Eastern Michigan University Historic District

The Eastern Michigan University Historic District is significant for containing Welch, Starkweather, and Sherzer halls, the oldest remaining and most historic buildings on the campus, and McKenny Hall, which has been the focal point of campus life since its construction in 1931. The district's three oldest structures are notable in architectural terms as a whole as a fine concentration of early college buildings and individually as major works of the important early twentieth-century, Michigan architects Malcomson & Higginbotham and Ernest W. Arnold. The Michigan State Normal School was established by the state legislature in 1849; thus Michigan became only the third state to found an institution exclusively for the training of teachers (Massachusetts and New York being the previous two).

Implementation of the 'normal school' concept was largely the result of the efforts of the Rev. John D. Pierce, Michigan's first Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Isaac E. Crary, a Marshall lawyer instrumental in establishing the state system of free education.

The system was modeled after that established in Berlin, Germany in 1748 by Johann Julius Hecker. The first school in the U.S. for training teachers was a private school founded at Concord, New Hampshire in 1823 by the Rev. S.R. Hall.

Massachusetts established the first state-supported normal school at Lexington in 1839; through the efforts of Horace Mann; Secretary of the State Board of Education and a pioneer American educator. The bill providing for the Michigan State Normal School was signed into law by the governor on March 25, 1850. It appropriated twenty-five sections of land for the support of the school; the Board of Education entertained bids from Michigan towns for the location of the school. As Ypsilanti made the most generous offer (a $13,500 cash subscription toward erection of the first building, temporary rooms for the use of the school, and payment of the principal's salary for five years), the school was located there.

Adonijah S. Welch, a lawyer and Jonesville educator, was named the first principal. The first building opened in October, 1852, and the first class (consisting of three students) was graduated in 1854. During the formative years between 1852 and 1865, the Normal School's pioneering role in education expanded.

A significant debate evolved over the institution's curriculum, as courses were developed which were not specifically oriented to the training of teachers. The issue was fueled by the fact that many Normal graduates did not enter the teaching profession after graduation. The school insisted, however, that a liberal arts education was essential in the development of the professional teacher. This concept is one of the school's most important legacies to the teaching profession.

In 1897, the Ypsilanti school became the second normal school in the country to adopt a four-year college-grade curriculum, the first being that at Albany, New York, in 1890. In 1899, the name was changed from Normal School to Michigan State Normal College. In the period just after the turn of the century, the college experienced a rapid increase in enrollment, further expansion of the curriculum, and a corresponding enlargement of the physical facilities. In 1956, as a result of the development of regional teachers colleges in the state, the Normal College became Eastern Michigan College.

In 1959, the college was reorganized as Eastern Michigan University, comprised of three colleges: Arts and Sciences, Education, and the Graduate School. The College of Business was created in 1964. Welch, Starkweather, and Sherzer halls, the oldest buildings now remaining on the Eastern Michigan University campus, all have considerable significance in the history of EMU and Ypsilanti. The campus' oldest building, Welch Hall, originally known as the Training School Building, was the first structure on the campus built specifically to house the school's teacher-training program, which was designed to prepare students academically for teaching and provide them professional training and practice in actual teaching.

The structure served this purpose from its opening in April, 1897 until 1924, when this function was moved to the new Roosevelt High School. Starkweather Hall is said to be the first building on a state university campus west of the Alleghenies to be erected specifically for religious purposes. The organization for which it was built, the Students' Christian Association, was the outgrowth of the Students' Prayer Meeting, which dated back to the earliest years of the Normal School's history. The Association, established in 1881, began raising funds in 1892 for a meeting place of their own.

Starkweather Hall was constructed in 1896-97, following the donation of $10,000 by Mary Ann Theresa Starkweather in November, 1895. Mrs. Starkweather (1819-97), the widow of Ypsilanti farmer John Starkweather (1807-83) and daughter of Elihu Newberry, was an heir to the Chicago Newberry fortune. In 1886, as a niece of Walter Loomis Newberry, she received a substantial inheritance.

In the remaining eleven years of her life, she made five major gifts to the city of Ypsilanti and the Normal School, one of which was Starkweather Hall. Sherzer Hall, originally known as the Science Building, was constructed in 1902 to accommodate all of the science departments: physics, chemistry, and natural science. It is now named after Dr. William H.

Sherzer, head of the Department of Natural Science from 1892 until his death in 1932. William Sherzer was born in 1860, received a B.S. degree from the University of Michigan in 1889, M.S. degree in 1890, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1901, after a year of study at the University of Berlin. He left an instructorship at U of M in 1892 to become head of the department at the Normal School. He was a practicing geologist, and participated in several surveys and expeditions, notably the Smithsonian Glacial Expedition to the Canadian Rockies.

Sherzer also authored several books on geology and nature study; in 1895 he served as president of the Michigan Academy of Sciences.

The Eastern Michigan University Historic District is located along West Cross Street and vacated Forest Avenue (now a major east-west pedestrian corridor through the campus) at the top of the low Cross Street hill which rises gradually up from the Huron River a short distance to the east. Set on a somewhat L-shaped parcel which fronts south on West Cross Street, the district contains the three oldest campus structures, Welch Hall (1896), Starkweather Hall (1897), and Sherzer Hall (1902), and the 1931 McKenny Hall which, sharing the Cross Street frontage with Welch Hall, combines a mildly medieval form with Art Deco detailing. Located directly adjacent to one another, the district structures relate strongly in visual terms. Welch and McKenny halls stand side by side on West Cross Street at its intersection with Washtenaw Avenue and face a triangular park that contains Ypsilanti's nineteenth-century, stone water tower.

The intersection, with the water tower and massive university buildings, forms the western gateway to the city. The broad front of Welch Hall also terminates the view from the south along Normal Street. The more modestly scaled Starkweather Hall stands a short distance behind Welch, adjacent to the former Forest Avenue street line. Sherzer Hall is located directly across the old Forest Avenue right of way and faces south toward the other three district buildings.

The district's four buildings are all substantial structures, largely of masonry construction. Welch, Sherzer, and McKenny halls all have red brick exteriors, while Starkweather's exterior combines random ashlar masonry and clay tile cladding. The buildings exhibit several divergent stylistic influences. Welch Hall's exterior is more or less Georgian or Federal Revival in style, while Starkweather, with its rambling, broad-shouldered forms and solid masonry walls, fits into the Richardsonian Romanesque idiom.

Sherzer's no-nonsense exterior has a few mildly Romanesque and Georgian elements, but defies stylistic classification overall, while McKenny seems to combine a generally Tudor-inspired form with restrained Art Deco detailing. Standing near the street line, Welch and McKenny halls form a physical barrier which separates this part of the university campus proper from the commotion of West Cross Street. These structures, along with Starkweather and Sherzer halls, form the flanks of a number of quiet and intimately scaled plazas and courtyards which are popular gathering places in times of good weather.