Genesee Street School, Lansing Michigan

History of Genesee Street School

The Genesee Street School served as a public school building in Lansing, Michigan, from its construction in 1912 until 1984. The building is one of the oldest remaining and longest-used elementary schools in Lansing. The 1912 main building is one of the few known remaining public school buildings designed by prominent Lansing architect Edwyn A. Bowd, who designed so many of Lansing's leading buildings from the 1890s to the 1930s.

In January of 1912 the school board moved to have plans drawn up for a new school at the corner of Genesee Street and Butler Boulevard, in a residential neighborhood adjacent to the downtown, on vacant lots that had been purchased in April 1909. In February 1912, the school board resolved to build said school for the cost of $40,000. The district voters approved a special tax to raise the funds at a special meeting on February 23^rd, 1912, at City Hall.

Three architects submitted sets of plans for the school, and those of Lansing architect Edwyn A. Bowd (1865-1940) were selected at a special meeting of the school board in early May 1912. One of Lansing's most prominent architects of the early twentieth century, Bowd was born and raised in England, graduating from Orset College in Dover. He emigrated to the United States in 1882, settling in Detroit, where he began his architectural career with Gordon W. Lloyd. Bowd relocated to Lansing in 1888, briefly working with architect William P. Appleyard. After many years on his own, he established a partnership, Bowd & Munson, with former employee Orla Munson in 1925, and the two established the firm Bowd-Munson, Inc., in 1929. Bowd remained active in the firm until his death in 1940.

Bowd was responsible for a number of Lansing's important civic and institutional buildings, as well as many of its churches. Among his early notable works were the First Baptist Church (1894), Lansing City Hall (1897), Plymouth Congregational Church (1900), and Lansing's Carnegie Library (1903). Bowd also worked extensively outside of the Lansing area, and received numerous commissions for public buildings throughout southern Michigan, designing courthouses for Ingham, Montcalm, and Wexford counties between 1900 and 1910, as well as the Ionia Armory (1909), Owosso Armory (1915), and Hillsdale City Hall (1913). Though some of Bowd's earliest major work was Richardsonian Romanesque in style, by the early twentieth century, he had shifted largely to Neoclassicism. His Neoclassical work in Lansing includes several buildings at the Michigan School for the Blind (1912-1924), the Lewis Cass State Office Building (1921), and the Masonic Temple (1924) among many others.

William Appleyard was a specialist in school design, and by 1891, Bowd also listed schools as a specialty. Bowd was appointed Architect of East Lansing's Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) in 1902 and designed a number of major buildings there. In the early twentieth century, he designed public school buildings for Corunna, Owosso, and other southern Michigan communities. Few of these have survived.

After Bowd's plans for the Genesee Street School were selected by the school board, a request for proposals was published in the April 4^th, 1912, edition of The State Journal, seeking bids for building, plumbing, heating, and electrical work. The contracts were awarded later that month. The construction contract was awarded to the lowest bidders, Early, Fitzpatrick & Wilcox, fora sum of $33,951.93, while the electrical contract was awarded to Capitol Electric of Lansing for $592. Initial bids for the plumbing and heating systems were rejected by the school board, but contracts were later awarded to the Lansing firms of J. G. Gross for $2,744.99 and Shields & Leadly for $4,200, respectively.

Bowd's original design for the school called for a rectangular, two-story brick structure with a tile roof, containing seven school rooms, two recitation rooms, a large kindergarten room with fireplace, and an assembly room with a 15 x 39 foot stage, all arranged around a central hallway. The building itself was originally topped with a small cupola, which was removed sometime before the mid-1960s. The school is strikingly similar to another designed by Bowd in 1903, the Shiawassee Street School in Corunna, Michigan.

Following World War II, Lansing's population growth again led to school overcrowding. Enrollment at the Genesee Street School increased nearly fifty percent between 1945 and 1961, from 238 pupils to 340, though the school's official capacity was only 295 students. Only two full-time and one part-time teachers were added during the same time frame, and in 1961, the school's staff consisted of a principal, ten full-time teachers, one part-time teacher, a secretary, and a custodian. The school shared the services of a librarian and nurse with other schools in the district, as well as teachers in remedial reading and speech correction. In the summer of 1961, the school district acquired seven parcels adjacent to the school, totaling 0.6 acres of land, and in 1962, a 3,721 square foot addition was completed to the east of the original structure, bringing the school's capacity to 375 students. Designed by architect Charles V. Opdyke of Lansing, the single-story brick addition contains a gymnasium/multi-purpose room, kitchen, storage, and restrooms. The general construction contract for the addition was awarded to Bud Reniger Construction of Lansing for $91,790. The mechanical contract was awarded to United Piping and Erecting Company for $18,700 and the electrical contract to Lansing Electric Motors for $6,635.

