The Street Name Change file
was submitted by Barbara Vander Mark who spent several years, working in the
City Assessor’s Office, bringing together the various historical sources for
In 1912, the City of
The 1912 issue of the City Directory publicly
printed the resultant changes with one error.
They mention a Wren street that doesn't seem to have existed. But the City Directory did not have any legal
authority and was not the source of the name changes. The City Commission was
the source and the City Engineer was the one responsible for keeping track of
these changes.
As the City grew, it annexed
lands and tried to make the newly annexed, existing street names fit existing
City streets and names. That often necessitated
changing the names of the newly acquired streets, e.g.
The City made another attempt
in 1920 by giving the same name to different streets. Now if you see an older street stop and then
start up again, or jog, it was probably composed initially of different street
names.
The building of the freeways
through the old part of the city added to the confusion by ending streets that
used to go through where the freeway is, and by creating strangely configured
service drives. Names of the chopped up
portions were often re-attached to a different street and given its name. Industrial Parks have added to the confusion
as have condominiums.
In addition, streets were
sometimes named without any regard for past traditions. The former simple rules of roads going east
and west being called a street, north and south called an Avenue, short streets
going north and south called Places, east and west called courts, were
sometimes ignored and Drives, Circles, and other street modifiers were added to
street names.
This is a compiled list that
Barbara produced from information from City Engineers, Assessors, Police, Fire,
library, archives, her father’s memory as a hawker, her own memory as a child
growing up in central Grand Rapids, and as a city employee working with old
sewer maps with the old names still on them and out in the field where she
sometimes found street signs that were wrong.
Researchers should know that old changes prior to 1912 may need to be
verified by checking the original plat maps located on microfilm in the
Quirks:
Ann Street - it appears that
Ann street did not go to the river but ended as it
curved into Broadway. Ann's counterpart across the river was called
Grandville/Ellsworth/Summit
Curved Grandville ended at
Bridge Street
Before the 1912 establishment
of the quads, streets were referred to as east or west or north or south but
not based on the quads boundary line Fulton/Division. So
On behalf of all genealogists
who will benefit from this database, I thank Barbara.
Joel Weintraub