Original Home of Stone Mason that Built the MI State Capitol Building now Set for Demolition

Richard and Deborah Glaister House, Lansing Michigan

Date added: March 15, 2025

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The Glaister House was the home of master stone mason Richard Glaister, who, employed by N. Osburn & Co., contractor for the Michigan State Capitol built in 1872-78, served as the company's head of stonecutting for the capitol's construction. The house is one of the few remaining Italianate houses in Lansing. The city's growth and development since the later nineteenth century have resulted in the loss of much of the city's nineteenth-century housing stock.

In 1847, after long and hard deliberations in the state legislature, what is now Lansing was selected as the future site of the seat of Michigan state government. The area, centrally located within the southern Lower Peninsula but previously wilderness except for a small settlement around mills to the north of the present downtown developed a few years earlier, was reportedly chosen with the idea that its selection would forward the progression of settlement northward from the early settled southeastern and south edges of the state. The platting of a town and construction of the first wooden capitol building in the 1847-48 period started a rapid influx of people to the area. In the 1854 state census the population of Lansing Township, which then included the future city of Lansing, was listed as 1556. In 1860 the newly established city had a population of 3085, and in 1870, eight years after the first of a number of railroad lines reaching the city from all directions was built, the city's population was listed as 5243. A new census taken in April 1873 showed 8556 city residents.

The original wooden capitol and an additional office building built within a few years were soon found inadequate in size for the rapidly expanding government of the growing state. There were calls for a new capitol to be built in the early 1860s but the finances of the state and ongoing discussions about moving the state's capitol elsewhere delayed action. In 1871 the state legislature voted $1,200,000 for construction of a new capitol in Lansing. A design competition for the new capitol was won by Elijah E. Myers, an architect then of Springfield, Illinois, in January 1872. In July 1872 the contract for the construction of the new capitol building was awarded to N. Osburn & Co. of Rochester, New York. N. Osburn & Co. employed James Appleyard, "who had worked for Osburn since before the Civil War," as construction manager and employed Richard Glaister as superintendent of stonework or head of stonecutting. Ground was broken for the capitol July 25^th, 1872, and the completed building accepted by the state September 26^th, 1878.

Richard Glaister was born in Whitehaven, England, in 1826. In 1847 he married Deborah Brough. Glaister's 1887 obituary in Lansing's The State Republican states that eighteen years after their 1847 marriage, the Glaisters "came across the Atlantic, taking up their abode in Ottawa, Canada, where Mr. Glaister had contract work to perform on the Parliament buildings. From there he moved to Detroit to work on the city hall, and thence to Pittsburg for a contract job on Trinity church. From Pittsburg he returned to Detroit and lived for six weeks, while action on proposals for the capitol building [in Lansing] was pending, and when his bid for the stone work was accepted he came here. That was in 1872, and Mr. Glaister with his family has lived here ever since. His life work has been contract stonework, and by care in carrying it out he accumulated some $100,000." A biography in the 1891 Portrait and Biographical Album of Ingham and Livingston Counties provides much the same information, but adds that "being naturally of a roving disposition he came to the United States and Canada several times. He made his first trip when he was twenty-seven years old (around 1853) and during that visit, he superintended the stonework of the Parliament house at Ottawa. The 1891 biography states that in 1864 the Glaisters settled in Ottawa, and in 1868 they moved to Detroit, where Glaister "took charge of putting in the stonework of the city hall. Leaving Detroit he went to Pittsburg, Pa., to build the Trinity Church and Chapel, as he had taken the contract for that building".

