The campus of Michigan State University is located in East Lansing on the banks of the Red Cedar River. It covers an area of 5,200 acres (21 km²), with 2,000 acres (8.1 km²) used for buildings and other structures. The campus was built in an untouched forest and opened in 1855 with three buildings, none of which are still standing. Originally, as an agricultural college, the campus was located several miles outside Lansing. However, as the university grew, the city of East Lansing developed just north of the main avenue.
Michigan State University is one of the largest campuses in the United States. As a large university, MSU has many facilities that serve the school and the surrounding area. Public spaces on campus include a football stadium, a multipurpose arena, an ice arena, a concert hall, a hotel, and a golf course. The campus also has its own power plant, laundry service, incinerator, and Amtrak train station.
In terms of infrastructure, there are 556 buildings: 100 for academic purposes, 131 for agriculture, 166 for housing and food service, and 42 for athletics. The university has a total of 22,763,025 square feet (2,114,754.2 m²) of indoor space. MSU also owns 44 properties outside the campus, covering 52,000 acres (210 km²) across 28 counties. However, the large size of the campus, along with its curving roads and lack of a central area, can make it difficult for new visitors to find their way around.
History
Before white settlers arrived, the area now known as East Lansing was covered with thick oak forests and tamarack swamps. In July 1855, a 677-acre site north of the Red Cedar River was suggested to the State Board of Education. A report to the board stated that the land was mostly dense hardwood forest, except for a few cleared areas. In one of these "oak openings," the school built its first three buildings in 1856: a multipurpose building named College Hall, a dormitory later called "Saints' Rest," and a barn. College Hall included classrooms, offices, labs, a library/museum, and a lecture hall/chapel. It was one of the first buildings in the United States used for teaching scientific agriculture.
When the college was founded in a sparsely populated area with only a few nearby farmhouses, and because it was a long and difficult stagecoach ride from Lansing, the college built four faculty houses in 1857. One of these original houses, Cowles House, still exists as the President's official residence, though only two walls and part of the foundation remain from the original structure. Between 1857 and 1885, ten faculty homes were built on campus. Besides Cowles House, one other survived and was moved to East Lansing; the rest were torn down between 1922 and 1948 to make space for residence halls and the student center called MSU Union.
Michigan State's campus was among the first in the country to use its grounds as a botanical laboratory for students and faculty. Today, it is home to the oldest continuously operated botanical garden in the United States. In December 1879, Professor William J. Beal buried seeds of 23 common plants in 20 jars of sand (to avoid water) across campus. Every 20 years, a jar is dug up to check which seeds still germinate after long periods of being buried. In April 2000, after 120 years, only a few seeds, including those of Verbascum blattaria (moth mullein), germinated. In April 2021, the same result occurred: 13 Verbascum blattaria seeds were the only ones to germinate. Four jars remain, with the next planned for 2040.
In 1871, President Abbot suggested that the Board of Trustees hire a landscape gardener to plan the college grounds, including tree planting and building placement. In 1872, Adam Oliver, a landscape gardener from Kalamazoo, was hired. From 1872 to 1887, he designed paths, roads, and the placement of buildings, including Linton Hall in 1881. He created a closed roadway system, an early version of which still exists today as West Circle Drive. He also arranged campus buildings in an informal way. President Abbott described the campus in 1882 as having no straight rows of buildings or trees, with buildings separated by hills, lawns, and groups of trees.
In 1906, O. C. Simonds, a famous prairie school landscape architect, was hired. He simplified the road system, planned walking paths, and designed planting areas. Simonds was the first to call the area around West Circle Drive a "sacred space" and emphasized that the campus should be treated as a park to protect it from development. In a 1906 letter to the Board of Trustees, he wrote, "This area is, I am sure, the feature of the College most remembered by students after they leave their Alma Mater, and I doubt if any instruction has a greater effect on their lives."
In 1914, the college hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., a well-known landscape architect. As larger buildings like Olds and Agriculture Halls were built, Olmsted faced the challenge of keeping the informal character of the campus while reducing walking distances. In 1915, the Olmsted Brothers firm proposed a redesign of the campus around quadrangles. However, students and alumni disliked the plan, as it changed the parklike feel of the campus. After eight years of consulting with little progress, the school ended its relationship with Olmsted in 1922.
In 1923, the college hired T. Glenn Phillips. His 1926 plan kept Simonds' "sacred space" and continued the curvilinear road system to the east, placing buildings in an informal way. His plan designated the area north of the river for academic purposes and placed agriculture and athletic facilities south of the river. Phillips' plan shaped campus development for the next 25 years.
After World War II, the return of many GIs and President John A. Hannah's push to expand the university led to rapid growth south of the river. The rise of the automobile influenced development, with buildings and streets laid out in a grid system and more land used for parking lots. This growth created the largest residence hall system in the United States. Today, 16,000 students live in MSU's 23 undergraduate halls, one graduate hall, and three apartment villages. Though no new residence halls have been built since 1967, several dormitories have been modernized. In 2007, MSU opened the Residential College in Arts & Humanities in a newly renovated Snyder-Phillips Hall, the site of MSU's first residential college, Justin Morrill College.
In 2001, a new master plan called "2020 Vision: A Community Concept for the MSU Campus" was developed to guide future growth. The plan recommended moving central campus parking to garages, replacing it with green space, removing head-in parking around West and East Circle Drives, adding more bike lanes, and planting more trees on the south campus to make it look and feel like the north campus.