The Genesee Street School remained in public school use until it was closed by the school district at the end of the 1984 school year, due to declining inner city population and enrollment. After its closure, the building was occupied by several small non-profit organizations, most notably the Black Child and Family Institute, who leased the building from the school district from 1986 until 2012. The building was sold to a private developer in March of 2013 and has remained vacant since.

In 2024, developers proposed converting the building into senior housing. Specifically, a plan for about 54 units of affordable senior housing. In March 2024, there was a fire in a first floor classroom, causing $200,000 in damage.

Developers ask for a tax incentive to convert Genesee St School into senior affordable housing Aug 14^th, 2024

Possible redevelopment plans for the former Genesee Street School Mar 26^th, 2024

835 West Genesee Street

Developer proposes senior housing to rehabilitate historic Lansing school August 14^th, 2024

Former school on Genesee Street catches fire in Lansing Mar. 7, 2024

History of Lansing, Michigan

Lansing, Michigan's capital city, was established as a result of a provision of the 1837 Michigan constitution that required the relocation of the state's governmental seat from its temporary location in Detroit by 1849. Several other towns vied for designation as the new capital, but, in the end, the future site of Lansing, then little more than wilderness, was selected by the legislature. The site was located midway across the state, and to the north of that part of the state that was already becoming settled, so its selection was seen as a means of promoting the growth of more northern parts of the state.

Commissioners appointed by the 1847 legislature to select the specific location for the new capitol chose Section 16, an area now bounded by Saginaw Street to the north, Martin Luther King to the west, St. Joseph Street to the south, and the railroad line east of Larch Street to the east. Very quickly, the beginnings of three villages sprang up along the Grand River in this region: a north village, which had grown up around a dam and sawmill at the point where the area's Pioneer Highway, now Grand River Avenue, crossed the Grand River; a south village, located along Main Street and South Washington Avenue, and a middle village, centered at Washington and Michigan avenues in the heart of today's downtown near the future capitol location. The middle village quickly developed into the main focal point of Lansing Township. In 1859, the City of Lansing was incorporated with a population of about 3,000. By 1880, the population of Lansing had grown to 8,326. With the rise of the automobile industry in the early twentieth century, Lansing's population swelled, reaching 31,229 in 1910 and 57,000 by the mid-1920s.

Lansing's rapid turn-of-the-century growth was largely due to the development of the automobile industry. Ransom Eli Olds founded the Olds Motor Vehicle Company with Frank G. Clark in Lansing in 1897. Though the company soon moved to Detroit, it moved back to Lansing in 1901, after the company's Detroit plant burned, eventually becoming the Oldsmobile Division of the General Motors Corporation. Olds subsequently established the REO Motor Car Company in Lansing in 1904. Numerous suppliers followed, with plants that produced automobile components - such as the Motor Wheel Corporation, Michigan Screw Products, and Atlas Drop Forge, all established between 1900 and 1910. As a result of this largely automobile industry-related development, Lansing's population soared, nearing 80,000 by 1930. The city's growth slowed somewhat through the 1930s and 1940s, though the many factories remained active through World War II, producing vehicles, ammunition, guns, and aircraft parts for the war effort. Lansing's population continued to increase with the post-war boom, topping 90,000 in 1950 and 100,000 in 1960. The city's population peaked around 1970 at 131,000, with more recent growth taking place primarily in the surrounding suburbs.

Lansing Public Schools

Although the city of Lansing was not incorporated until 1859, the area's first public school opened in May 1847, in the north village, near what would later become the Cedar Street School. A one-room building, it initially served ten pupils. Enrollment increased to thirty by the end of the three-month term, and the structure was replaced with a larger one that autumn. In 1851, the school moved into a new, two-story brick building, which remained in use for nearly twenty-five years. Additional public schools were opened in the middle and south villages in 1849 or 1850 and 1851, respectively.

