Building the Freeway: A Photo Find

by Gina Bvins

Several years ago I gave a program for the Historical Society on the mug shot book in the archives of the Grand Rapids Public Museum. I knew about it from my days as a volunteer during the once a year Open House weekend at the “old museum” on Jefferson. I was stationed in the Police Station in Gaslight Village, issued a pair of white gloves and was actually allowed to show people more than one page. The book is huge and fragile. The earliest entry in the book is from August of 1897. I took my responsibility for the safety of the book very seriously. It still is one of my favorite artifacts in the collection (okay, I have about 150 favorite artifacts, maybe more).

What does the mug shot book have to do with the program I will give in October? When my husband Fred and I went into the Grand Rapids Public Museum archives to take photos of the mug shot book entries Tim or Alex showed me a couple of boxes of slides and said, “you probably would be interested in these”. Well, there’s an understatement. I have been waiting to find the time to really dig into the slides and do a presentation on them. It is now time.

The exciting thing about this collection of more than 1,000 slides is that they are from a time in the history of Grand Rapids when the landscape of the city was changing rapidly. The photographer, Seymour Beiboer, chronicles the destruction of downtown buildings as well as the building of new ones. He shows the wasteland that was created when the expressways went in as well as the construction of these roadways. It was Seymour’s brother in law, Elvin Hofstra, who donated this treasure to the museum. For this, all history buffs should be grateful.

The Museum has been making the effort to get their photographic images scanned and put up on the www.grpmcollections.org site so that the public can look at what is in the collection on line. Fred told the curators that he had a slide scanner and would find time scan the Beiboer images. About that time Albert Baxter Award winner Garret Ellison was writing a series of articles about urban renewal for the Grand Rapids Press. He was looking for some photos that he could use and called the curatorial staff who told him of Fred’s project. Garret started coming in and helping Fred. Once they were done, the staff downloaded the digital images to the web site.

For a little over a year I have split my time at work between the main museum building and the archives building. Between projects I have been working on two photo collections. The museum has a large photo collection that has been partially scanned, I am filling in the data base as well as I can with the knowledge I have regarding their identification. The other is the slides from Beiboer. Seymour stamped information on each slide mount and I am slowly getting that all into the record.

I chose to do the presentation on the expressway images he took. What first appeared to me to be mundane photos of the aftermath of the destruction were taken in such a way that I began to see beauty in many of the images. I have struggled to decide how to best present the images. I have chosen to let them fall into place as I review them over and over, and perhaps over again. I hope you enjoy my journey beside this remarkable chronicler Seymour Beiboer. I am so happy he decided to take the time.

The Seymour F. Beiboer Collection #1987.92 at Grand Rapids Public Museum Archives: Stamped on the slide mount is the date and Expressway. This collection is made up of almost 1,000 color, 35mm slides, taken by Grand Rapids resident Seymour Beiboer to document Urban Renewal in downtown Grand Rapids. The slides depict the demolition of many historic buildings including City Hall and the County Building, as well as the construction of their replacements. This remarkable collection provides a firsthand look into a very significant event that shaped modern Grand Rapids.

To view the entire Seymour F. Beiboer Slide Collection in Grand Rapids Public Museum Archives online at: https://grpmcollections.org/Detail/entities/4768

Thursday, October 11, 2018, at the Grand Rapids Public Library presented by Gina Bivins.