What to See in Grand Rapids - Top Sights and Attractions

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is a 158-acre botanical garden, art museum, and outdoor sculpture park located in Grand Rapids Township, Michigan, United States. Opened in 1995, Meijer Gardens quickly established itself in the Midwest as a major cultural attraction jointly focused on horticulture and sculpture.

Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park includes a tropical conservatory, an 8-acre Japanese garden, major works of modern and contemporary sculpture on the grounds and indoors, along with a series of outdoor gardens and nature trails.

It is a well attended cultural site in Michigan, having attracted 750,000 visitors annually between 2015 - 2017. Meijer Gardens has continued to grow its permanent collection of sculpture from major figures in Modern and Contemporary art while building additional structures for indoor and outdoor gardens. In 2018, the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park was included as one of "Eleven of the World's Greatest Sculpture Parks" by Artsy.^[2]

Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Grand Rapids Public Museum, located on the bank of the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, is among the oldest history museums in the United States. It was founded in 1854 as the "Grand Rapids Lyceum of Natural History". The museum includes a cafe, a gift shop, and a 1928 Spillman carousel, which is situated in a pavilion over the Grand River. A Wurlitzer #157 Band Organ that plays 165 rolls provides the carousel's music. The Museum building also houses the Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium. The current Pearl Street N.W. location, built in 1994, replaced the former Art Deco location on Jefferson Avenue S.E.; that building now serves as a High School and is connected to the GRPM Collections and the City of Grand Rapids Archives.

The GRPM brings in a variety of traveling exhibitions annually ranging among topics related to science, history and culture.^[5]

Non-denominational church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was for a time unique in the United States as being large, religiously liberal and non-denominational in a notably conservative city. It arose from its beginnings as a Baptist church which responded to the ascendency of liberal Christianity in the late 19th century, primarily through graduates of the University of Chicago Divinity School, which was a leader in the movement.

Established in the largest town in West Michigan, in 1869 as Fountain Street Baptist Church, by 1960 FSC surrendered its Baptist name and identity altogether to become an independent, non-denominational liberal church. In 1959, a book chronicling the story of Fountain Street Church titled Liberal Legacy – A History of Fountain Street Church was published in-house by Philip Buchen, a member of the church and legal advisor to President Gerald Ford.

In the years between 1896 and 2006 Fountain Street Church eventually shed its explicitly Christian identity for a non-creedal spiritual life that closely approximated Unitarian Universalism. Its newest mantra to "Free the Mind, Grow the Soul and Change the World" summarizes the church's approach to religion from the earlier days to this.^[9]

Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rosa Parks Circle is a plaza located in the heart of Grand Rapids, Michigan. During the warmer months it is a multipurpose facility, acting as a venue for events like concerts or dances put on by the Grand Rapids Original Swing Society. In the winter the Circle is converted to an ice rink. Below the ice there are 166 fiber optic lights designed to represent the sky of Michigan as it appeared at midnight, January 1, 2000.

The area was designed by Maya Lin who is famous for her work on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The original name of the circle was Monroe Mall Amphitheater. It is now named in honor of longtime Michigan resident Rosa Parks, of whom there is a statue in the park.

On August 7, 2012 Rosa Parks Circle was the location of a Guinness Book world record for the largest number of people swing dancing in unison (756 individuals) organized by the Grand Rapids Original Swing Society.^[10]

Grand Rapids Civic Theatre & School of Theatre Arts, located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was founded in 1925 and has grown into one of the largest community theatres in the United States. Grand Rapids Civic Theatre & School of Theatre Arts is located in downtown Grand Rapids in an 80,000-square-foot facility consisting of four historic buildings: the Majestic Theatre; the Hull Building; the Botsford Building; and the Wenham Building.

