Grand Rapids Home Tour

The Heritage Hill neighborhood, where we currently reside, is Grand Rapid’s oldest residential district with more than 1,300 homes dating from 1844. We are currently living on the third floor of a home built in 1870. The entire neighborhood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the largest urban historic districts in the US!

Here is the outside of our house and the homes next to us. That unique, three-sided window is in our apartment.

Also, there is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home, the Meyer May House, just around the corner from us. We went on a guided tour of that this morning and I’ll share photos from that soon!

I don’t mind an old home, for a while. There are just too many oddities and issues associated with trying to update a home, especially one that didn’t even have electricity or indoor plumbing, for me to truly feel great about living in one. Now, if the home has been gutted and updated, that’s another story. But in most cases, all the creaks, random holes, dark closets, smells, and weak air conditioning, make it less than optimal for my long term comfort. I guess I’m picky that way.

The owners did a great job with our place, but I would still not want to live in this house. It would take a lot of upkeep for sure. Right now, the owners use it as three Airbnb rentals. Enjoy this walking tour.

Grand Rapids Activities

We’ve been here just over one week and we’ve been to a coffee shop down the street at least four times! It an easy walk, has decent coffee, bakery items and even pizza. It’s on Wealthy Street, but it’s making us poor. Ha! If Dale doesn’t have many calls, we go there and work in the mornings.

We’ve also enjoyed disc golf. Garfield Park has one that is my favorite. It’s a rather compact course, with beautiful big trees, lot’s of grass and easy shots! Grand Rapids supposedly has 15 disc golf courses to choose from.

We spent one evening after work checking out downtown, which is less than 10 minutes from the house. It’s nice. The Grand River runs through it. No need to go back.

On Wednesday I went to the Fulton Street Market and enjoyed looking at some of the most beautiful fruits, vegetables and flowers. I bought two watercolors from an artist who was born in Texas. She gave me her godmother’s name and address who lives in Austin, just in case I wanted to stop by and say hi!

I’ll write separate blogs about our weekend adventures into neighboring towns, and our fireside storytelling/sing-a-long event (which was very odd).