Notice the pedestrian-friendly corridor that has been downtown Grand Rapids' main commercial street since the nineteenth century. This pedestrian-friendly corridor was the main artery of a city that grew with astonishing speed in the late nineteenth century, its prosperity built on river power and white oak lumber that fed the furniture industry. The storefronts that lined this street once sold pianos, hatpins, and horseshoe nails to a population swelling with Dutch, German, Polish, and Lithuanian immigrants.
The street takes its name from President James Monroe, and for much of its history it was simply the place where Grand Rapids showed up — for parades, for speeches, for window shopping after church on Sunday. Today it anchors a revived downtown where restaurants, galleries, and offices fill buildings that sat half-empty a generation ago. Look at the mix of nineteenth-century facades and twentieth-century towers overhead, and listen for the sound of the city that never quite stopped believing in itself.