Before Michigan State University was even called Michigan State University, students could use an observatory on its campus in East Lansing, Mich. This summer, its long-lost foundation was unearthed by the Campus Archaeology Program, or CAP.
When the observatory was built in 1881, and the school was called State Agricultural College. It wouldn’t get its current name until the 1960s.
Back during the days of State Agricultural College, the school was a “radically different institution with only a handful of professors and a relatively small student body,” according to Ben Akey, MSU campus archaeologist and anthropology doctoral student. He said that the discovery helps provide “us a sense of what early campus looked like in the late 19th century.”
Archeologists weren’t on a mission to find the old observatory. In fact, it was workers from the Michigan State University Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, or IPF who first came upon it. They were attempting to install hammock posts close to student residence halls on West Circle Drive.
These workers at first thought the “hard, impenetrable surface,” they found underground was either a large rock or building foundation. By cross checking old maps, the campus archeologists determined the foundation was from the old observatory.
“I did a lot of reading to learn more about the first observatory: its history, how it was used and what the building itself might have looked like,” Akey said. Information about the building is included in “Stars Over the Red Cedar” by Horace A. Smith, professor emeritus in the MSU Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Professor Rolla Carpenter, an 1873 graduate of Michigan State Agricultural College, built the observatory. He taught astronomy classes as well as mathematics, French and civil engineering.
“In the early days of MSU’s astronomy program, Carpenter would take students to the roof of College Hall and have them observe from there, but he didn’t find it a sufficient solution for getting students experience in astronomical observation,” Akey explained. “When MSU acquired a telescope, Carpenter successfully argued for funding for a place to mount it,” and the first observatory was born.
In the 142 years since Carpenter and her students used the observatory, another one has gone up at the MSU campus. That one has a 24-inch telescope used by students and faculty.
“It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come from a little 16-foot circular building to a large building with a high-quality telescope and an electric dome,” said Levi Webb, an astrophysics and anthropology major who works at MSU’s current campus observatory and participated in the archeological dig. “Seeing the difference between how observing used to be versus how it is now is very interesting to me and makes me appreciative of the observatory we have now.”
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