Ground for the Parliament complex in Ottawa, comprised of the Parliament and Public Department Buildings that flank it on either side, was broken in December 1859 and the buildings completed in 1865 or 1866. Fuller and Jones (Thomas Fuller and Chilion Jones) designed the Parliament Building and Stent and Laver (Thomas Stent and Augustus Laver) the Public Department Buildings. Thomas McGreevy, a master builder from Quebec, served as contractor for Parliament, while Jones, Haycock and Clarke of Port Hope, Ontario, were contractors for the Public Department Buildings. Glaister may have been employed directly or as a subcontractor by McGreevy on the Parliament Building or by Jones, Haycock and Clarke on the flanking buildings that also formed part of the Parliament complex, but the masonry work would have begun probably in 1860. The 1891 biography has Glaister working on the Parliament complex when he was around 27 years old, but that would have been around 1853, well before construction began. By 1864, when the Glaisters actually settled in Ottawa according to the 1891 sketch, the masonry work would have been well along or nearing completion. If Glaister's "roving disposition" brought him to Ottawa before the family's 1864 move there, it most likely would have been around 1860 when the stonework was in its early stages.

The Detroit City Hall, designed by architect James Anderson of Detroit, was built in 1866-71. Silas Farmer's Detroit history reports that a contract was awarded to Charles Stange for construction of the basement Aug. 28, 1866, and on Feb. 2, 1867, N. Osborne & Son of Rochester, NY, was selected as contractor for the building above the basement (a The Detroit Free Press story of Feb. 14, 1868, lists the firm name as N. Osborne & Co. "N. Osborne" was really Nehemiah Osburn. Osburn was born in Pompey, NY, in 1801, and died in Rochester in 1892. He arrived in Rochester in 1821 and at the age of twenty "here began business as a contractor and builder, having already gained some knowledge of the carpenter's trade". "N. Osborn" was listed as a dealer in lumber and Nehemiah Osborn under "Builders - contractors or masons" in the 1838 Sketches of Rochester by Henry O'Reilly (372-73). Nehemiah Osborn & Brother were cited by O'Reilly as furnishing the woodwork for the then recently built New Market, a 200-foot long, with two eighty-foot long wings, brick and stone building in Rochester. Osburn later made a specialty of government work. The sketch lists as presumably key commissions the Chicago and Milwaukee custom houses, U.S. courthouse in Baltimore, and the Detroit City Hall and Michigan Capitol (1392). The city of Detroit took possession of the completed city hall building in June 1871 and a formal opening took place on July 4th.

Neither Farmer nor Clarence Burton's The City of Detroit list subcontractors or contractor's staff for the Detroit City Hall project, Glaister presumably served as the subcontractor for the superstructure masonry work.

Glaister's obituary and the 1891 biographical sketch both list him as working on Pittsburgh's Trinity Episcopal Church after the Detroit City Hall project. The church was designed by Detroit's own Gordon W. Lloyd. Its chapel was built first, in 1869, and the church in 1869-72. The Gothic church with its massive stone walls survives today as Trinity Cathedral. A church history lists the contractors for the building as "Bullman & Gleister," Gleister perhaps being a mistake for Glaister.

Unlike these earlier buildings for which Glaister's association as contractor or masonry contractor is difficult to document, Glaister's role in the construction of the Michigan State Capitol is more clearly documented. The Lansing State Republican carried a number of brief items on the capitol building's progress. One from the July 25^th, 1873, issue may have been the earliest to mention Richard Glaister. It states that "Richard Glaister, who has charge of the stone-cutters, is one of the firm of Osburn & Co., and a man of great practical experience. He has had tempting offers to take charge of the stone-cutters employed on the New York State House at Albany."

In 1872, while Glaister was likely already working on the capitol building, the family moved to Lansing. The 1891 biography states that the house was built in 1876. He lived there with his family until he ended his own life in his house on the 22 of March 1887. The State Republican of that date stated that Glaister "committed suicide at his residence, No. 402 Walnut Street, south, this morning a few minutes before seven o'clock, by shooting himself through the head with a Winchester rifle." The story's very graphic description of the body as found once the locked door to his first-floor bedroom was forced is followed by the coroner's jury finding that death resulted "from a gun shot inflicted by his own hand during temporary aberration of mind induced by nervous prostration and physical disability." The article stated Glaister had been ill since a hunting trip the previous fall (The State Republican, March 22^nd, 1887). His widow Deborah continued to live in the house until her death in 1896, and the directories show that a daughter, Isabelle Hartley, and several other family members lived there until around 1911 or 12 when it was sold to Dr. Joseph Bartow.