The Theatre is in the process of a major capital and endowment growth project. In 2006, a major renovation of the facility led and managed by Grand Action invested over 10 million dollars in the Theatre’s four historic buildings. In the fall of 2006, Civic Theatre’s artistic home was renamed the Meijer Majestic Theatre in honor of Fred and Lena Meijer’s lead gift to this project. Civic Theatre is completing the project with a 2.3 million dollar endowment and theatrical equipment campaign.

Each year, Civic Theatre creates over a dozen productions and over 15,000 hours of educational instruction. These programs are made possible by over 700 volunteers under the leadership of 9 professional staff and over 30 guest artists.^[18]

Planetarium in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium, named for astronaut Roger B. Chaffee, was constructed in the early 1960s as part of the Public Museum of Grand Rapids. The facility initially featured a 30-foot plaster dome and a Goto Optics mechanical star projector. Among the planetarium's first shows was "Star of Wonder", an astronomical attempt at an explanation of the Star of Bethlehem. The show received positive reviews in the Grand Rapids area and remained in the Chaffee's catalogue for several years.

The Chaffee, then known as the Planetarium of the Public Museum of Grand Rapids, came under the curatorship of David L. DeBruyn in 1964. A young man fresh out of college at the University of Michigan, DeBruyn helped found the Great Lakes Planetarium Association in 1965, hosting the first meeting in Grand Rapids. In 1967 the theater was dedicated as the Roger B. Chaffee Planetarium, following the death of the astronaut in the Apollo 1 mission.

During the late 1960s the Grand Rapids Amateur Astronomical Association began a project to construct a new dark sky observatory in the Grand Rapids area. A site was leased to them on Kissing Rock Hill and the James C. Veen Observatory was constructed by the Association members, with some support from the Public Museum and Chaffee Planetarium. Today the Veen remains tied to the museum and the Chaffee.

In 1994 the planetarium was relocated to a new facility, along with the entire museum, where it would feature a new 50-foot (15 m) aluminum dome and the state-of the art projection system: a prototype of the Evans and Sutherland Digistar II digital star projector, running on Digistar software. Within a few years this was upgraded to software for Digistar II. The system also features three Sony video projectors, a Barco video projector, scores of Kodak ektagraphic slide projectors and even more special effect projectors and devices. The planetarium is well known for its many educational programs, as well as its unique library of laser light shows, many programmed at the Chaffee itself, making use of the unique effects of the Chaffee and innovative and original Digistar programming.

Visiting the Planetarium is a popular activity for students of all ages in Grand Rapids and across Michigan, from preschoolers who learn about the cycles of day and night, to elementary students studying the Solar System and stars, up to high schoolers and even college students focused on the more mysterious wonders of the universe. The Chaffee also draws in visitors to its educational public shows, especially its informal "Under Starlit Skies" descriptive astronomy lectures and spectacular laser light shows.

The Chaffee remains a member of the Great Lakes Planetarium Association, and as of 1995 began hosting conferences on the decennial anniversaries. David L. DeBruyn officially retired after forty years of curatorship in 2003, and still serves in an advisory capacity as a volunteer.

In 2014 the planetarium received a 1.2 million dollar upgrade.^[22]

Park in Kent County, Michigan. Millennium Park is the largest urban park in West Michigan, located on the southwest side of Grand Rapids. Millennium Park connects four of the major cities in the area together, including Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Grandville, and Walker. When completed, the park will be twice as large as New York City's Central Park, at approximately 1,500 acres.

The project began in 1998 when the Parks Department director Roger Sabine began planning for an expansion of Johnson Park. Sabine expanded the Johnson Park expansion into the 1,500 acre (6 km²) park project. The project was finally submitted to the Secchia Millennium Commission (SMC) later that year and later approved the project by which the Kent County Board of Commissioners named the park Millennium Park. The park celebrated its grand opening in July 2004.

The park is built on the former location of gypsum mines and gravel pits, including the former location of the Domtar mine. About 50 pumps continue to extract petroleum in locations across the parkland.^[30]