[nfbmi-talk] Michigan School for the Blind

Larry Posont president.nfb.mi at gmail.com
Sun Apr 14 18:34:55 UTC 2013


National Federation of the Blind of Michigan
20812 Ann Arbor Trail
Dearborn Heights, MI 48127

April 14, 2013

Dear Michigan Federationists:

     Some of you may find the following information interesting. You
may also want to take advantage of the walking tour on Thursday, April
18 at 6:00 P.M.

Sincerely,
Larry Posont
President
National Federation of the Blind of Michigan
(313) 271-3058
Email: president.nfb.mi at gmail.com
Web page: www.nfbmi.org

To: msb-alumni
Subject: Article on Michigan School for the Blind Walking Tour

I think the article below may have a few factual discrepancies, i.e. I
think the still was put up in the 1960s.  I also thought the High
School was built a few years earlier.

Interestingly, it sounds like the housing on the west side of the
campus fell through.

I haven't had any desire to go back to the campus, but I think that
Walking Tour might be an exception.

I'll try to see if I can get someone to video it with my iPhone.  No
promises, but if I can, maybe I can put it up on Youtube.



http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/lansing/article-8682-the-abigail-waits-for-a-mission.html


The Abigail waits for a mission
Michigan School for the Blind property on cusp of change

by Lawrence Cosentino
hed/art8682nar
Apart but not isolated, dignified but not imposing, there’s no place
in Lansing like the old Michigan School for the Blind campus. The
Abigail, the campus’
central building, rears up on four huge Doric columns at the end of a
long promenade, wrapped in a park-like hush. The sidewalk edges have a
distinctive
ripple pattern that let students know when they were on campus.

Valerie Marvin, president of the Historical Society of Greater
Lansing, got some funny looks when she told people she will lead a
public tour of the 40-acre
ghost campus on Lansing’s northwest side on April 18. Friends told her
it was a run-down and dangerous place to be, but she finds it tranquil
and fascinating.

“We want people to go back and see the beauty of this campus,” Marvin said.

The tour is timely because the campus, mostly idle for 17 years, is on
the cusp of change. In late spring or early summer, the two main
owners — the Ingham
County Land Bank and the Great Lakes Capital Fund — will use a blight
removal grant, provisionally approved by the state, to demolish the
mid-20th-century
dorms and service buildings that ring the west end of the campus.
Marvin wanted the public to see the grounds before that part of the
campus’ story is
lost.

The owners’ goal is to make the site’s oldest buildings — the Abigail,
built in 1916, and a 1914 high school — “development ready,” according
to Tom Edmiston,
a senior vice president at the Capital Fund. An auditorium built in
the 1950s will also be “gutted to shell,” keeping open the chance to
leave it standing.
The third early-20th-century building on campus, the 1914
superintendent’s residence, was refurbished into the office of Rizzi
Design in 2010.

“We’re trying to re-think what the highest and best use of the Abigail
would be, as well as the high school building,” Edmiston said.

It’s been a tough winter for the Abigail. Next Thursday’s visitors
will see broken windows and cracked masonry. The bushes around the
Abigail and the high
school have recently been slashed to the ground and trees have been cut down.

“It looks kind of bleak at this point,” Edmiston admitted. “There was
a lot of vandalism and people hiding and living in the basement.” He
said the landscaping
will be redone along “historic” patterns when the demolition is over.

Whatever its next use may be, this campus has already filled a crucial
gap, twice over, until the outside world caught up. The campus was
first developed
in the 1850s as the Michigan Female College, founded by Abigail and
Delia Rogers, with backing from Lansing pioneer and merchant James
Turner. (“The Abigail”
wasn’t the only local icon named after Rogers; so was Turner’s
daughter, Abigail Turner Dodge.)

When state colleges started admitting women in 1869, the Female
College was closed and the building had a brief interlude as an
Oddfellows hall.  Meanwhile,
the State School for the Blind and Deaf in Flint was in need of a
second facility. Blind and deaf students needed different services —
and, one story goes,
the kids played disability-specific pranks on each other.

The Lansing campus became the Michigan School for the Blind in 1879,
serving students from pre-school to their mid-20s. A blond brick high
school went
up in 1912, now the oldest building on the site. Lansing architect
Edwin Bowd designed the high school, the 1914 superintendent’s house
and a new “Old
Main” building, also called the Abigail, in 1915.

Bowd’s involvement, Marvin said, adds a lot of local significance.
Bowd designed dozens of area landmarks, from Christ Community Church
to the Ottawa Power
Station.

The Abigail was an all-purpose building at first, but a mid-century
growth spurt spawned an entire complex, including an auditorium,
gymnasium, dining
hall and service buildings. There were senior trips, parties, dances
and even roller skating parties. Sports teams included men’s and
women’s track and
field and wrestling. In the 1980s, some enterprising youngsters built
a still in the dorms.

The school was also a major local employer. Michigan Department of
Education yearbooks list nearly 100 staff members by about 1970. A
volunteer foster
grandparent program paired blind students with local families.

“The school was very much a part of the community, and the community
enriched the school,” Marvin said.

But enrollment declined in the late 1970s, owing to a combination of
state budget cuts and a changing educational philosophy. By 1996,
local schools mainstreamed
disabled students and the Lansing campus was phased out. After a brief
stint as a training center for the Department of Corrections, the
Abigail and the
high school were idled. The state sold the campus to the Lansing
Housing Commission and a charter school, the Mid-Michigan Leadership
Academy, which still
occupies about a quarter of the site.

When the economy tanked in 2008, a plan to develop the campus into a
senior housing complex foundered and the Housing Commission faced
default on the mortgage.
The middle of campus, including the Abigail and the high school, went
to a creditor, the Capital Fund. The Ingham County Land Bank bought
most of the western
part of campus, where the cottages are, and some vacant land at the
northeast corner.

The campus began a piecemeal revival in the 2000s. A library on the
southwest corner was purchased by the Greater Lansing Housing
Coalition and refurbished
into the Neighborhood Empowerment Center, a home for the Coalition and
other non-profits, in 2010. The superintendent’s house was refurbished
too.

The recent improvements on the fringe are welcome, but Land Bank
Chairman Eric Schertzing said the clock of entropy is ticking and a
new push is needed
at the center.

“At some point you have to do something different to change the game,”
Schertzing said.

Bob Johnson, Lansing’s director of planning and neighborhood
development, agreed, adding that no developers have offered to take on
the whole campus, including
the 1950s buildings.

“It’s been five or six years, and no one’s come a-knockin’, wanting to
move in,” Johnson said.

Robbert McKay, historical architect at the State Historic Preservation
Office, said he would rather see the complex preserved in toto.

Partial demolition is “not the approach we would like to see,” he
said. “From our perspective, everything there is really a historic
resource.”

In 2007, an offshoot set up by the Housing Commission submitted an
application to the National Register of Historic Places for the
eastern “quadrangle”
of the library, consisting of the library, the superintendent’s house,
the Abigail and the high school. The feds ruled that the campus would
qualify as
a whole, but not piecemeal.

But partial demolition may not be a deal breaker for National Register
status. “It doesn’t mean that the front portion couldn’t get listed,”
McKay said.
Future developers would have to resubmit and explain the demolition.

“I hate to see those buildings in the back go, but we still have to
look out for what’s left,” McKay said. “Those front buildings —
there’s a reasonable
case to be made that there’s still an intelligent story there to be told.”

Walking tour of Michigan School for the Blind campus
6 p.m. Thursday, April 18
Historical Society of Greater Lansing
Starts at Neighborhood Empowerment Center
Free and open to the public




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