Downtown Lansing Downtown Lansing Downtown Lansing is the central business district of Lansing, Michigan, United States. Located in the west-central part of the city along the banks of the Grand River, downtown Lansing is primarily home to Michigan's state government and three colleges, and also contains sports facilities, museums, entertainment and retail, and a growing residential population. The area that would become downtown was part of the original plat of Lansing. When the city was chosen as the capital of Michigan in 1847, this area – known as Middle Town – was chosen as the site of the state capitol building, but
Robert Lansing , Lansing backed Woodrow Wilson in issuing three notes of protest to the German government. William Jennings Bryan resigned as Secretary of State following Wilson's second note, which Bryan considered too belligerent. Lansing replaced Bryan, and said in his memoirs that following the "Lusitania" tragedy he always had the "conviction that we would ultimately become the ally of Britain". In 1916 Lansing hired a handful of men who became the State Department's first special agents in the new Bureau of Secret Intelligence. These agents were initially used to observe the activities of the Central Powers in America, and later to