Obituary of a home: How we researched the history of one vacant house in Grand Rapids. (Grand Rapids Press, 3/31/2011)
Excerpt: On the fourth floor of the downtown branch of the Grand Rapids Public Library is a treasure trove of information about the city, its buildings and its inhabitants.
Materials like real estate listing cards, city directories, death records and drawers and drawers of newspapers on microfilm can help people find the story of their home. These are some of the materials we used to research the life story of one vacant house in Grand Rapids.
The point of the project, which will be reported in coming days, culminating Sunday, was to take a snapshot of a single home caught up in a wave of vacancy. When census figures were released last week for Michigan, they detailed an estimated 8,493 empty houses in the city of Grand Rapids, compared to the 4,743 homes listed as vacant the previous decade. (If you have a vacancy or foreclosure story you'd like to share, use this form to tell us about it.)
But the resources at the library aren't just for researching vacant homes -- they are available to anyone interested in researching the history of a house or other local building.
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