My Old Coit School Neighborhood on Lafayette Avenue by Trowbridge Street.
For the link to Coit School: Coit
Trowbridge Street was a very steep cobblestone hill. I had to walk up it every day, twice a day, to Coit School. Lafayette Avenue was a very busy street and was a bus-route. There were no parkway trees from our house to the corner. Every house had a big front porch and the porch was used for socializing. Back yards were used for coal, trash and chickens.
The City began, in 1935 as a WPA project, to photograph and identify every building within the City. Before that there is only addresses and assessment amounts, no architectural details.
Many of the houses were pre-1900, pre-central heating, pre-indoor plumbing. It was common for there to be a protruding front room with a porch. This was the front "parlor" and sometimes would have a separate entrance. It was used in the evening and on Sunday afternoons. It would oftentimes become a needed bedroom. The main door opened into the formal dining room/everyday living room/family room. Many times at the far side of this room would be a small bedroom while along side would be the stairway upstairs. There would be a bedroom over the front room and the dining room. The top half of the stairway and a hall would be over the small bedroom. The kitchen was often only one story or just had a low attic overhead reached by an access door off the stairway. The bathroom would have been added on later near the kitchen or inserted in an interior space, perhaps a closet or small bedroom or the end of a hall. The basements were often a Michigan basement, a big dirt hole, maybe only under the kitchen or dining room. There would often be an outdoor entrance to the basement. For a very bad general drawing see house.
I am still working on this.
The whole area was Coit & Curtis which was subsequently subdivided. The block between Lafayette/Clancy and Trowbridge and Fairbanks was: Corbitt's Fraction recorded in 1873. The lots closer to Fairbanks were sold first. For information on individual houses see
Across Lafayette Avenue towards Prospect was Sweet's Subdivision recorded in 1890 while the south side of Trowbridge was not subdivided at all which could indicate the houses were built very early.
The Octagon House on Hastings
Lookout Park, Resevoir Park, Mary Waters Park, Creston Park coming Parks
From Heading History and the City of GrandRapids
From web site: MyCityofGrandRapids.info