Outdoor Sculpture and Historic Buildings

Grand Rapids Tours: Outdoor Sculpture and Historic Buildings

Grand Rapids has become a prominent player on the global art scene with the advent of ArtPrize, the world's richest art competition. For 2-1/2 weeks in autumn, downtown is jam-packed indoors and out with more than 1,000 works of art for public viewing.

But Grand Rapids is also blessed with wonderful outdoor art year-round. You'll see stone angels on churches, bronze busts in older parks and monumental abstract works tucked into public courtyards. But, really, what else would you expect from a city that pictures a well-loved sculpture on every street sign and garbage truck?

Everyone refers to this big red steel artwork as "the Calder." Though half a dozen pieces by Alexander Calder grace the city, it's the 54-foot-long, 43-foot-high, 42-ton La Grande Vitesse (French for "the great swiftness" or "the grand rapids") that that has come to symbolize the city's artistic spirit.

Celebrating Artistic Spirit

La Grande Vitesse was dedicated in 1969 in front of City Hall on a large plaza that has become known as Calder Plaza. That same spirit of bringing art outside museum walls for all to enjoy inspired the first Festival of the Arts in 1970. Alexander Calder designed that festival logo.

Held the first full weekend of June, Festival has grown into the nation's largest all-volunteer arts festival. Half a million people paint faces, chalk sidewalks, glue wood scraps and enjoy free performances by musicians, dancers, actors and visual artists from all over West Michigan.

Festival-goers line up for a turn on Motu, a Mark di Suvero sculpture that can support several riders on its gigantic rubber tire swing. (Don't be shy about jumping on at any other time of year, either.)

Rosa Parks Circle (Monroe NW and Monroe Center) was designed by Maya Lin, best known for her Vietnam Veterans' Memorial in Washington, D.C. At the heart of the Circle is a sculpture named Ecliptic, which doubles as a 13,000-square-foot amphitheatre that hosts free ethnic festivals and summer blues concerts. In winter, it converts into an ice skating rink. The park's grassy sculpted banks suggest waves. It also has a reflecting pool and a pool emitting water vapor.

Natural Beauty, Manmade Wonders

If you have a free hour - and an artistic soul - stroll two miles on the paved Riverwalk. It lines both banks of the Grand River from the Fulton Street Bridge to the wrought iron Sixth Street Bridge, built in 1886. (Crossing any of four bridges south of Sixth Street will shorten your Riverwalk loop.)

From Fulton Street, walk north along the east side of the river. You'll soon see Michael Singer's River's Edge Environmental Sculpture, built into 600 feet of riverbank.

Meant to blend into the landscape, this artful arrangement of native boulders and plants combines with a sculpted granite floodwall to create a peaceful oasis. Listen to water drip into rectangular pools. Feel shifting warmth and coolness as sun and shadows play over wild grapevine and cottonwood trees. Watch ducks and fishermen in the river below.

Look for historical markers and carved building facades as you continue north along the Riverwalk, passing the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel and DeVos Place convention center. In Sixth Street Bridge Park, Joseph Kinnebrew's red steel Kid's Katwalk invites people to hop up on low balance beams set at cross angles.

Fish Gotta' Swim, Men Gotta' Float

You're now in the North Monroe Avenue business district, home to art galleries, cafes, offices and loft apartments in restored factory buildings. Canal Street Park (North Monroe north of Sixth Street) has a new playground and fascinating kiosks about railroad history.

Cross the Grand River on Sixth Street Bridge's wide pedestrian walkways, then go two blocks south to another local landmark - Joseph Kinnebrew's Grand River Sculpture and Fish Ladder. People crowd the viewing platforms each spring and fall to watch salmon and steelhead jump graduated steps up and over the Sixth Street dam.

Return south along the Grand River's west bank. In Ah-Nab-Awen Park, near the Gerald R. Ford Museum, Indian Burial Mounds honor Odawa, Ojibwa and Potawatomi people. Nearby is Man in Space by Judd Nelson, an intriguing depiction of a weightless astronaut. Directly north of the Ford Museum, climb into Lorrie's Button by artist Hy Zelkowitz. This giant "Pop Art"-style button won the Playground Sculpture Competition of Festival ‘76. More sculptures stand outside Grand Rapids Public Museum and Grand Valley State University's Eberhard Center.

Now head east up Fulton Street to the Sheldon Avenue cross street and the Grand Rapids Children's Museum. The mosaic wall that decorates the exterior was a 2009 ArtPrize finalist.

Building on the Past

Head further east - up the hill - and you'll enter the Heritage Hill Historic District. This 40-block area includes 1,300 homes dating from 1848 and representing more than 60 architectural styles.

Back down the hill, the downtown area is hosts a wide array of architectural styles, from Renaissance, Greek and Italianate to Gothic and Romanesque. These buildings are just as much a part of Grand Rapids' artistic legacy as our public sculptures.