Workers at Michigan State University discovered a more than a century old piece of the university’s history as a result of what started as a straightforward hammock installation. A astronomy building.
In June, workers from the university’s Infrastructure Planning and Facilities Department were excavating a hole near a student residence hall near West Circle Drive when they came across a “hard, impenetrable surface under the ground,” according to a statement from MSU.
At first, workers believed they had discovered a huge rock or an old building foundation. They contacted the Campus and consulted old maps to determine what it was. It turned out to be the foundation of the university’s first observatory, built in 1881.
The observatory, which is situated behind the present-day Wills House, was constructed by then-professor Rolla Carpenter. Carpenter taught algebra, astronomy, French, and civil engineering after graduating from Michigan State Agricultural College in 1873. According to the MSA, it was constructed in 1927 for the U.S. Weather Bureau and donated to the university in the 1940s. It was given the name H. Merrill Wills in honor of the meteorologist who resided there.
The discovery, according to university PhD candidate in archaeology and anthropology Ben Akey, provided a glimpse into how the campus seemed back then.
“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” Akey said.
Akey stated that the observatory was built for a handful of academics and a tiny student population when the university was known as Michigan Agricultural College, and that the discovery was confirmed using the university’s archives and Horace Smith’s “Stars Over the Red Cedar” book.
“The campus archaeology program is designed to protect and mitigate our below ground heritage here at MSU,” Stacey Camp, associate professor of anthropology at MSU, said in the release. “We are involved in preplanning stages to ensure that if they potentially hit an archaeological site, we can protect it in some manner.”
A ground penetrating radar will be utilized at the site on August 9 in order to gather more information, according to MSU spokeswoman Alex Tekip.
Cover Photo: The picture shows people, probably astronomy students, in front of the old astronomy building in about 1888. Michigan State University Archives