Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a Combined Statistical Area, Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland, population of 1,321,557. It is the county seat of Kent County, Michigan, second largest city in Michigan (after Detroit), and the largest city in West Michigan. Grand Rapids is home to five of the world's leading office furniture companies and is nicknamed the "Furniture City". The city and surrounding communities are economically diverse, and contribute heavily to the health care, automotive, aviation, and consumer goods manufacturing industries, among others.

Over 2,000 years ago, people associated with the Hopewell culture occupied the Grand River Valley. Around A.D. 1700, the Ottawa Indians moved into the area and founded several villages along the Grand River.

The Grand Rapids area was first settled by Europeans near the start of the 19th century by missionaries and fur traders. They generally lived in reasonable peace alongside the Ottawa tribespeople, with whom they traded their European metal and textile goods for fur pelts. Joseph and Madeline La Framboise established the first Indian/European trading post in West Michigan, and in present Grand Rapids, on the banks of the Grand River near what is now Ada. After the death of her husband in 1806, Madeline La Framboise carried on, expanding fur trading posts to the west and north. La Framboise, whose ancestry was a mix of French and Indian, later merged her successful operations with the American Fur Company. She retired, at age 41, to Mackinac Island. The first permanent white settler in the Grand Rapids area was a Baptist minister named Isaac McCoy who arrived in 1825.

In 1826 Detroit-born Louis Campau, the official founder of Grand Rapids, built his cabin, trading post, and blacksmith shop on the east bank of the Grand River near the rapids. Campau returned to Detroit, then came back a year later with his wife and $5,000 of trade goods to trade with the native tribes. In 1831 the federal survey of the Northwest Territory reached the Grand River and set the boundaries for Kent County, named after prominent New York jurist James Kent. Campau became perhaps the most important settler when, in 1831, he bought 72 acres (291,000 m²) of what is now the entire downtown business district of Grand Rapids. He purchased it from the federal government for $90 and named his tract Grand Rapids. Rival Lucius Lyon, who purchased the rest of the prime land, called his the Village of Kent. Yankee immigrants and others began immigrating from New York and New England in the 1830s.

An outcropping of gypsum, where Plaster Creek enters the Grand River, was known to the native American inhabitants of the area, and was commented on by the pioneer geologist Douglass Houghton in 1838. This outcrop was first mined in 1841, at first in open cast mines, but later underground mines as well. Gypsum was ground locally for use as a soil amendment known as "land plaster". The Alabastine Mine in nearby Wyoming, Michigan was originally dug in 1907 to provide gypsum for the manufacture of stucco and wall coverings, notably the alabastine, favored by Arts and Crafts Movement architects. This mine has been converted to use as a storage facility.

The first railroad into the city was the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad, which commenced service in 1858. In 1869 the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway connected to the city. The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad began passenger and freight service to Cedar Springs, Michigan on December 25, 1867 and to Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1870. This railroad expanded service to Muskegon in 1886. The Grand Rapids, Newaygo and Lake Shore Railroad completed a line to White Cloud in 1875. In 1888 the Detroit, Lansing and Northern Railroad connected with Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids was a home to one of the first regularly scheduled passenger airlines in the United States when Stout Air Services began flights from Grand Rapids to Detroit (actually Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan) on July 31, 1926.

In 1969, Alexander Calder's abstract sculpture, La Grande Vitesse, which translates from French as "the great swiftness" or more loosely as "grand rapids," was installed downtown on the Vandenberg Plaza, the remodeled site of Grand Rapids City Hall. It became the very first federally funded work of public art in the United States funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Since then, the site has hosted an annual Festival of the Arts on the plaza, now known informally as "Calder Plaza." During the first weekend in June, several blocks of downtown surrounding the Calder stabile in Vandenberg Plaza are closed to traffic. Festival features several stages with free live performances, food booths selling a variety of ethnic cuisine, art demonstrations and sales, and other arts-related activities. Organizers bill it as the largest all-volunteer arts festival in the United States because it is organized and managed entirely by volunteers. Vandenberg Plaza also hosts various ethnic festivals that take place throughout the summer season.

Grand Rapids is the home of John Ball Park, Belknap Hill, and the Gerald R. Ford Museum, the final resting place of the 38th President of the United States. Significant buildings in the downtown include the DeVos Place Convention Center, Van Andel Arena, the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, and now the JW Marriott Hotel. The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts is located downtown, and houses art exhibits, a movie theater, and the urban clay studio.

Along the Grand River are symbolic burial mounds which were used by the Hopewell tribe, a fish ladder, and a riverwalk.

Grand Rapids has a number of popular concert venues in which a large assortment of bands have performed, including the Orbit Room, the Mixtape Cafe, the DAAC, the Intersection, DeVos Hall, the Van Andel Arena, the Royce Auditorium, the Forest Hills Fine Arts Center, and the Deltaplex.

The Grand Rapids Symphony, founded in 1930, presents more than 400 performances a year.

The Great Lakes Chorus of Barbershop Singers is one of the oldest chapters in the Barbershop Harmony Society formally known as the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA). The Grand Rapids chapter organized in November 1939.

Grand Rapids Ballet Company was founded in 1971 and remains as Michigan's only professional ballet company.They are currently located on Ellsworth Avenue in the Heartside neighborhood, where it moved in 2000. In 2007, they expanded their facility by adding the LEED-certified Peter Wege Theater.

Opera Grand Rapids, founded in 1966, is the state's longest running professional company. In February 2010, they moved into a new facility in the Fulton Heights neighborhood.

Grand Rapids has long been a center for furniture, automobile, and aviation manufacturing; American Seating, Steelcase, Haworth and Herman Miller, major manufacturers of office furniture, are based in the Grand Rapids area. The area serves as an important location for GE Aviation Systems.

In 1880, Sligh Furniture Company started manufacturing furniture. In 1881, the Furniture Manufacturers Association (FMA) was organized in Grand Rapids, it was apparently the first furniture manufacturing advocacy group in the country. Also since 1912, Kindel Furniture Company, and since 1922, the Hekman/Woodmark Furniture Company, have been designing and manufacturing traditional American furniture in Grand Rapids. All of these companies are still producing furniture today.

More recently the city has had some success in developing and attracting businesses focusing on the health sciences, with facilities such as the Van Andel Research Institute (primarily focused on cancer research), Grand Valley State University's Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences (undergraduate and graduate health-related programs, doctorate program in Physical Therapy, Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP)), and Michigan State University's new Grand Rapids based Medical School. Nearly a billion dollars has been spent on new and expanded facilities (including the Spectrum Health Cancer Pavilion, the Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children's Hospital and an addition to the Van Andel Institute, which will more than double its space. Most of these buildings are located in the Michigan Street medical corridor, and is commonly known as "Medical Mile." Employment opportunities thrive and the growth has developed specialized health science employment groups to facilitate the influx, such as the Medical Mile Group.