The 1912 directory is the first to list Dr. Joseph G. Bartow, and Bartow descendants have continued to own the house since Bartow's purchase about that time. Joseph Bartow was born on October 23^rd, 1863, in Williamston, MI, to Andrew and Ellen Bartow. His 1937 obituary states that he attended Williamston schools and Valparaiso College (Valparaiso, IN) and "practiced medicine in Owosso, Shaftsburg, and Williamston" before moving to Lansing. Joseph married Flora Emily Murray in 1887 and they had three children, Ethel, Clarence and Zarepha. Dr. Bartow and his family used the house as a single family home until 1919 when they started to rent out apartments. The family still lived in one of the units for some time and Dr. Bartow used a basement space as the office for his optometry practice. The house continued to be used as apartments until 1972 when the Bartow family allowed a local church to use it as a halfway house for a year. After this year the apartment use resumed.

Historic Glaister House's fate seems sealed: Demolition

Building Description

Originally owned by the master mason for construction of the Michigan State Capitol, and located only two blocks south of it, the Glaister House stands in downtown Lansing on the southwest corner of Walnut and Kalamazoo Streets and faces east. The home, now utilized as an apartment building containing eight apartments, stands out as it is surrounded by commercial and government buildings. Built in 1876, the two-story, 3,950 square foot, wood-frame Italianate house has red brick walls and stands on a tall dark red-brown rock-face coursed ashlar sandstone foundation. Its windows and doors display smooth stone trim now painted white. The building has an asymmetrical cross-shaped footprint with the long rectangle containing the front and rear faces stretching east and west, while the smaller rectangle forming the cross intersects just east of the middle of the building. The roof is cross-gabled with classical cornices, with dentils, and slender paired brackets under the extended eaves.

The house's north-south rectangle intersects the longer east-west one just east of the middle of the building. The house's footprint is asymmetrical, with the northern arm the same width as the southern but extending only one window bay north of the longer main section's north facade while the southern extends two window bays south of the main section's south facade. The sandstone foundation and red brick exterior walls are separated by a dark fine-grained stone water table painted white. The house's windows all have white-painted smooth stone slab sills and decorative smooth stone caps, displaying central keystone forms that rise above the cap on either side and incised floral and vine forms, including a Christopher Dresser plant detail in each keystone. The front and all other exterior doors have caps of similar form. The cross-gable roof is clad in asphalt shingles. On the south cross section of the roof is a short brick chimney which has been shortened since 1967. Since then, there has been a chimney removed from the north cross section. The exact date that the chimneys were altered is unknown.

The house's east-facing front has a gable-front center section, containing the main entrance, flanked by a short side-gable wing on either side whose east front is recessed well back from the main front. A broad six-step concrete staircase leads to the double-door front entrance, located on the left/south side of the gable-front center section. The white-painted wood doors appear to be the originals, each containing three panels in its lower part and a single tall, narrow window in the upper. The first floor has two tall, narrow windows rising from floor level, the second three shorter windows, one over the entry. The windows are one-over-one, double-hung; those in the first and second story in the rest of the house match them. The front gable has an oculus window with keystone devices at the four cardinal directions - each displaying an incised Christopher Dresser-inspired plant motif.

The short east-facing portions of the north and south side-gable sections feature windows of the same size and with the same trim as the center section's - one window in the second story in the shorter north wing, two each in the ground and second stories of the south. The north wing's short east face contains a now boarded-over door opening in the ground story. A six-step concrete staircase leads up to a concrete platform or stoop in front of the now closed-in doorway. To the south of the front stoop there is also a concrete staircase that leads down alongside the south side of the east front's projecting center section to a basement door. The basement door is a white painted, three panel, wood door. Two windows provide light to that part of the basement, one to the left of the door and the other to the right on the south wing. An outdoor light was also added to the brick exterior, probably for safety purposes. The light is above the entrance door and to the east.

