Albert M. Todd House

This once stately home served as residence for successful Kalamazoo businessmen for several decades before becoming the Delta Upsilon Fraternity home in 1953. It is perhaps best remembered as the home of the Albert M. Todd family who lived there from 1891 until 1940. 

George T. Bruen and his brother-in-law, Delos Phillips, seem to have built the present structure on the site of an earlier one in 1873. They had purchased the property in 1872 from Stephen Wattles, real estate speculator and proprietor of the "Sheridan House" on Main Street. The Wattles family occupied a much older structure on the southeast quarter. In the next months, Bruen and Phillips sold the portions of their property fronting on Academy Street (or "Cow Alley" as it was popularly known), and they built a new and larger home near the center of the lot. They chose the fashionable Italian Revival of the day, with its regular features, (four rooms to the floor), heavy classical lintels over the windows and low-hipped roof. An 1883 "birds-eye" drawing of the city shows the present structure much as it stands today. Later owners added a Queen Anne gable and balcony over an elaborate "Eastlake" porch. Still later residents modernized the window lights. 

Bruen, his wife, and three sons occupied the house along with Delos Phillips, his wife Lizzie, and their four daughters. Bruen operated a dry-goods establishment on Main Street, and Phillips sold musical goods and manufactured the "Star" organ at his shop next door. 

In 1885, however, Bruen and Phillips sold their interest to Lorenzo Egleston. Egleston preferred to list himself in the city directories simply as "Capitalist." He had come to Kalamazoo some time earlier from LaSalle, Illinois. By the mid-'seventies, Kalamazoo voters elected him a village trustee. In 1878, he bought out an earlier steel spring factory. Under the heading of L. Egleston & Company, he would employ a hundred hands at his new building on Eleanor and Park, and produce two million pounds of carriage-springs (a $150,000 annual business in 1879). Egleston left $50,893 in "personalty and money" and $20,000 in real property to his wife and daughter on his death. His daughter, Amelia Stanbro, of Chicago sold the family home in May 1891 to Albert Todd, mint farmer from Nottawa. 

Todd, then in his early forties, came to town with a flourish. In the same year he built the "Todd Building" at the corner of Rose and Kalamazoo Avenues. He brought with him his interest in mint and other essential oils and soon made Kalamazoo the center of mint production for the United States. Born in Nottawa in 1850, he attended Northwestern University for a time, married Augusta Allman in 1876, and two years later spent the summer touring the mint works of Europe. With information gained there and experimentation of his own, he perfected techniques that established the A. M. Todd Company as a major industry. The Kalamazoo Telegraph reported in 1894 that "the Mint King" was distilling oils from 10,000 tons of peppermint each year, and that he controlled fully half of the world's supply. Todd built a chemical reference library of awesome proportions and fitted out the Todd Building with an elaborate laboratory for his experiments. He continued to operate there until 1929, when the company moved to new headquarters on Douglas Avenue. 

Todd raised a family of four sons and one daughter at the South Street home and eventually turned much of the business over to them. He devoted increasing attention to political and reform questions after the end of the century. Unsuccessful as a Prohibitionist candidate for Governor in 1894, he was the only Democrat elected to Congress from Michigan in 1896. Later he showed an interest in the socialist questions of the day and took a leading role in founding the Public Ownership League of America in 1916, serving as President and honorary President until his death in 1931. In this connection he found time to author two essays: "Municipal Ownership in Europe and America" and "The Relationship of Public Ownership to Social Justice and Democracy". He was identified with a variety of similar groups like the London Fabian Society, the Peace Society, the Co-operative League, the League for Industrial Democracy, as well as with a number of civic, artistic, and bibliophilic societies.

Always interested in rare books and other art objects, Todd brought back paintings, rare books and other works from a number of trips to Europe, Asia, Africa and Mexico. He saw to it that many of the art works found a place in the public schools, at Western Michigan Normal School, and in other civic buildings. 

Todd passed away at his home in October, 1931, at the age of eighty-one. His wife, Augusta, continued to live on South Street until her death in 1940, when the house passed to others. Joel Shepherd [whose wife Suzanne was Albert M. Todd's granddaughter] and his family occupied it in the late forties, and in the early fifties it became a fraternity house.

Maps:

Deeds Office:

Dec. 20, 1872 (liber 39, 202) "Phillips & Bruen" buy all lot K from Stephen H. & Juliet Wattles for $9000; and agree to pay off $6000 mortgage taken through Henry Breese on June 10, 1872 (liber 13, 599) backed by lot K and village lots 15, 16, 35 (Sheridan house lots)

Feb. 23, 1885 (liber 68, 250, 251) Lorenzo Egleston buys S1/2 of K except 26' to Jonathan Parsons ($3500 for W1/2, $4500 for E1/2 from George Bruen and Delos Phillips in two deeds)

Dec. 29, 1890 (liber 77, 246) Amelia Stanbro, et. al., inherits from father Lorenzo Egleston; probate of will, Dec. 31, 1890. Lorenzo Egleston lest $503,893 in "personalty and money" and $20,018 in real prop. Amelia, only child, got real prop and 1/2 personal; Jeannette Egleston, wife, got 1/2 personal.

May 19, 1891 (liber 81, 611) Albert M. Todd of Nottawa buys S1/2 lot K from Amelia Stanbro of Chicago for $9500.

Kalamazoo County Tax Rolls:

Kalamazoo City Directory:  

Albert Todd dies February 21, 1926 [the article for this date is actually for James A. Todd.  Albert Todd's obituary appears in the Gazette on 6 October 1931, page 1, column 5]; See Kalamazoo Gazette and Who's Who in America

U.S. Census Rolls: