Grand Rapids Then and Now

[Pattmost20]

1 hour ago, Floyd_Z said:

The entire Ottawa Hills neighborhood used to be a golf course as well.  There was a streetcar that went down Franklin that you could take to get there.  I wonder how long it will be until Ken Country Club FINALLY sells to a developer.  That property has so much potential and an awesome location.

Not going to happen anytime soon. I know a few members, they have doubled the number of members in the last few years. That place is booming.

[joeDowntown]

4 hours ago, Pattmost20 said:

Not going to happen anytime soon. I know a few members, they have doubled the number of members in the last few years. That place is booming.

I think it’s a great place for a golf course. I hope it stays that way (they could help the neighborhood aesthetics a bit with new fencing though). I like the history of that course. Not a golfer, never physically been there. 

Joe

[ctpgr34]

On 7/4/2022 at 11:01 AM, Floyd_Z said:

The entire Ottawa Hills neighborhood used to be a golf course as well.  There was a streetcar that went down Franklin that you could take to get there.  I wonder how long it will be until Ken Country Club FINALLY sells to a developer.  That property has so much potential and an awesome location.

I don't see that happening anytime soon.  They have invested a ton into the course/clubhouse and membership has increased with an influx of young members over the last 5 years.

[civitas]

Reorganizing old image folders and found a group of walking-around photos from 2006 - the era of cranes everywhere.  Much has changed and much has stayed the same.  

[joeDowntown]

Great photos. My highlight: The towers building on Michigan (and the fact that it, and it's suburban parking lot are gone).

Low light. That BEAUTIFUL stone being removed from 65 Monroe Center. That developer was off his meds. He could have retained the stone and added the additional floors without it looking much different (only better).  What a waste.

Joe

[GR_Urbanist]

It's cold. You're stuck inside. Why not go through some old burned CDs from 2006.

Near the corner of Wealthy and S. Division.

 

Heartside buildings along S. Division

Corner of S. Division and McConnel

 

Where the side patio of the Winchester is located now.

Looking east at Ionia and Cherry.

Old storefront in the "peacock building" on E. Fulton and Jefferson.

[joeDowntown]

Great photos!  It’s funny how quickly you forget about some of the buildings/conditions of buildings around town. We’ve come a long way!!

Joe

[walker]

On 7/4/2022 at 11:01 AM, Guest said:

. . . I wonder how long it will be until Kent Country Club FINALLY sells to a developer.  That property has so much potential and an awesome location.

On 7/4/2022 at 12:21 PM, Pattmost20 said:

Not going to happen anytime soon. I know a few members, they have doubled the number of members in the last few years. That place is booming.

Thought of these old posts when I read this article today about the improvements to Kent Country Club:

WOODTV: Renovations Modernizing Kent Country Club Dining Area and Patio

[Pattmost20]

6 hours ago, walker said:

Thought of these old posts when I read this article today about the improvements to Kent Country Club:

WOODTV: Renovations Modernizing Kent Country Club Dining Area and Patio

I went to their restaurant for the first time this winter. Food was good, but definitely could use some modern updates. 

[joeDowntown]

5 hours ago, Pattmost20 said:

I went to their restaurant for the first time this winter. Food was good, but definitely could use some modern updates. 

I'm glad it is doing well and they're actively upgrading (it's a beautiful historic building). I was surprised that they only have 400 members. I've always heard that the membership is $$$$, but can't imagine how much it most cost each member in fees each year to keep a course like that afloat!

Joe

[Pattmost20]

1 hour ago, joeDowntown said:

I'm glad it is doing well and they're actively upgrading (it's a beautiful historic building). I was surprised that they only have 400 members. I've always heard that the membership is $$$$, but can't imagine how much it most cost each member in fees each year to keep a course like that afloat!

Joe

I want to say it is under $10k to join, and I think it is a few grand a year. They do get you with mandatory monthly minimums you have to spend at their restaurant. I don't golf so I'd have no interest in joining, but I know probably 5 or 6 of the members there and they all seem to enjoy it.

[joeDowntown]

Saw this on reddit. Great video of downtown GR in 1989. Notice all of the parking lots and underutilized/abandoned buildings:

 

 

Joe

[GR_Urbanist]

Looks so jarring, but familiar/normal at the same time.

A lot of Leonard still looks vaguely the same. Alpine out by Fruit Basket Flowerland just looks alien compared to today.

 

And you have to give it to the cameraman. He wasnt holding some cellphone, kids! He was rocking a beefy VHS camcorder that must have been a bear to just aim without fully knowing where it was pointing (with no side LCD displays back then), while steering and not losing his cigarette. LOL!

[Khorasaurus1]

Great video! Biggest takeaway is that GR was just...smaller. Alpine was basically rural beyond 96. Downtown ended abruptly after just a few blocks. The freeways seem overbuilt and incongruous.

More specific observations - ugly-ass traffic lights downtown, Fulton Street looking completely desolate, and Butterworth feeling tiny, disconnected from downtown, and almost suburban. Grand Center and the Hall of Justice were smaller and uglier than I remember.

And what was that building at the southeast corner of Lyon and Monroe? Looks like it doesn't have any windows?

Edited March 15, 2023 by Khorasaurus1

[Cookin_peacocks]

Does anyone have any more pictures of the Grand Center? I kinda hate-like the architecture of the exposed beams and such. 

 

Also, is Michael J Fox filming this? Good grief, man. 

[destijl]

15 hours ago, Khorasaurus1 said:

And what was that building at the southeast corner of Lyon and Monroe? Looks like it doesn't have any windows?

That was the 'remodeled' Mays of Michigan store.

[walker]

I thought this article was behind a paywall but I guess not.  My sister e-mailed me this link and I can read it just fine.

It's about the old Romana Park amusement park that was operated by the trolley company and later by the bus company where Gaslight Village is now just west of Reeds Lake.  My parents took my sister and me there a few times in its waning days in the early fifties.  Despite what the article says, I don't think they operated the roller coaster the last few years.  I can remember my father saying it was condemned, maybe that's just what he wanted me to think.

MLIVE: Ramona Park

 

Edited February 19 by walker

[walker]

If you live long enough eventually memories from your youth become fodder for archeologists.  WOODTV has an article about construction workers working on the expansion of the museum discovering remnants of the one of the two old Voigt flour mills that sat on the channel next to the river on the westside downtown.

WOODTV: construction unearths pieces of history

Here’s a Facebook photo of the empty mill around the time it was torn down (click on the X to bypass the log-in box) :

FACEBOOK: Pearl Street Mill 1971?

If you were driving or walking from the east side over either the Bridge Street or Pearl Street bridges you would first drive over the longer river spanning bridges but then you’d come to smaller spans over the channel.  Even after the channel was filled in and the area was converted to a giant parking lot, the channel bridges were still there.  You can see the guardrails of the channel-less bridge in the photo above. 

When I was in grade school the Kiwanis Club would sponsor a special travelogue movie for all the fourth and sixth graders at the Civic Auditorium.  We’d take chartered buses downtown (the public schools did not have many of their own busses back then.)  The buses would take a hard right from Pearl Street to a road on the strip of land between the channel and the river and wait there for unloading instructions.  This was before urban renewal.  From the buses you could see all the effluences pouring out of pipes attached to the factories on the east side into the river.  When it was time for your bus to unload, the driver would make another hard right and drive over the old interurban bridge (what’s now the Gillette Bridge) and drop you off on Lyon Street in front of the Civic Auditorium. 

The other old flour mill was roughly where Betty and Jerry are buried now.  When I first was a substitute mailman, I can remember delivering mail to that other mill.  Old Ralph Voigt and his elderly secretary still went to work there even though both mills had long been out of service and the channel was gone, replaced by a huge parking lot.  Don’t know what they did there all day.  Maybe they took care of his personal business and collected monthly parking fees.

Later when I had my regular mail routes in Heritage Hill, I used to deliver mail to Ralph's house on College.  I went into his opulent front parlor a few times when I needed him to sign for certified or registered letters.  He was actually sort of my neighbor.  My apartment was in a house directly west of his the next block over on Madison, except there were several backyards of houses on Washington that separated my yard from his.   When he died, he left most of his estate to the St Mary’s Hospital nursing program.  Where that money may be now, I don’t know since the nursing program no longer exists.  The house he gave to the public museum and they ran it for many years as a Victorian museum with its furniture as it was when he died.  They still have it but it is not normally open to the public.  

Here's a short video of the house:

FACEBOOK: Video - Voigt House

And if you can’t quite place where the mill on Pearl Street was, here is the Google view of it:

GOOGLE: what's there now

And if you've got this far and are interested in seeing historic aerial views of the mills and the channel, you can  find 1955 and 1947  aerial views of the area if you are willing to dig into this site:  

https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer

LATE EDIT: Found this old photo from 1969 of the other flour mill where I delivered mail to Ralph Voigt (probably the year before.)  It is the big gray building next to Sullivan's Tile Store along Bridge Street.  The channel has been filed in for several years at this point:

 

 

 

Edited March 17 by walker
added additional photo

[Zads]

GRPM has posted some pictures from the excavation of the turbines that powered Voigt Mill on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/GRMuseum/posts/pfbid02GuGkvPLDdZ4qUrd9qYBH8HRaq1MvQ8X4QoDPAHHVnjRALhhwP3ofQJN7syUHFWw1l

https://www.facebook.com/GRMuseum/posts/pfbid02znS3D6G9WteDbsSpkRYTbrziL9bX3npZ5yj6YSPZ97Ag8VZ4GmLt5et19n7Q9YM9l

https://www.facebook.com/GRMuseum/posts/pfbid02QBv2wUWvagUu3s9yoGXXFnfrUcDzjogBwibE9diJqbWBd7QHxkf62e43UNhP9Xf3l