Background of the Westside of Grand Rapids

(Image from GR Archives) The people living in the Westside of Grand Rapids were the Dutch and the Poles. They resided in separate neighborhoods, centered around their churches. The churches looked different and different languages were spoken depending on the neighborhood. While the Dutch and Poles worked together in the factories, they didn’t interact after work or on the weekends. Both groups were conservative though the Poles were more oriented to the Democratic Party. Both groups had the goal of house ownership in a clean and safe neighborhood. St. Adalbert began as a wooden church in 1882. By 1913, it had been replaced by a twin towered, landmark church that would later be declared a minor basilica. It was patterned after a church in Trzemeszno, which is 35 miles from Poznan. This area is where many early Polish families were from. Anthony arrived in Grand Rapids in 1912 and married his first wife Klementyna in 1916 at Sacred Heart Church. Sacred Heart was started in 1903 by Polish people who wanted a church closer to their house than St. Adalbert Church. Anthony married his second wife (my grandmother) Pauline in 1920 at St. Adalbert Church. Church figured big in family life. There was a Polish language newspaper from 1900 to 1957, the Echo Tygodniowe (The Weekly Echo) which was available weekly. The Polish Catholic Cemetery was established in 1909 and its name changed to Holy Cross Cemetery in 1947. There was a Polish Military band, choirs, halls for social and other support, Polish political organizations. The Polish language was used in the Catholic schools and the churches until the 1940s and 1950s. The business districts were on Bridge Street, Stocking Avenue, Leonard Street, Alpine Street and Michigan Street with shops run by Germans and Poles. They included groceries, bakeries, meat markets, tailors, barber shops, doctors and dentists, drug stores, dry goods stores, restaurants and bars, movie theaters and a police station.

Image: http://www.historygrandrapids.org/photo/802/west-side-of-the-grand-river THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The neighborhoods surrounding the Basilica of St. Adalbert’s (Wojciechowo) and other Roman Catholic churches were obvious because of the Polish being spoken as well as the differences from the Protestant churches. (Information from “The Poles, the Dutch and the Furniture Strike of 1911”, Mary Patrice Erdmans, Polish American Studies, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 5-22) DUTCH-POLAND RELATIONS: ”Through the years Dutch-Polish relations were minimal. They worked along side each other in the furniture factories, but nil else. Each lived in their own ethnic neighborhoods. The Vest Side St. Adalbert Polanders considered Alpine Avenue the line of demarcation between themselves and the Hollanders who were so heavily concentrated the length of Vest Leonard Street. 34 The East Side St. Isidore Polanders had only very minimal contact with the East Fulton Dutch thrust which bordered the southern limits of their enclave. The South Side Sacred Heart Polanders reacted similarly to the Dutch families on the easterly extremity of their enclave near Ninth Reformed Church. Simply stated, both groups kept to themselves and avoided each other. Both were conservative in outlook, despite the Polanders' Democratic Party orientation, and both were apprehensive of American liberalism. They each strove to make Grand Rapids a city of individual homeowners in clean neighborhoods who wanted to live a better life in a new land of opportunity.35 The Present Current Status of the Grand Rapids Polonia A general observation can be made that today the three Grand Rapids Polish communities in no way exude the vim, vigor, and vitality of the Grand Rapids Polonia in its Golden Age between 1910 and 1945. Assimilation and acculturation and Americanization have taken their inexorable toll . . . “ http://www.mipolonia.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/St.-Adalbert_1881-1981_Grand-Rapids_MI.pdf NEWSPAPER: “The Grand Rapids Polonia had a weekly newspaper. The Glos Polski (The Polish Voice) was published in 1899-1900. From 1900 to 1957, the Echo Tygodniowe (The Yeekly Echo) appeared each Friday.28 Except for Dutch publications, it outlived all other Grand Rapids ethnic publications. In 1906-1907, still another weekly, named Kuryer z Grand Rapids (The Grand Rapids Kuryer) served the Polish community.29 Of all these issues, only portions of the Echo have survived the ravages of time and the negligence of humankind. Happily this Echo microfilm (1908-1928 = 21 years) spans the bulk of the local Polonia's Golden Age (1910-1945). It provides a good partial social history of this immigrant group.” CEMETERY: ”The beautiful, rolling, 100-acre Polish cemetery, founded in 1909, in the Yalker-Richmond sector had its name changed in 1947 from Polish Catholic Cemetery to Holy Cross Cemetery. The weekly Polish Echo ceased publication in 1957. Even the diocesan The Yestern Michigan Catholic which provided news from the Polish parishes was liquidated in 1991. The PolishAmerican Military Band was disbanded during Yorld Yar II. There are no dramatic groups. The numerous choirs have been phased out. The Polish language was curtained in the schools in the early 1940s and in the churches in the early 1950s. Rarely is the language heard. Polish political organizations are a non-enti ty .. “ BUSINESS DISTRICT: “Perhaps the most physical indication of the deterioration and diminution of Polish ethnicity in Grand Rapids is the demise of its business districts on the West Side in the Stockbridge sector and on the East Side along Michigan Street. (Only the South Side Yest Fulton Polish business stretch has maintained a semblance of its former self.) The Bridge Street and Stocking Avenue business areas were a veritable second downtown with shops and stores operated by Germans and Polanders. Typically there were groceries, bakeries, butcher shops, barber salons, tailor shops, dry goods stores, shoemakers, sausage shops, hardware stores, adult-beverage watering holes, doctors and dentists, haberdasheries, drug stores, restaurants and even a police station. Today these areas are hardly a skeleton of their former selves. Brown's Stocking Theater near Fourth Street, the State Theater on the northwest corner of Stocking and Second, and the Town (or Roosevelt or Alcazar) Theater on Bridge Street just west of Lexington Avenue are no more. The Polish neighborhood stores on Alpine and Seventh and on Davis and Eleventh and on many other neighborhood corners throughout the area are no more.” * The Rise and Fall of the Grand Rapids Polonia https://dutchamericans.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/1993_07_skendzel.pdf Images: