North College Block Club | Heritage Hill | Grand Rapids, MI


  505 Fulton - Historic Story by Chris Bailey

After the trail ran cold on 505 Fulton and 521 Fulton St., Dan Ballast from Central Reformed Church (CRC) found these photographs in the church archives. Along with the professional quality photos, was a GR Press clipping (with photo) from April 2, 1954. This allowed me to pinpoint the dates of a few more articles and further narrow the timeline for when the DeVries house moved from 521 Fulton to 46 College Ave NE.

Some interesting highlights from the 1954 article are that Otto R Eggers, architect from New York City was selected to design the church edifice. Otto Eggers is known by some for working on the design of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. NCBC is well connected! Local construction was led by Daverman Construction.

On January 28, 1955, the Grand Rapids Press reported the sale of two additional homes to expand the foot print of CRC with construction to begin in early summer of 1955. Together, the homes at 521 Fulton and 36 College Ave NE (mystery home) were purchased for a total price of $77,500. Also noteworthy is that the cost of the masonry was expected to be $500,000 alone.

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