CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · History & Society

Lawrence Technological University

private university in Southfield, Michigan, United States

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ6504630
Source-derived summary

Lawrence Technological University (Lawrence Tech, LTU) is a private university in Southfield, Michigan. It was founded in 1932 in Highland Park, Michigan, as the Lawrence Institute of Technology (LIT) by Russell E. Lawrence. The university moved to Southfield in 1955 and has since expanded to 107 acres (43 ha). The campus also includes the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Affleck House in Bloomfield Hills. The university offers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs through its five colleges.

History

In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Lawrence Tech's founding president Russell E. Lawrence envisioned a new model of higher education that could serve both traditional students as well as working adults, and combined a teaching philosophy espousing both theory and practice.

Lawrence believed engineering and technological achievements would be what would spur economic recovery, both for the region and the nation. Henry and Edsel Ford agreed to lease their former Henry Ford Trade School building, a part of their Model-T assembly complex in Highland Park, to the new university, which began operations with a few hundred students. The institution's enrollment dropped during World War II but surged immediately thereafter as veterans enjoyed the education benefits of the G.I. Bill.

In 1955, Lawrence Institute of Technology (LIT) moved to a campus in then rural Southfield.

Editorial summary

“Lawrence Technological University” enters the record as private university in Southfield, Michigan, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lawrence, Technological and University can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1932, 1955—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1932. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Lawrence, Technological and University.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Lawrence Technological University” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lawrence, Technological and University provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6504630. VIAF identifies the subject as 152961823. The Library of Congress control number is no2001011255. Authority coordinates are 42.475, -83.249. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932 and 1955.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Lawrence Technological University”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lawrence Technological University primary sources, Lawrence Technological University archive and Lawrence research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Lawrence Technological University”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lawrence Technological University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.