In 1861, under a provision in the Lansing city charter, the three separate districts were consolidated into a single Lansing School District, with a new fourth ward added. School elections were held in each ward to form the first Board of Education of the School District of the City of Lansing. The newly formed board held its first meeting on April 8^th, 1861. At that time, Lansing was home to three simple public school buildings, two brick and one wood frame. A fourth school building was added in 1868, at the corner of Kilborn and Walnut Streets in the fourth ward.

As Lansing's population grew in the late nineteenth century, so too did the number of wards within the school district. A fifth ward was added in 1871, and a sixth in 1874. A new high school was built in 1868-75, and new schools were built in the third and fifth wards in the 1870s and 1880s. Population growth led to a policy of school expansion in the 1890s, with four new schools built in that decade, and most of the existing schools were remodeled and expanded by 1910. The city's rapid population growth and development of new residential areas led to a large-scale school-building program in the early 1900s. Two additional schools were built in the 1900-1910 period, the Moores Park School in 1906 and the Franklin Avenue School in 1910, and many more in the 1910s and 1920s.

Lansing's oldest surviving public school buildings (none still used as schools) are:

• Cherry Street School. Built 1894. Last used as a school in 1933, this Late Victorian building has since housed offices and various other activities.

• Cedar Street School. Built 1910, expanded 1917. This building has been substantially altered.

• Genesee Street School. Built 1912.

• Allen Street School. Built 1913, expanded 1925.

• Lesher Place School. Built 1916. This and the Allen Street School retain high integrity (except for the universal window replacements).

• Maplewood School. Built 1918. The building has been extensively remodeled for housing.

Genesee Street School Building Description

The Genesee Street School is a two-and-one-half-story hip-roof building, with a one-story 1962 east-end addition, that stands at the southeast corner of Genesee Street and Butler Boulevard, facing northward onto Genesee. Constructed in 1912, the main part of the building is a broad-fronted Neoclassical building with orange-tan brick walls trimmed with limestone. Its symmetrical front displays banks of closely spaced square-head windows separated by narrow brick strips, the banks to either side separated from the central ones by slightly broader sections of brick wall. Notable exterior features include the grouped, closely spaced windows on all facades, the broadly projecting roof eaves with their exposed shaped rafter tails, and the slightly projecting broken pediment portico at the center of the facade.

Detailed Description

The Genesee Street School is located in an early twentieth-century residential neighborhood located northwest of Lansing's downtown commercial district, at the intersection of Genesee Street and Butler Boulevard. The intersection is located two blocks south of Saginaw Street, Michigan Route M-43, and one block east of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, both major thoroughfares. The neighborhood consists primarily of two-story, single- and two-family homes, with a few multiple units interspersed. A single early twentieth-century commercial building is located to the north of the school, across Genesee Street, and has been converted into apartments.

The school sits on an irregularly shaped lot of a little over two acres, with frontage of approximately 363 feet on the south side of Genesee Street and 264 feet on the east side of Butler Boulevard. The east and south property lines deviate around residential properties. The school building is situated at the northwest corner of the site with its historic front facing north. The site is generally level at an elevation of approximately four feet above the grade of Genesee Street. A drive enters the school grounds from Butler Boulevard behind the school and broadens into a large parking lot directly south of the 1912 portion of the building. A chain link fence partially surrounds the property, running eastward from the northeast corner of the 1962 addition to the easternmost edge of the property, and then following the property lines along the east and south sides of the lot. To the east of the addition is an asphalt play area, and to the east of that is a play structure and playground. A small garden area with raised beds sits at the southeast corner of the site (playground and garden). There are a number of mature trees and shrubs along the Genesee and Butler sides of the site, both of which are bordered by concrete sidewalks. A concrete walkway runs eastward from the sidewalk along Butler Boulevard to an entry on the west side of the structure.

The original 1912 portion of the school is two-and-one-half stories in height and rectangular in plan. The structure has a concrete foundation and a slightly projecting concrete water table, punctuated by half-height basement windows. The broad brick walls are accentuated by limestone sillcourses, delineating the first and second stories of the building, while a plain, painted wood architrave runs above the second-story windows. The structure is topped by a hipped, asphalt shingle roof, whose north front is pierced by three small, low shed dormers, clustered near the center of the building. A circa 1912 photograph indicates that the building was originally topped by a small cupola. It is unclear when the cupola was removed, but a low, square base remains visible from the front and rear of the building. A simple, slender brick chimney rises perhaps fifteen feet above the roofline from the rear, south side of the roof.

