997 |
| MALCOLM X HOMESITE Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925, lived on this site in the 1930s. His early life was marked by the violent death of his father, the Reverend Earl Little, on the Michigan Avenue streetcar tracks. Under severe economic stress, the family was separated, and in 1937, Malcolm was sent to Mason. After a public school teacher discouraged his ambition of becoming a lawyer, Malcolm at fifteen, left for Boston and New York. He became involved in street crime and was arrested in Massachusetts. In prison he was converted to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and read widely in history and philosophy. He also developed an understanding of black self-hatred and came to see his years in Lansing as common to black experience. Released in 1952, he joined his family in Detroit, and began his new life as a Muslim. When his talent for SIDE TWO preaching was recognized, he moved to New York to head Temple Eleven. He founded the Nation of Islam’s weekly newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, and traveled the country organizing new temples among its followers. In 1959 a television program brought him to public attention as the principal minister of the Nation. Preaching black pride and autonomy, he openly articulated the extent of racial discontent in our society. He broke with the Nation in 1964 and founded Muslim Mosque, Incorporated. A trip to Africa in the same year helped him enlarge his thinking on international problems. By 1965 when he was assassinated, he had become an eloquent spokesman for the oppressed everywhere. His influence continues through his recorded speeches and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a landmark of twentieth century social thought.
4705 South Martin Luther King Boulevard, SE corner of Vincent Court in front of Regency Townhomes Malcolm X Home Informational Site; S455; February 21, 1975; 1975 |
| MICHIGAN DENTAL ASSOCIATION The Michigan Dental Association was organized on January 8, 1856, by fourteen dentists who met in Detroit at the office of Hiram Benedict and Lorain Christopher Whiting. According to the American Dental Association, it was the first state dental society in the country. At this meeting the dentists established bylaws and membership qualifications. “One must be twenty-one, a practicing member of the profession, possess `a good English education,’ and have unexceptionable moral character.” In the 1860s and 1870s the association advocated a dental school in the state. At this time few dentists received formal training. In 1875, after almost twenty years of effort, the state legislature appropriated money to establish a dental school at the University of Michigan.
230 North Washington Square Michigan State Dental Association Informational Designation; L1640C; March 16, 1989; 1989 |
| MICHIGAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION BUILDING When completed in 1928, this building marked the Michigan Education Association’s seventy-fifth anniversary. The Lansing architectural firm of Warren Holmes-Powers Company designed the Neo-Georgian structure. The symmetry, limestone quoining, projecting entrance, and the broken pediment topping the center second-story window typify the style. The Michigan Education Association (MEA) was organized in 1847 in Ann Arbor. By the 1960s operations expanded and a larger facility was needed. In 1964 the organization moved to new offices. The MEA Building has housed many different enterprises. In 1988 it became the headquarters of the Michigan Association of Counties. |
| MICHIGAN ASSOCIATION OF COUNTIES On February 1, 1898, township and city officials met in the capitol and founded the Michigan State Association of Supervisors (MSAS). The group served as a liaison between the legislature and county government, and worked for statewide rather than parochial interests. In the 1950s a director was hired and an office opened in a Quonset hut at Michigan State University in East Lansing. In 1957 the Institute for Local Government merged with the MSAS. That year offices were relocated to Lenawee Street in Lansing. In December 1969 the group adopted the name Michigan Association of Counties. The association acquired this building in 1988.
935 North Washington Avenue Michigan Education Association Building (Lindsey Centre); S626A; October 27, 1983; Michigan Association of Counties, S625C; 1991 |
| MICHIGAN LICENSED BEVERAGE ASSOCIATION After the repeal of prohibition in 1933, some Michigan tavern owners and liquor dealers organized trade associations including the Progressive Liquor Alliance and the Royal Ark No. 2. In 1939 these two organizations agreed to merge. The following year the Michigan Table Top Congress was organized. The group headquartered in Detroit until it moved to Lansing in 1946. In 1947 the Association of Michigan Tavern Owners and Operators joined the Table Top Congress. The organization became a lobbyist on behalf of the hospitality industry. It soon led the campaign to repeal a law that prohibited women from tending bar in cities of fifty thousand or more residents unless they were the bar owner’s daughter or wife. In 1963 the organization was renamed the Michigan Licensed Beverage Association.
534 South Walnut Street Michigan Licensed Beverage Association Informational Designation; L1676C; July 20, 1989; 1989 |
| MICHIGAN MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION Since its 1902 founding, the Michigan Manufacturers Association has dealt with many important business issues. Beginning in 1908 the MMA organized employers to establish a system for compensating injured workers. In 1912 based on a proposal authored by the MMA, Michigan’s first Workers Compensation Act became law. In 1943 the Michigan Manufacturers Association became the first such association in the nation to offer group insurance programs to its members. SIDE TWO In 1902 the Michigan Manufacturers Association (MMA) held its first meeting in the chamber of the Michigan House of Representatives. The MMA is a voluntary, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the welfare of Michigan industry and providing information to manufacturers about such ongoing concerns as taxation, workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance. In 1952 the MMA established an office in Lansing so that constant contact with the legislative process could be maintained.
124 East Kalamazoo Street, east of Washington Avenue Michigan Manufacturers Association Informational Designation; L1459C; September 26, 1987; 1987 |
| MICHIGAN PHARMACISTS ASSOCIATION On November 14, 1883, seventy-seven druggists met in the state capitol to organize the Michigan State Pharmaceutical Association. Jacob Jesson of Muskegon led the effort to establish a professional association to participate in national professional organizations and secure legislation to regulate drug distribution and pharmacist licensure. By 1886 the association boasted 971 members. It changed its name to the Michigan Pharmacists Association in 1973.
815 North Washington Avenue, between Oakland and Saginaw Streets Michigan Pharmacists Association Informational Designation; L1194C; September 24, 1984; 1986 |
| MICHIGAN RETAIL HARDWARE ASSOCIATION With the philosophy, “in union there is strength,” twenty Michigan hardware retailers convened in Detroit on July 9, 1895, and organized the Michigan Retail Hardware Association. Frank S. Carlton of Calumet was elected the first president. The group worked toward the enactment of state and national legislation on behalf of the retail, wholesale and manufacturing trades. The first success was the passage in 1897 of a state mechanics lien law. SIDE TWO Hardware retailers in attendance at the association’s organizational meeting in 1895 were: R. B. Bloodgood, C. F. Bock, L. B. Brockett, F. S. Carlton, Thomas Harvey, George W. Hubbard, T. Frank Ireland, H. C. Minnie, J. H. Moyes, John Popp, J. B. Sperry, N. B. Wattles, Henry C. Weber, S. L. Boyce and Son, Casper Gnau and Company, Edwards and Chamberlin, Foster, Stevens Company, John W. Jochim Company, McDonnell Hardware, and Scott Brothers and Delisle.
4414 South Pennsylvania Avenue at Cavanaugh Street Michigan Retail Hardware Association Informational Designation; S628C; February 21, 1991; 1991 |
| MICHIGAN SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND Michigan began educating the blind in 1859 at Flint’s Michigan Asylum. In 1879 the legislature established the Michigan School for the Blind, which opened here on September 29, 1880, with thirty-five students. The next year, five students were its first graduates. At first, students learned by lecture/demonstration, but in 1884-85 the school introduced braille reading and writing. The first deaf/blind student was enrolled in 1887. By the 1950s the school boasted its largest enrollment, three hundred children in kindergarten through grade twelve. Student activities have included music, drama, and track. In 1961 and 1963 student wrestlers won class B state championships. |
| ADMINISTRATION BUILDING |