31 College Ave NE was built in 1892 by Paul James Steketee who was the son to the founder of the Steketee family business. The picture shown was found in the Grand Rapids Public Library archives and dates back to 1896. From the photo you can see College Ave when it was a dirt road. You can also see from the photo, very little has changed from the original design of outside of the house.

The approach from the driveway to the street looks as though it was as problematic in 1890, as it is today. I wonder if the horse and buggies bottomed out as they entered College Ave like my car frequently did. Paul Steketee lived in the house until he passed away in 1929. His wife remained in the home until 1940 when the house changed owners. Records show the house went back and forth as single family and an owner occupied rental property a few times in the 1940s. By 1950 the house became (and still remains) a three unit rental property.

Through the years the house has been relatively well maintained for its age and potential for wear and tear. Some noticeable changes from the picture show that a chimney was removed and the architecture of the porch has changed a little. Also the double hung windows on the third floor were more decorative. When we bought the house in 2001, the third floor window was just a basic rotted out double hung window and so we replaced it with a similar style window of higher quality. If only we had this picture at that time. I always felt the window style just didn’t seem to fit the character of the house.

From the picture the exterior appears to be a light color. I uncovered a brown color while scraping and painting the house. Just a few weeks ago I found a color picture from the 1960s showing the entire house was painted brown. Over the years each owner made their contribution to restoring the house. When we purchased the house, the roof and furnace had been replaced as well as second floor kitchen.

After one week of living in the house, my brother and I pulled the front door off and refinished it. It wasn’t much longer and the 30 yard roll-off dumpsters started to appear in our shared driveway (thank God we had wonderful neighbors –Doug and Diane Thole). Through all the dejunking and third floor demolition, we filled four of these large dumpsters and one smaller twenty yard dumpster. The result was a newly constructed third floor apartment with peaked ceilings.

We also updated all the electrical wiring in the house, most of the lighting, skim-coated all the walls for a smooth finish, replaced toilets that were not original to the house, replaced the deck off the second floor master bedroom, replace and restored many windows, retiled many floors, added the current fence, repainted the exterior and restored the front porch among many other small projects. The house was last on the Heritage Hill Tour of Homes in 1980. With the completion of a few more projects and approval of the tenants, hopefully the house will again be on tour.