A Gateway to the City: The Grand Trunk Station

by Matthew Daley, GRHS Board Member, and Professor of History, GVSU

The Evening Press on Thursday, July 18, 1907 complimented those residents of Grand Rapids who had taken advantage of the special rates for the Press’ Annual Excursion to Niagara Falls. Two trains had departed new Grand Trunk Railway station on East Bridge (now Michigan Street) at 6:20 and 7:30 that morning arriving at their destination by 7 p.m. While less of a destination today than in the early twentieth century, the Niagara Falls excursions marked the start of the traditional vacation season and the new downtown station provided an extra perk.

Built in a Richardsonian Romanesque-style, with large Vermont granite footings rising into dark red brick walls with additional granite framing around the windows, the new Grand Trunk Station projected an air of solidity. The square 90-foot-tall tower, in contrast, featured Italianate details and a green tiled roof, matching that on the main structure. 15-foot signs with “Grand Trunk” picked out in electric lights on all four sides served as both guide and landmark to the station. Travelers entering from Bridge Street entered the main waiting room with a small circular ticket counter to the left and the baggage area in a separate room to the right. The marble detailed waiting area was lit by an upper tier of stained-glass windows depicting railroad scenes and a large skylight 26 feet above an inlaid terrazzo floor. Once their train had arrived, passengers would exit the rear of the main building to a train shed that provided shelter until boarding. Situated in a small area, part of the train shed’s overhang would actually extend beyond the flood wall, providing a close view of the river. While not as large as Union Station to the south, the Grand Trunk Station welcomed travelers through a gateway suitably elegant for Furniture City, U.S.A.

The Grand Trunk Station lineage extended back to the first railroads in Grand Rapids. The Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad’s arrival in 1858 brought regular passenger and freight service, but not stability to the company itself. Railroads often experienced turmoil and a flurry of new names as they changed hands. Successor company the Detroit, Grand Haven & Milwaukee placed Grand Rapids on the line between Grand Haven and Pontiac but later came under the control of the Canadian based Great Western Railway in 1878, which itself was merged into the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada in 1882.

The initial Grand Trunk passenger and freight station operated at the juncture of Plainfield and East Leonard. It was also the main service yard with a roundhouse and offices near the foot of LeGrand Street (today’s Barnett Street). The completion of Union Station on the south side of downtown in 1900 meant that the Grand Trunk’s competitors now had a direction connection to the heart of the city. A web of factors including city and business resistance, the refusal to allow a line to run through downtown, and conflict between the competing railroads had denied the Grand Trunk access to the consolidated station.

The disastrous flood of March 1904, while leaving the West Side underwater, had a lesser impact on the eastern side partly due to improvements already underway. The Grand Trunk had started planning for a downtown extension several years earlier and had made some progress. They would catch a break with the flood. To buffer the East Side Canal the dock line would be extended west by over fifty feet to a new flood wall, and in that new space, the Grand Trunk’s line would travel to its proposed station site along East Bridge Street. The line extension brought legal challenges to river access, constructing a half dozen bridges, acquiring property for a new trackage, and building a new steel bridge across the Grand River south of Ann Street.

The completion of the new bridge permitted the construction triangular “wye” of tracks connected to the Grand Trunk’s main line using a viaduct over Canal Avenue. Because the new station would be at the end of the tracks, it would be a “stub” station that trains could not pass through. The “wye” meant that passenger trains could be backed into the station from either east or west from the main line. Though a complicated maneuver, the Grand Trunk felt having access to downtown as its competitors did made it worthwhile. The improvements also meant that while construction on the station began in September 1905, it would be paused for most of 1906.

The evening of Saturday, June 15, 1907, was not merely a ribbon cutting for a new building, but a cause for civic celebration. Thousands of residents came out to see the formal parade of National Guardsmen, community organizations, marching bands, and dignitaries along Bridge and Canal. Tours of the station saw an estimated 50,000 residents pass through its doors and with period appropriate exaggeration the Herald proclaimed that the “Opening of the Station Most Successful Event in History of [the] City.” Organizers also gathered forty-three residents who had witnessed the first train to Grand Rapids in 1858 to ride on the inaugural train to depart the station. While it might seem a bit overdone in the present, it is worth considering that train stations were the gateway to cities and having one or more that reflected the aspirations of the community said a great deal about that place. Once the final salute was rendered at 10:30 on that June night, the Grand Trunk Station would become a key part of civic infrastructure.

Even though World War II had brought the highest ever rate of passenger traffic on railroads it would not be sustained. The years of the Great Depression and war had meant a great deal of deferred maintenance to Grand Trunk facilities initially from financial inability and later shortage of materials. The Grand Trunk Station showed that neglect as well and combined with the larger size of rail passenger cars and the difficulty of backing them into the station along with limited automobile parking, meant its days were numbered. On December 21, 1948 the Grand Trunk opened a new combined freight and passenger station at the old Plainfield and Leonard site where abundant parking was available. There were no parades for this station’s opening. The city agreed to purchase the old station, a decision that stirred controversy with critics unhappy with public funds being used in such a fashion. City leaders, already considering the site as a potential ramp for a proposed highway, viewed the purchase as a prudent planning measure as it was adjacent to the now cleared sites of Valley City Milling and the Berkey & Gay factory that had burned in 1943.

The station remained vacant until leased to the State Liquor Control Commission for use as an office and store in August 1951. The train shed was enclosed with cinderblocks into a warehouse and the front entrance enclosed as well. The commission would remain until 1957 when the increasingly poor physical conditions, including the collapse of the skylight, would lead to former station’s condemnation. Instead of a highway ramp, a new $3.6 million post office, a key part of the downtown urban renewal program, would take its place. The 1907station represented the past as reflected by its entry in Lydens’ The Story of Grand Rapids that called it a “dank, dark, riverfront depot.” Even with its new station at Plainfield Avenue the Grand Trunk continued to eliminate stations and passenger service as traffic declined serving Grand Rapids with only two trains per day by 1959.

The Grand Trunk Station’s opening came with a parade, and its demolition would also come with a parade. Monday afternoon, October 4, 1960, saw a parade of firefighters, mail carriers, postal vehicles,

Creston High’s marching band, and dignitaries including Gerald Ford travel from Veteran’s Park to the former station for groundbreaking ceremonies. After the speeches, the assembled crowd watched as crews began the work of tearing down the old station. In a coincidence, during the prior weekend the Grand Trunk ended passenger service to Grand Rapids, the final eastbound trip carrying two reporters other than the crew. By November 1960, only the steel framework remained with the tower being toppled in early January 1961. Today, the Grand Trunk Station exists only in photographs, postcards, and memory as nothing remains on the site to remind citizens of the gateway so hailed by residents in 1907.