Wikipedia - Grand Rapids

[WMrapids]

Not sure if there was a topic here involving Wikipedia already but I have been editing Grand Rapids topics heavily lately.

 

There are a few things that I would like to ask you guys if you have any knowledge:

1. Where was the old Plainfield Bridge?

2. Does anyone have sources for the history of Grand Rapids' tallest buildings?

3. Where are some good places that I can take updated photos?

Anything would help and if you guys have any other recommendations as well, just let me know.

[jonathan.jam]

A larger project in collaboration was done with the city of Monmouth in Wales. It would be interesting to see a similar endeavor happen in Grand Rapids: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monmouthpedia

[Allison Slater]

The old Plainfield Bridge was in the same location the Northland Dr/EBL bridge is today.  Before the bridge was a ferry (a simple wooden barge with a railing.)

[WMrapids]

5 hours ago, tSlater said:

The old Plainfield Bridge was in the same location the Northland Dr/EBL bridge is today.  Before the bridge was a ferry (a simple wooden barge with a railing.)

Thank you! One of the old Ottawa chiefs was buried "20 rods" south of that bridge.  I don't know if they moved him or what but I thought it was interesting.

[RegalTDP]

7 hours ago, WMrapids said:

2. Does anyone have sources for the history of Grand Rapids' tallest buildings?

Do you mean the modern skyscrapers, or the historic ones (like McKay or 77 Monroe)?  And what kind of info are you looking for?  

[WMrapids]

1 hour ago, RegalTDP said:

Do you mean the modern skyscrapers, or the historic ones (like McKay or 77 Monroe)?  And what kind of info are you looking for?  

Historic ones. I've gotten past McKay but I don't know if I should include St. Mary's since they say it reaches up to 200 feet.

[Allison Slater]

10 hours ago, WMrapids said:

Thank you! One of the old Ottawa chiefs was buried "20 rods" south of that bridge.  I don't know if they moved him or what but I thought it was interesting.

What might also be of interest is in the very earliest maps of the city, a cemetary was listed at the northern end of Belknap Hill, but disappeared from maps not long after.  It's certainly not there today.  I've never been able to find any information on it, where the bodies were moved to, or why it was changed.

There also used to be a school where old Central (HH) still stands, but I've not found any records of that school aside from its presence on one map which I've lost.  Nor any details of the hospital on the same block that stood where Fountain School stands today.

[WMrapids]

7 minutes ago, tSlater said:

What might also be of interest is in the very earliest maps of the city, a cemetary was listed at the northern end of Belknap Hill, but disappeared from maps not long after.  It's certainly not there today.  I've never been able to find any information on it, where the bodies were moved to, or why it was changed.

There also used to be a school where old Central (HH) still stands, but I've not found any records of that school aside from its presence on one map which I've lost.  Nor any details of the hospital on the same block that stood where Fountain School stands today.

There's a lot of interesting things about the natives here too. One of the schools near where GRCC stands today was used for a lot of historic photos of GR.

[GR8scott]

The metro area statistics are off and kind of confusing. First there is a link for GR metro area and GR CSA which both lead to the metro area page. Then it shows the CSA and MSA populations at the top but below in the demographics section has a population much smaller 

[Pattmost20]

2 hours ago, GR8scott said:

The metro area statistics are off and kind of confusing. First there is a link for GR metro area and GR CSA which both lead to the metro area page. Then it shows the CSA and MSA populations at the top but below in the demographics section has a population much smaller 

First off for the Demographics section, it goes off of the official Census report, which is from 2010. Technically the 2015 numbers are just estimates, so they don't have the detailed breakdown of race, ethnicity, income, etc. for each year. Also under the demographics section they only show the population of city proper.

As far as Metro area and CSA links directing to the same place, I don't see where you are running into that problem. If you click the ranking for Metro it leads here, and if you click the ranking for CSA it leads here. If you are clicking the reference numbers for each they lead to different pages as well. Reference number 2 leads here, and reference number 3 leads here.

[GR8scott]

18 hours ago, Pattmost20 said:

First off for the Demographics section, it goes off of the official Census report, which is from 2010. Technically the 2015 numbers are just estimates, so they don't have the detailed breakdown of race, ethnicity, income, etc. for each year. Also under the demographics section they only show the population of city proper.

As far as Metro area and CSA links directing to the same place, I don't see where you are running into that problem. If you click the ranking for Metro it leads here, and if you click the ranking for CSA it leads here. If you are clicking the reference numbers for each they lead to different pages as well. Reference number 2 leads here, and reference number 3 leads here.

To clarify, I'm not talking about the rankings but the links, they both lead to a generic "Grand rapids metropolitan area" page, then on there, it contains  confusing population stats. It has 2015 CSA at 1.4 mil, 2015 MSA at just over 1 mil, then below in the demographics it has the 2010 population as 774K.  It doesn't explain where those demographics are coming from, as it's larger than Kent County alone but smaller than Kent/Ottawa combined, and there's no way it grew over a quarter million in five years.