The Sanborn maps appear to show a wraparound porch was added to the house's front between 1906 and 1913. The porch covered the east elevation and wrapped around the east end of the north side, ending against the north wing's east face. A photo of the house taken sometime between 1926 and 1937 shows the porch with square-plan concrete block support posts rising from ground level up to the top of the wooden spindlework porch railing and wooden Tuscan columns rising above them to support a deck at the second-story level whose front was outlined by another similar railing. The staircase up to the front entry, recessed into the porch, was topped by a gable roof. A staircase also ran up to the part of the porch along the house's north side near the side entrance. A later view shows the same porch but without the second-story railing. A still later view shows the front entry still fronted by a small gable-roof porch, retaining a block pier and Tuscan column on each side of the opening, and also the part of the porch along the house's north side that sheltered the side entrance. The 1951 Sanborn map updated to 1965 appears to show, because there is a small update patch over the front of the house, that the front door porch was removed between 1951 and 1965; the porch fronting the north side of the house's projecting center front section was still in place. That side porch is also no longer present, leaving only a set of wooden steps leading to that now closed-in side entrance.

The broad north side elevation fronts on the south side of Kalamazoo Street. The sandstone foundation on this elevation contains several low windows that, set in segmental-arch-head openings, give light to the basement. The north end of the north side-gable wing displays a slant-sided bay window with a broad center and narrow side windows. The wood-trimmed bay window has paneled bulkheads and a bracket and dentil-trimmed cornice beneath its asphalt-shingled hip roof. In the second story directly above, there are two side-by-side matching tall, narrow windows that have continuous sills and lintels and otherwise match the other windows of the home. The gable above contains another oculus window that, finished like the front gable one, has keystone forms, with incised plant designs, at the cardinal directions. The short back/west side of the north wing contains another tall window in the first story. The rear ell that, located behind/west of the side-gable cross section, runs east and west contains three windows each on the first and second floors, the windows and their stone trim matching those in the rest of the house, the first-floor ones taller than the second.

Other than the removal of the wraparound porch and the addition of a metal pole for a meter, the north elevation of the house has changed comparatively little. However, the landscape has changed. Where old photos show lawn with a sidewalk near the street, the area west from the bay window fronting the rear ell has contained a paved parking area housing three or four cars for the building's apartment dwellers since before 1967.

The south and west elevations of the house that don't face streets are more simply detailed. The south elevation once faced another nearby house but now faces a parking lot and apartment building farther south. The narrow, gabled west (back end) elevation has a ground-floor door neat the southwest corner, reached by a short flight of wooden steps, and a second-floor white wooden door reached by an unpainted modern, wood staircase. Both doors have white-painted stone lintels incised with the same floral/vine detailing as the other door and window openings. The Sanborn maps show that a small one-story garage was attached to the house's rear end sometime between 1926 and 1952. It was removed sometime after 1967, and that area is now occupied by a small crushed stone-surface courtyard. A large modern office building stands directly behind (west of) the house.

The front landscape, historically lawn with a sidewalk near the street, now contains several large walnut and pine trees and other smaller trees and shrubs that have replaced much of the lawn and partly mask the front of the house from view. The pine trees were planted sometime after 1967 by the current owners' family to provide some privacy from a busy street.

Inside the house's east front entrance, a foyer/hallway against the south side of the gable-front east-west-axis part of the house leads past what was described in a newspaper story on Glaister's funeral as the "main parlor" on the right/north, in the northeast corner of the gable-front section, and another room, in the south wing, to a broader rear hall containing a dogleg staircase to the second story. The staircase begins along the broader rear part of the hallway's north side and rises to the west, then to the south to a narrow second-story hallway. The staircase's upper end once rose into an open upper hall space at the second floor, with a passage around the opening's curving south and east side outlined by a balustrade. The open well was long ago enclosed with a curving wall in the second story in place of the railing to meet fire code requirements.

The northeast parlor, entered through a broad double-door from the entry hall, has become the resident owner's bedroom. The south wing room (perhaps once a bedroom), containing a simple black mantelpiece and raised chimney breast near the center of the windowless south side wall opposite the door, is now a separate apartment. Directly behind/west of it in the west side of the south wing is another narrow room that perhaps once served as a pantry but now houses a kitchenette.

Adjacent west of the northeast front parlor, entered from off the broader rear part of the hall next to the lower staircase landing, is another room the current owner states was the sitting room (it was labeled the "rear parlor" in the Glaister funeral story) that contains the north bay window. Now the owner's living room, it was once connected to the parlor by a large square-head opening containing double doors; a solid wall between the rooms has replaced the double-door "archway." Directly west of this one-time sitting room was the dining room. It was also connected to the sitting room by a broad double-door opening. The sitting and dining room spaces have been reconfigured, with the west end of the sitting room and part of the dining room now made into the kitchen for the owner's apartment and the west part of the former dining room walled off as part of a separate rear apartment.

The center hallway runs west past the staircase's lower end to another room, perhaps originally the primary kitchen space, that occupies much of the rear ell's south side and now houses another apartment. From its south side a door leads out to a narrow fenced-in yard area dominated by trees and shrubs. The entrance to the room from the hallway passes through a double arch, the northerly archway straight ahead from the hall leading into the room itself while the more southerly arch forms part of the passage between this room, a narrow pantry-like space/now serving as a kitchen for one of the apartments, and the front south wing room.

The rooms have had work done to them over time to turn them into apartments. The center hall has the original crown molding; it has been painted white. The rear parlor/sitting room and dining room have been reconfigured, as noted above; the date of the work is unknown. The owner's north front apartment retains the bay window. The trim and crown molding is original but has been painted white. The walls have also been painted and there is no longer wallpaper on them. The original wood floors still remain and the first floor main rooms retain an intricate design of inlaid woods. The fireplace in the northeast parlor remains in place, though hidden from view by the owner's possessions, and there is a matching fireplace in the south parlor that is also still present but also largely concealed behind a table and storage items.

The front hall staircase is the original and still has its dark wood newel post and railing and balusters, now painted white. Today the staircase's upper end is enclosed at the second floor with a door at the head of the stairs separating the stairway from the second-floor hallway and a curving full-height second-story wall in place of the open railing that once ringed the upper landing. The hallway and stair treads have carpet over their original wood floors.

On the second floor, there are five apartments located off a narrow east-west hall. Toward the back the hallway makes a jog to the north and then west again and descends a few steps entering the west/rear ell, whose roof height is lower than in the front part of the house. All of the original wood on the second floor has been painted white. The second story has undergone changes to accommodate transforming the single-family home into apartments. However, it still maintains a significant amount of its original features including wood floors and door and window trim, and many of the changes are reversible.

Despite long years as an apartment building the house retains much if not most of its original finishes. The downstairs rooms retain their wooden tall mopboards, architrave door and window trim, and paneled doors, along with the original staircase. Most floors are carpeted, thus not exposed to view, but in the entry to the north center parlor a portion of the wood floor, finished in an ornamental pattern of different woods, is exposed to view, and the owner reports that this ornamental parquet flooring remains in place is several front rooms. The northeast parlor and the south front room retain original mantelpieces (that in the northeast parlor is covered over and not visible while the south room one is so hidden by household goods as to be too inaccessible to be carefully studied). The plastered ceilings retain elaborate cove moldings, and most rooms' ceilings retain circular molded plaster centerpieces.