A shallow, limestone entry portico stands at the center of the front, north-facing facade, reaching from ground level to the bottom of the second-story windows. An unfluted Roman Doric column on each side of the former entry supports a simple entablature and broken pediment. The pediment frames a limestone plaque reading "GENESEE ST." The enclosing of this portico-entry constitutes the exterior's primary physical integrity issue: originally sheltering the front entrance to the building, the portico location has been filled in with a smooth concrete-finish wall that contains a small triple casement window at the top and a small vent grill near the bottom, and the original entry hall space within rebuilt as an office and bathrooms. A side entrance on the west facade of the building now serves as the main entry into the building. Two additional entries, reached by flights of concrete steps, are located on the rear, south facade.

The building's windows are simple modern double-hung aluminum ones, with solid insulating baked enamel aluminum panels in the upper portion. Basement windows are a combination of simple one-over-one sash or single light casement windows, with several having been bricked in. The current windows were installed during modernizations in the late 1960s.

The 1912 portion of the school is rectangular in plan, with classrooms and offices arranged off the north and south sides of a twelve-foot-wide central hall. Stairwells are located at either end of the hall, at the east and west ends of the building. The school's first or main floor is located approximately six feet above ground level. Large classrooms are located at the northeast and northwest front corners of the first floor, with several small offices, teacher's restrooms, and coatrooms between them. One of the offices and the two restrooms occupy the central north side space that formerly contained the main entry into the building and an entry hall leading from it to a central east-west corridor. Three more large classrooms are located on the south side of the central hall, including the former kindergarten room, which retains its original simple brick fireplace in one corner. Additionally, a number of small offices are located at the southeast corner of the first floor. Boys' and girls restrooms are located at either end of the building, directly to the south of the stairwells.

The second floor is laid out similarly to the first, with three large classrooms across the north front of the building, separated by narrow hallways lined with coat hooks and shelves. To the south of the broad central hall is a large assembly room, complete with a stage along its west side. Smaller classrooms are located on either side of the assembly room, to the east and the west. As with the first floor, boys' and girls' restrooms are located at the east and west ends of the building, directly south of the stairwells.

The basement is arranged similarly to the first and second floors, with several small storage and mechanical rooms, offices, classrooms, and a teachers' lounge arranged on either side of the central hall. Its floor stands one-half story below grade. From outside it is reached by a straight-run concrete staircase from just inside the slightly recessed west-side entrance.

The building retains much of its stained wood trim, including door frames, chair rails, and blackboard surrounds, as well as the original interior doors and transom windows. A number of the classrooms retain their original wood floors on the first and second stories and terrazzo flooring in the basement, although some areas have been covered with carpet and vinyl tile. Acoustical tile ceilings have been installed throughout the structure.

To the east of the original structure is a single-story addition, completed in 1962. The addition is roughly rectangular in plan, its westernmost portion with its north facade aligned with the north front of the 1912 building, and gradually stepping forward (north) in sections toward the east. Constructed of an orange-tan brick similar to that of the original structure, the addition stands on a concrete slab foundation. At the westernmost portion of the addition's front (north) facade are double steel entry doors, in front of which is a small concrete porch with a flat roof. The east part of the addition is a large, gable-front structure, which houses the school's gymnasium. Though it is faced with brick in a simple, common bond, an abstract tile mosaic in a cross-like pattern off-center in the north front adds visual interest. The structure's east facade is covered by a brightly colored mural, completed in 2011. Designed by local artists Joy Baldwin and Brian Whitfield, the mural was completed in collaboration with several local artists, including Brian Snyder, Jeana-Dee Allen Rogers, Jessica Yorko, and Erika Magers. The upper portion of the mural depicts the history and development of the Genesee neighborhood, while the lower portion is a collection of silhouettes of people painted by the members of the Black Child and Family Institute's 2010 fine art camp. At the rear of the building is a wide play porch, covered by an extension of the gymnasium's gabled roof. In addition to the gymnasium, the addition houses a small kitchen, boys' and girls' restrooms, and a janitorial closet.