East Campus (Western Michigan University)

The original tract of land on which the Western State Normal School was built was donated by the City of Kalamazoo.

It consisted of 20 acres (81,000 m2) on Prospect Hill, overlooking the city, accessible either by walking up from Davis Street on the east or via Asylum Road (now known as Oakland Drive).

Further buildings were erected on the Prospect Hill until the university began to construct its West Campus in the late 1940s.

With the construction of the Richmond Center for the Visual Arts, artist's studios were no longer located in East Hall, leaving only the University's archives collection located in East Hall until moving to the new Charles C. and Lynn L. Zhang Legacy Collections Center in 2013.

In August 2013 West Hall and the Speech and Hearing building on WMU's East Campus were demolished.

"Normal's Railroad", or the "Western Trolley", carried people up and down the hill from its base on Davis Street to the summit at the grassy lawn between East and North Halls.

It operated until 1949, by which time the campus was moving in new directions and the automobile was making inroads as the preferred method of travel.