Greenville Downtown Historic District

About this property

The Greenville Downtown Historic District is a commercial historic district located in Greenville, Michigan along Lafayette between Montcalm and Benton, along with the adjacent blocks of Montcalm, Grove, Cass, and Washington on either side. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. In 1844, John and Deborah Green moved from Fulton County, New York to this site in Montcalm County. The Greens purchased a plot of land and built a dam and sawmill. More settlers quickly arrived, including a millwright, blacksmith, carpenter, and doctor (John Green's brother, Thomas), who all settled in Greenville in 1845. The first merchant arrived in 1846, and a small town grew from that location. John Green himself financed many of the early businesses, and the site soon became a commercial hub for the county. In 1853, John Green and Manning Rutan platted areas of Greenville that included Lafayette and surrounding streets. John Green died in 1855, but when the city was later chartered, it was officially named Greenville in his honor. In the 1850s and 60s, Greenville's business district began developing along Lafayette between Washington and Cass. The commercial buildings of the time were a mixture of one- and two-story wooden structures, none of which survive today. In 1868, Greenville adopted a fire code prohibiting new wooden buildings. Coupled with the rise in population due to logging activities, this created a construction boom in commercial buildings along Lafayette, and by 1875, about twenty substantial brick commercial blocks had been constructed. The national economic downturn prevented more construction until the mid-1880s. At that time, a series of fires along Lafayette prompted a new wave of construction, and a dozen more buildings were constructed in the later 1880s and early 1890s. Development in the early 1900s was slow, as buildings were replaced or lots infilled. Construction halted during the Great Depression, then picked up again after World War II before essentially ceasing in the mid-1960s. The district contains 60 contributing buildings dating from the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the oldest dates to 1869. Most of the structures are commercial blocks located along Lafayette, housing businesses on the first floor and office space or social meeting spaces on the upper floors. The district also includes churches, houses, and a hotel. The Winter Inn was built in 1901-02 by Thomas B. Winter on a site that had previously hosted a string of hotel buildings. The Winter Inn has continued to serve as a hotel until the present day, and is significant as a still-functioning example of a modest, locally owned hotel of a type once common in small towns like Greenville. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1979 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Montcalm County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Montcalm County.

More historic places in Michigan

Browse all historic places in Michigan.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Michigan history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.