Grand Rapids
By Alex Forist and Tim Gleisner
()
About this ebook
Alex Forist
Alex Forist, collections curator at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, and Tim Gleisner, head of special collections at the Grand Rapids Public Library, have explored the two most significant repositories of historical images in Grand Rapids to create this volume. The result is a rich mixture of familiar images and hidden gems that will appeal both to readers who are already knowledgeable about Grand Rapids history as well as to those new to the topic.
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Book preview
Grand Rapids - Alex Forist
Nate.
INTRODUCTION
The history of any community is a continuous struggle between continuity and change, and Grand Rapids is no exception. Our city is fortunate that many of the physical manifestations of our past have survived in the collections of the Grand Rapids Public Museum and Grand Rapids Public Library. These archives, created from donations by city residents and amassed over more than a century-and-a-half of collecting, give us the opportunity to actually see our past, albeit as through a glass, darkly.
When we stop to look at the visual record of Grand Rapids’ past from the vantage point of 2015, it is tempting to see our history as a simple story of progress. From the Norton Mounds to La Grande Vitesse, it is indisputable that much has changed in Grand Rapids over the centuries. But those changes were not forgone conclusions for the people who lived them. Every choice, from how to lay out the streets of the new village in the 1830s, to the decision to participate in federally funded urban renewal in the 1960s, was made by people and was fraught with conflict. If any one of these choices had been made another way, Grand Rapids might look much different than it does today.
With that in mind, we have attempted to choose images that demonstrate both the longevity and persistence of certain aspects of Grand Rapids history, as well as document the many changes that have taken place over the years. In order to create a volume that would be enjoyable to peruse, easy to reference, and visually cohesive, we have chosen to structure the book into the following four chapters: The River, Industry, Neighborhoods, and Community Institutions. Although these designations are not mutually exclusive—for example churches, which we have chosen to place in the Neighborhoods chapter, could just as easily have been included under the heading of Community Institutions—we feel that they allow us to demonstrate both the great breadth and depth of the collections at both the museum and the library, while still offering something resembling a narrative history of Grand Rapids from the time of its earliest settlement to approximately 1970.
The book, like Grand Rapids, starts with the river. Called Owashtanong
or the Far Flowing Waters
by the Native Americans, the Grand River rises in Jackson County and flows westward across the state, passing directly through the center of downtown Grand Rapids on its journey to Grand Haven and Lake Michigan. The images in this chapter document the river and include some of the earliest depictions of Grand Rapids known to exist, even predating the invention of photography. With these maps, sketches, and paintings as our point of departure, we set sail down the river of time to observe how multiple generations of Grand Rapidians have interacted with the central geographical feature of their community.
The choice to settle at the rapids of the Grand River proved fortuitous for the development of industry. From the very beginning, residents of Grand Rapids capitalized on the rich natural resources of the Grand River Valley, not only to build up their own community, but to create a wealth of goods that they could export to the entire world. The second chapter offers a roughly chronological overview of the many industries and commercial services Grand Rapids generated in the 19th and 20th centuries. From obscure and long-vanished industries like the production of quicklime, through the booming years as the Furniture City,
and into the modern era of international corporations, these images bear witness to Grand Rapids as a city of industry.
The process of place-making has been repeated all over Grand Rapids with the development of unique neighborhoods, each with their own persistence and character. Over the years, many different groups of people have made their homes in Grand Rapids and have defined the shifting boundaries of their neighborhoods based on the exigencies of the times. At the most basic geographical level, the Grand River bisects the city into eastern and western portions, and while entirely artificial, the street numbering system has created a city of four quadrants. However, these divisions are only a beginning, as immigrant groups, religious congregations, and social classes have created a network of neighborhoods, sometimes overlapping, sometimes strictly segregated, which together make up the patchwork of the city. The images in this chapter depict the schools, parks, churches, and businesses that make up neighborhoods all around Grand Rapids, spiraling outwards from downtown, through Heritage Hill, Grandville Avenue, and Eastown, to the west side of the Grand River and the suburban edges of the city limits.
The final chapter contains images of the community institutions that the people of Grand Rapids have built over the almost two centuries of our history. The Grand Rapids Public Museum and Grand Rapids Public Library,