Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids
Author: Norma Lewis
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738552002

William Haldane opened a cabinet shop in 1836, 14 years before Grand Rapids incorporated. Other furniture companies followed: Berkey and Gay, Widdicomb, Sligh, Hekman, and Phoenix were among those taking advantage of the Grand River for transportation and power, the area's abundant hardwood supply, and a growing immigrant labor pool. The furniture soon attracted national attention. In 1876, the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition proved conclusively that a river town in Michigan had indeed earned the title "Furniture City." Presidents Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower all worked at Grand Rapids-made desks. Fifteen manufacturers joined forces to build 1,000 Handley Page bombers during World War I. The Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed on September 2, 1945, at a table made in Grand Rapids. Despite fires, floods, strikes, depressions, and wars, Grand Rapids led the industry until the 1950s and 1960s, when the factories began moving to North Carolina. Today the area, along with nearby Holland and Zeeland, dominates the office furniture industry.

Lost Restaurants of Grand Rapids

Lost Restaurants of Grand Rapids
Author: Norma Lewis
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2015
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1467118877

Grand Rapids restaurants have served up meals and memories since the city's earliest days. At Bentham's, one of the first downtown restaurants, customers without money to eat could trade an animal pelt for supper. John Sebaitis trained his German shepherd, Spooky, to serve beer to the patrons at his tavern. And a seventeen-year-old Gerald R. Ford worked part time as a server and dish washer at Bill's Place. Join Norma Lewis as she explores the history of Grand Rapids most beloved eateries and the stories behind them. Book jacket.

Murder & Mayhem in Grand Rapids

Murder & Mayhem in Grand Rapids
Author: Tobin T. Buhk
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467117528

While the River City is known for its history of furniture making, it also has a sinister side. Jennie Flood was a widow with a get-rich scheme that involved a shotgun and an insurance application. Reverend Ferris went undercover in his war against the city's purveyors of vice. The police rounded up the usual suspects in an attempt to solve the infamous 1921 bank heist that led to the slaying of two detectives. And the death of a teenager exposed "Aunty" Smith and her dangerous side business conducted in the shadows. Author Tobin T. Buhk delves into the colorful characters of Grand Rapids' past and the heinous crimes they committed.

The American City

The American City
Author: Arthur Hastings Grant
Publisher:
Total Pages: 866
Release: 1927
Genre: Cities and towns
ISBN:

The Big Vote

The Big Vote
Author: Liette Gidlow
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2007-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801886379

Low voter turnout is a serious problem in American politics today, but it is not a new one. Its roots lay in the 1920s when, for the first time in nearly a century, a majority of eligible Americans did not bother to cast ballots in a presidential election. Stunned by this civic failure so soon after a world war to "make the world safe for democracy," reforming women and business men launched massive campaigns to "Get Out the Vote." By 1928, they had enlisted the enthusiastic support of more than a thousand groups in Forty-six states. In The Big Vote, historian Liette Gidlow shows that the Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns—overlooked by historians until now—were in fact part of an important transformation of political culture in the early twentieth century. Weakened political parties, ascendant consumer culture, labor unrest, Jim Crow, widespread anti-immigration sentiment, and the new woman suffrage all raised serious questions about the meanings of good citizenship. Gidlow recasts our understandings of the significance of the woman suffrage amendment and shows that it was important not only because it enfranchised women but because it also ushered in a new era of near-universal suffrage. Faced with the apparent equality of citizens before the ballot box, middle-class and elite whites in the Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns and elsewhere advanced a searing critique of the ways that workers, ethnics, and sometimes women behaved as citizens. Through techniques ranging from civic education to modern advertising, they worked in the realm of culture to undo the equality that constitutional amendments had seemed to achieve. Through their efforts, by the late 1920s, "civic" had become practically synonymous with "middle class" and "white." Richly documented with primary sources from political parties and civic groups, popular and ethnic periodicals, and electoral returns, The Big Vote looks closely at the national Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns and at the internal dynamics of campaigns in the case-study cities of New York, New York, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Birmingham, Alabama. In the end, the Get-Out-the Vote campaigns shed light not only on the problem of voter turnout in the 1920s, but on some of the problems that hamper the practice of full democracy even today.