The year is 1921.
John Patriarche steps outside his 525 M.A.C. Ave. house and sees nothing but swamps and woodlands. The surroundings are new to Patriarche, who is 3 years old.
Now, more than 85 years after Patriarche moved to East Lansing, the landscape of M.A.C. Avenue looks drastically different, lined with homes and traffic rushing down both sides of the avenue.
The same transformation is seen throughout the rest of East Lansing, which celebrates its 100th birthday this year.
Patriarche has lived in the city for more than eight decades, likely longer than any other resident in East Lansing today. He was a city manager for 28 years (1948-1976) and a member of the East Lansing Historical Society.
Patriarche, 88, moved from Massachusetts to East Lansing at the age of 3, when the city was little more than a small college campus.
He attended East Lansing High School when it was located at the site of the current-day Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbott Road.
Following high school, Patriarche attended MSU, which was then called the Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Science.
During Patriarche's time at MSU, the college didn't resemble today's sprawling university.
"When I joined the school, we had 5,900 students," Patriarche said.
At the time, campus was located entirely north of the Red Cedar River, with the exception of the newly constructed Spartan Stadium, he said. He graduated in 1938 with a degree in civil engineering.
Later on, during his time as city manager, Patriarche worked with former MSU President John Hannah to expand the campus and build new dormitories. Following the annexation of more than five square miles of land, East Lansing and the campus began to attract many more students and professors.
"As (East Lansing) expanded, the university expanded," Patriarche said. "Until we really grew in the 1950s, we weren't very big at all."
Hannah and Patriarche extended the campus westward, and when Hannah left the university in 1969, the student population was slightly fewer than 40,000, according to MSU Archives and Historical Collections.
"We were growing all the time in the late '60s," Patriarche said.
When he retired from his position as city manager in 1976, he remained active in city politics for seven more years as East Lansing continued to develop.
John M. Patriarche Park was named for the former city manager. It is located at 1100 Alton Road, off East Saginaw Road between Abbott Road and North Hagadorn Road.
"I guess if you get old enough, they do stuff like that," he said.
Although Patriarche rarely gets out to tour the city, the Burcham Hills Retirement Community, 2700 Burcham Drive, resident knows East Lansing is quite different from when he first moved here.
"You wouldn't recognize the city then and now," Patriarche said.
Jacob Carpenter can be reached at carpe219@msu.edu.