[RegalTDP]

1 hour ago, GR8scott said:

To clarify, I'm not talking about the rankings but the links, they both lead to a generic "Grand rapids metropolitan area" page, then on there, it contains  confusing population stats. It has 2015 CSA at 1.4 mil, 2015 MSA at just over 1 mil, then below in the demographics it has the 2010 population as 774K.  It doesn't explain where those demographics are coming from, as it's larger than Kent County alone but smaller than Kent/Ottawa combined, and there's no way it grew over a quarter million in five years.

You realize anybody can edit a Wikipedia page, right??  If this bothers you, you can go in and fix it yourself.

[Pattmost20]

3 hours ago, GR8scott said:

To clarify, I'm not talking about the rankings but the links, they both lead to a generic "Grand rapids metropolitan area" page, then on there, it contains  confusing population stats. It has 2015 CSA at 1.4 mil, 2015 MSA at just over 1 mil, then below in the demographics it has the 2010 population as 774K.  It doesn't explain where those demographics are coming from, as it's larger than Kent County alone but smaller than Kent/Ottawa combined, and there's no way it grew over a quarter million in five years.

MSA is defined as a principal county and all surrounding counties (without a major population center) who send at least 25% of their workforce to the principal county. CSA is when counties that have major population centers still send over 25% of their workforce to a different county. So GR's MSA doesn't contain Ottawa, Muskegon, or Allegan county (because Holland and Muskegon have their own MSAs) but the CSA does. MSA can change drastically when they reclassify counties in or out of a specific MSA. So in 2010 we were hovering around 3/4 of a million, after 2013 some counties were reclassified and we topped 1 million.

I track census numbers closely, the Wikipedia should be 100% up to date. 

[RegalTDP]

1 hour ago, Pattmost20 said:

MSA is defined as a principal county and all surrounding counties (without a major population center) who send at least 25% of their workforce to the principal county. CSA is when counties that have major population centers still send over 25% of their workforce to a different county. So GR's MSA doesn't contain Ottawa, Muskegon, or Allegan county (because Holland and Muskegon have their own MSAs) but the CSA does. MSA can change drastically when they reclassify counties in or out of a specific MSA. So in 2010 we were hovering around 3/4 of a million, after 2013 some counties were reclassified and we topped 1 million.

I track census numbers closely, the Wikipedia should be 100% up to date. 

The 774K figure actually is wrong, because after the 2013 reclassification (where they added Ottawa and Montcolm County, and dropped Newaygo), the Census retroactively applied it to their 2010 figures.

The Census now has the GR MSA 2010 population at about 989K.  The 774K stat is obsolete and shouldn't be appearing on Wikipedia anymore.

With the 2015 MSA estimate at 1.039 million, that's a gain of about 50,000, or 5%.  Fairly respectable.

[Pattmost20]

Well to be fair I've only kept the GR population estimates up to date. If it isn't already changed, I'll update it. 

[GR8scott]

4 hours ago, RegalTDP said:

You realize anybody can edit a Wikipedia page, right??  If this bothers you, you can go in and fix it yourself.

I realize what Wikipedia is, the part that bothers me is the numbers don't make sense and I dont know what the correct ones are so why would I edit it if I dont know what the correct information is?!

[WMrapids]

So I updated the list of tallest buildings article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Grand_Rapids

There are still a few gaps I need to fill for the historical section and I’m not sure if we have more buildings at +150 feet.

Found out that Grand Rapids has the tallest building in Michigan from 1873-1877, the Fountain Street Baptist Church at 217 feet.

It was the tallest building in Grand Rapids until it was destroyed by a fire in 1917.

[The ATX]

9 minutes ago, WMrapids said:

So I updated the list of tallest buildings article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Grand_Rapids

There are still a few gaps I need to fill for the historical section and I’m not sure if we have more buildings at +150 feet.

Found out that Grand Rapids has the tallest building in Michigan from 1873-1877, the Fountain Street Baptist Church at 217 feet.

It was the tallest building in Grand Rapids until it was destroyed by a fire in 1917.

Nice job with the update.  I've updated the Austin tallest list on Wikipedia a couple times, and each time somebody else redid it to their own liking shortly after me.  I have given up on editing wikis.

[GR8scott]

10 hours ago, WMrapids said:

So I updated the list of tallest buildings article:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Grand_Rapids

There are still a few gaps I need to fill for the historical section and I’m not sure if we have more buildings at +150 feet.

Found out that Grand Rapids has the tallest building in Michigan from 1873-1877, the Fountain Street Baptist Church at 217 feet.

It was the tallest building in Grand Rapids until it was destroyed by a fire in 1917.

That's really cool. Nice update, is the blob at bob not even 150'?

[WMrapids]

4 hours ago, GR8scott said:

That's really cool. Nice update, is the blob at bob not even 150'?

It’s only about 140ft tall.

[WMrapids]

Some users on Wikimedia Commons backed out from trying to draw the seal, so I tried it myself. Not great, but better than the pixelated image from a 100 year old book that was being used on Wikipedia.