What to See in East Lansing - Top Sights and Attractions

Garden in East Lansing, Michigan. The Michigan State University Horticulture Gardens are horticultural gardens, with a landscape arboretum, located on Bogue Street on the Michigan State University campus in East Lansing, Michigan. The gardens are open to the public daily without charge.

The gardens are a popular visitor destination on campus, and have been throughout their history. There have been gardens on campus almost since the founding of the Michigan Agricultural College, which would become Michigan State University. After being moved around because of new buildings being built, the current gardens are located adjacent to the Plant and Soil Science Building, which houses the Department of Horticulture, and its teaching greenhouses.

The main features of the gardens are as follows:

• Amien and Florence M. Carter Annual Garden - more than 1,000 varieties of annuals and helpful student workers!
• Clarence E. Lewis Landscape Arboretum, founded in 1982 - a working arboretum for landscape students.
• Frank's Nursery Rose Garden - over 700 rose cultivars.
• Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden - 55 theme areas plus the Goon Squad.
• Perennial Garden - 400 species suited for Michigan.

Arena in East Lansing, Michigan. The Jack Breslin Student Events Center is a multi-purpose arena at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. The arena opened in 1989, and is named for Jack Breslin, MSU alumnus, former athlete and administrator, who first began pushing for the arena in 1969. It is home to the Michigan State Spartans men's and women's basketball teams. Although it nominally contains 16,280 seats, the arena typically holds around 10,000 for most events depending on the floor or stage setup. The Breslin Center superseded Jenison Fieldhouse, which stands approximately 400 feet to the northeast, which had served since 1939.

The arena's previous basketball court was the same floor where the Spartans won the 2000 NCAA Men's Tournament, which was at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. The school purchased the floor from the NCAA and Final Four floor installer Horner Flooring (based in Dollar Bay) after the title game, and had a plaque installed on the baseline near the Michigan State tunnel to commemorate the floor's purpose in the school's history. They updated their court before the 2016-2017 season that has a two-toned finish inside the arcs and a large Spartan Head in the middle.

The building not only serves as the home to MSU sports teams, but as the main large performance arena for the Lansing area. The Michigan State Bar Examination, large concerts, commencements, monster truck rallies, and circuses that travel to Mid Michigan are often held at the Breslin Center. With a large arena, it is Lansing's WWE venue. Many events for Michigan State are held here, including a plethora of career fairs and many Greek Life events.

The arena underwent a $50 million renovation starting in January 2016 that went until October 2017. This renovation changed many things about the Breslin, but the most notable was the addition of the Tom Izzo Basketball Hall of History. This addition includes both men's and women's basketball trophies throughout the years, along with tributes to notable former players, previous jerseys, and even a wax figure of Tom Izzo. Another notable addition, donated by Draymond Green, was a new weight room for the players. Other things included in the renovation were a locker room for former players, a players' lounge, and a recruiting room. The concourse was also widened, and improvements were made to the restrooms and concession stands for the benefit of the fans. Quicken Loans founder, Dan Gilbert, donated $15 million to both the addition and a scholarship fund. They named the outside of the Hall of History the Gilbert Pavilion in his honor.^[4]

Botanical garden in East Lansing, Michigan. The W. J. Beal Botanical Garden is a 5-acre botanical garden located on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It is claimed to be the oldest continually maintained university botanical garden in the United States, and is open to the public without charge year round during daylight hours.

The garden displays 1,800 plant taxa, in economic, systematic, landscape and ecological groupings.

The botanic garden was started by Prof. William James Beal as part of the Department of Botany to serve as an outdoor teaching and research laboratory. Work towards starting the garden began in 1872 with a nursery, followed in 1873 by test plots of 140 species of forage grasses and clovers in a portion of the garden referred to as "Sleepy Hollow". Shortly after founding the botanic garden, Professor Beal established an arboretum on campus in 1874 which began as two rows of swamp white oaks. For the period of time from 1877 to 1924, the garden was known as "The Botanic Garden" or "Wild Garden" at Michigan Agricultural College. Shortly after Professor Beal's death on May 12, 1924, the garden was officially named for him on December 17, 1924 by the Michigan State Board of Agriculture upon the recommendation of the Department of Botany. After Professor Beal's retirement in 1910, Professor H.T. Darlington was appointed Director of The Botanic Garden in 1914 and served until 1930. The gardens developed from these starting points until 1950, when they were reorganized and redesigned by Prof. Milton Baron to form today's four main collections.

In 1954, the garden began participating in the international seed exchange program, publishing its first Index Seminum, and in 1961 was extended with a collection of acidophilous plants including rhododendrons, azaleas, and ferns. More recently, a collection of Michigan's endangered plants was added in 1986, and the non-flowering vascular plant collection was started in 2001 with ephedras, conifers, ginkgo, cycads, ferns, horsetails and clubmosses.^[5]

Public library system. Michigan State University Libraries is the academic library system of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. The library system comprises nine branch locations including the Main Library. As of 2015-16, the MSU Libraries ranked 26th among U.S. and Canadian research libraries by number of volumes and 11th among U.S. and Canadian research libraries by number of titles held.

The Africana Collection is one of the largest of its kind in the nation with a collection of over 200,000 items. Other significant collections include the G. Robert Vincent Voice Library, the largest academic voice library in the nation, containing a collection of over 40,000 hours of spoken word recordings and includes the voices of over 100,000 persons from all walks of life, and the Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collections which includes the extensive Comic Art Collection. This collection includes over 100,000 comic books, and 10,000 related books and periodicals. The Turfgrass Information Center is recognized as the most extensive public collection of turfgrass educational material in existence.^[7]

Sparty is the mascot of Michigan State University. Sparty is usually depicted as a muscular male Spartan warrior/athlete dressed in stylized Greek costume. After changing the team name from "Aggies" to "Spartans" in 1925, various incarnations of a Spartan warrior with a prominent chin appeared at university events and in university literature. In 1943, MSU art professor Leonard D. Jungwirth designed a statue for the university, which had to be cast in terra cotta because of World War II rationing. In 2005, the university replaced Jungwirth's original statue with a bronze replica, moving the original indoors to protect it from the elements.

Sparty appears in several other incarnations. In printed literature, the university uses a copyrighted cartoon Spartan, usually drawn with a grimace and several days worth of whiskers, lending the nickname of "Gruff" Sparty. Recently, Sparty was modeled after Waterford School Board Member Bob Piggott. Finally, Sparty appears as a foam rubber mascot with an oversized head. The mascot costume, worn by an anonymous student, appears at most university sporting, alumni, and fundraising events; he is often portrayed in MSU notices and materials.^[10]