Areas
The oldest part of the campus is located north of the Red Cedar River and south of Grand River Avenue and Michigan Avenue. Its buildings include a variety of architectural styles, such as Collegiate Gothic, Beaux Arts, and Richardsonian Romanesque. The north campus has many trees and roads that curve with few straight paths. In the center of the north campus is the "Sacred Space," which is surrounded by West Circle Drive. This area is where the College first built three structures. None of these original buildings remain, but important historical buildings near the Sacred Space include Cowles House, the President's official residence, and Beaumont Tower, a carillon clock tower that marks where College Hall once stood. To the east of the Sacred Space is Laboratory Row, a group of laboratory buildings built during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These include Eustace-Cole Hall and Marshall-Adams Hall, which were America's first freestanding laboratories for horticulture and bacteriology, respectively.
The campus south of the Red Cedar River mostly includes buildings constructed after World War II. Many of these buildings are designed in the International and Brutalist styles, with roads that are mostly straight and fewer trees compared to the north campus. The south campus also has more surface parking lots, partly because of sporting and performing arts venues. The "2020 Vision" Master Plan suggests replacing these parking lots with parking ramps and green spaces to create a park-like environment similar to the north campus. However, these changes will take many years to complete. Notable academic and research buildings on the south campus include the Cyclotron and the College of Law.
Most of Michigan State's academic and residential buildings are located north of the Canadian National Railway. South of the railway are service buildings, such as the T. B. Simon Power Plant, laundry services, and the campus incinerator. However, more academic buildings are now being built south of the railroad. These include the MSU Clinical Center, the Life Sciences Building, and a nature preserve called the Baker Woodlot. South of the service buildings and the CSX railroad are thousands of acres of university-owned farmland and agricultural research facilities, such as the MSU Pavilion. The closeness of the farmland to campus helps Michigan State keep a rural feel, which reflects its history as an agricultural college, even though East Lansing, a city, is just one mile north. Recently, the Demmer Center was added to the campus. The Demmer Center is a place where students, faculty, and community members can learn how to safely handle firearms.
Landmarks
Michigan State has three bronze statues. Two were built in 2005, and one was built in 2003. The statue of former president John A. Hannah is located on the entrance plaza of the Administration Building named after him. Downstream on the south bank of the Red Cedar River is a new bronze statue of "The Spartan." This 2005 statue replaced an older terra cotta statue, which is still visible in the west concourse of Spartan Stadium. The third statue, built in 2003, is a 12-foot sculpture of Earvin "Magic" Johnson, a famous Spartan Basketball player and Los Angeles Laker.
Another notable feature is "The Rock," a spray-painted boulder located east of Farm Lane, just north of the river. It is a popular place for events like outdoor summer theatre, Greek house tailgating, and candlelight vigils. Students from Michigan Agricultural College, the predecessor to MSU, once used the boulder to study mineral content. MSU has several botanical gardens, including the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden across the river from the stadium, the Old Horticulture Gardens near the building of the same name, the MSU Horticulture Gardens, the Radiology Healing Gardens, and the 4-H Children's Garden.
The university has buildings for public gatherings and events. Spartan Stadium is the football stadium. The Breslin Center is a multi-purpose basketball arena. The Munn Ice Arena is used for ice hockey. The MSU Pavilion hosts agricultural expositions and other events. Abrams Planetarium is located between North Shaw Lane and South Shaw Lane. Michigan State has two separate buildings for theatre: the MSU Auditorium/Fairchild Theatre, which is used for theatre department shows, concerts, and public speakers, and the Wharton Center for Performing Arts, the main theatre for the Lansing metropolitan area. The Wharton Center features Broadway plays and other performances and was the site of the 1992 U.S. presidential election debates. The university also has the Kellogg Center, a hotel and convention center.
Transportation
Michigan State University's campus has sidewalks, bike paths, roads (some with bike lanes), and unpaved trails. The transportation system includes 27 miles (43 km) of roads and 100 miles (160 km) of sidewalks. People often use walking, bicycling, rollerblading, skateboarding, and motorscooters or mopeds to move around campus. Some buildings are connected by skywalks and public tunnels. The non-motorized Lansing River Trail starts on campus, going west to downtown Lansing and then north to the airport. The non-motorized River Corridor runs along the south side of the Red Cedar River and is the main path for non-motorized travel across campus.
Main roads on campus include West Circle Drive, East Circle Drive, Shaw Lane, Farm Lane, Wilson Road, Bogue Road, and Red Cedar Road. These roads pass through busy areas and have high traffic from both pedestrians and vehicles. The Capital Area Transportation Authority (CATA) bus service is a popular way to travel, with many routes on and off campus. Some routes are called "Spartan Service" and only operate during fall and spring semesters. The MSU-CTC (MSU CATA Transportation Center) is the central bus hub on campus, connecting to many local destinations. Buses are used often during winter.
Two railroads cross campus, giving students access to train travel. The East Lansing Amtrak station on campus provides daily direct train service to Chicago, Kalamazoo, Flint, Port Huron, and other Michigan cities via the Blue Water line. Travel to Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Grand Rapids requires switching to another train line. The station also connects to Greyhound bus routes. Two airports are reachable from campus: Lansing Capital Region International Airport (LAN) in DeWitt Township and Detroit Metro Airport (DTW) outside Detroit. Michigan Flyer buses offer eight daily trips to and from DTW.