North Division Avenue School
NE 1/4 of Section 25 of Walker Twp
Alternate Name: Primary #1, East Bridge Street School in 1883
1854 - first mention of this school in Reports of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State
of Michigan For the Years 1855, '56, and '57
First purchased Location:
November 25, 1864
Charles H. Carroll
To
Fractional School dist. No. 1
Liber 37 page 159
consideration, $1100
Description
Lot 181 of Kent PlatCE
Village of Kent was platted very early in the 1830's for Lucius Lyons. It surrounded Louis Campau's Village of Grand Rapids. Street Name Changes: Canal to Lower Monroe then to Monroe, Bridge to Michigan, Cemetery to Taylor, Clinton to Fairview, Kent to Bond.
The North side of the lot ran 174 feet on East Bridge Street (later renamed Michigan Street). The lot ran 169 feet deep on both the East side along Division Avenue and the West side along Ionia Avenue. The school was bordered on the East by Immanuel Lutheran Church which stills stand today although overshadowed by new medical buildings. On the West side had been the old German Brewery that looked like a castle. It has since been demolished and replaced by an ugly hunk of concrete that is the State of Michigan office building. There were many small alley-like streets north of Michigan filled with old small houses and apartment buildings as were both Michigan Street and Ionia Avenue until c.1965 and the advent of the freeway demolished hundreds of homes.
1866 -
This photograph was taken from Linda Samuel's Book Heart and Soul The building in the lower left hand corner is the earlier Immanuel Lutheran Church which faced Division Avenue.
1872 - school faces Bridge Street, two-story brick, heated with a furnace except one room in the basement, five rooms for 300 pupils. It has a recently sunk well. The house and ground in good condition, value $20,000.
1874 - new sidewalk been built on Bridge Street. (With the addition of a stove, it is implied it is for the one room in the basement)
1876 - There was expended for painting, building steps and platform, and for taking city water into the building, $106..
1877 - Plans are being made for an additional school to relieve overcrowding.
1880 - 4th Ward, connected to City Sewer.
1881 - Spent $135 for vaults and connecting the same with the sewer.
1882 - Part of the building has been re-plastered.
1883 - name change to East Bridge Street School. During vacation the building has been re-lathed and re-plastered throughout, new hard wood floors laid in the entire building, and the inside re-painted at cost of $526.
1884 - name change to North Division Street School. - formerly a five-room building - increased by an addition to the south - it now contains eleven good rooms with sittings for 600 pupils, including the two new basement rooms not yet ordered seated.
1885 - one basement room seated, the area walls on the north and east sides of the building have been extended and drain tile put in back of the walls.
The 1885 Collar and Greiner map shows this school on a large lot. Lot 181 of the Village of Kent
1886 - furnace has been replaced.
1890 -heated by furnaces, grates and stoves, some of the rooms in the basement are poorly lighted.
1892 - One basement room changed to bath and closet rooms with sewer and water connections, a large tubular boiler place and necessary ventilating shafts put in, also contract for painting the outside. Cost $2,000.
1893 - Brick, two stories and basement, ten rooms with sittings for 500 pupils. Heated by steam and provided with three sets of closets (toilet stalls) and a bath room. Room and closet ventilation is equal to the best.
1895 Sanborn Fire Map:
1907 - recommendation to sell school to Grand Rapids Brewing Company. The old building, erected in 1866, has been sold and a new site acquired on the opposite side o the street, just south of Crescent avenue. The new plans call for the erection of a three story and basement building of a type easily convertible into commercial purposes. Provision will be made for Deaf school, Truant school and four regular primary rooms, The supply department will have quarters in the basement. The plans and specifications are now in course of preparation and the building is to be ready for occupancy in September, 1908.
1907 Section 25
Ogle Walker shows no change1908 - The contract was let for the new North Division street building to cost approximately $33,577. This building has four floors and will accommodate four regular grade rooms and the Oral School for the Deaf. The ground or first floor is to be used for the school and janitors' supplies. The building is to be ready to occupancy September 1.
This is the assessor's photo of the new building:
It is south of Crescent Street on the East side of Division.
This photo comes from the manuscript collection at the GRPL.
The only
identification is hand-written anonymously on the back as East Bridge Street
School. It is not the East Bridge Street school constructed in 1884 near
College Avenue. It is not the North Division Street School either, which was
called East Bridge Street School in 1883. It is similar to another photo
identified as Baxter Laundry. Don't know if that's correct either. I told
the library it wasn't East Bridge Street School but have included it here as I
don't think the library made any "correction".
1913 - The Sanborn map shows this school located on the East side of Division
avenue, four buildings below Crescent.
(The only thing I remember of this area was what looked like a converted house into a small restaurant on the corner of Division and Crescent. I think it was Bono's. Then up along the curve of Crescent were a number of big-city Chicago style apartment houses. All gone now. I don't remember the school at all although the building is still standing. It's either vacant or has some commercial use. The straight portion of Crescent street was actually just a set of steep steps as the roadway curved around the steep hill on both sides).
1921 Annual Report - Old 4th Ward, Lot 8, the south 2 feet of lot 5, the north 20 feet of lot 9 of Block 23 of Dexter Fraction.
1951 - undated, unidentified newspaper clipping in Hall Street School scrapbook " Built in the early 1900's, the present supply building, (234 N Division), at first housed the former North Division School, later became a vocational school and in recent years was reconstructed for use as a supply room when the vocational school was moved to a Division Av S location. --- We have four floors, including the basement, with a total of about 12,000 square feet of storage area. --- A new site (for the supply building) being considered --- is located on the east side of Fuller ave NE between Leonard and Michigan streets." .
2005 - First site originally had Division Avenue running up steeply and ending at Michigan Street. In 1928 Division Avenue was extended through this site. When the freeway went through about 1965, the hill the school had been on was dug away and Division Avenue was run under an overpass.
2005 - Second building now commercial.41-14-30-105-006 owned by the Van Andel Institute
From article School History
From Heading History and the City of GrandRapids
From web site: MyCityofGrandRapids.info