Guide
Grand Rapids with Kids
The zoo shuts for the winter, the carousel does not, and the best hour of a family day here costs three dollars and runs on a platform out over the river.
5 min read
Marguerite Vanderhoff
Senior Editor
Beat: Things to Do, Attractions, Best Time to Visit
Marguerite has edited Midwest city coverage for sixteen years and owns the practical pages here: which attractions are a drive rather than a walk, what the free downtown shuttle actually replaces, and how a lake-effect band changes a Tuesday. She quotes admission in bands because institutions revise them, and says plainly when a figure is unconfirmed.
5 guides · 4 news posts
Last updatedMarguerite's most recent update to this site was .
Long-form
Guides by Marguerite Vanderhoff
Reported guides to Grand Rapids, each with its own publication and last-updated date.
Guide
FeaturedA Weekend in Grand Rapids
Two nights, one car, and one hard constraint that decides the whole schedule: the free Frank Lloyd Wright house only opens to the public on Sunday afternoon.
5 min read
Guide
FeaturedA First-Timer's Guide to Grand Rapids
Michigan's second city is a furniture town that spent its furniture money on art. Here is how the address grid works, what is walkable, and what needs a car.
6 min read
Guide
FeaturedThe Best Time to Visit Grand Rapids
Late September is the best fortnight and the most expensive one. March is the worst month and nobody says so. Here is the year, month by month, without the tourism-board gloss.
5 min read
Guide
FeaturedGrand Rapids in Winter
Seventy-odd inches of snow, the cloudiest January of any month, and a city that responds by putting a hundred art installations outdoors and flooding a Maya Lin park into an ice rink.
6 min read
News desk
News under Marguerite Vanderhoff's byline
Shorter, dated pieces about what is changing in Grand Rapids.
How this was written. News published under Marguerite Vanderhoff's byline was drafted by machine from primary sources — operator notices, government and municipal releases, published schedules — and every factual claim in it was matched to one of those sources before it published. A Grand Rapids Guide editor can change or pull any of it. Our editorial standards.
Seasonal
December at Meijer Gardens Is the Busiest Ticket in West Michigan
More than forty cultural displays and decorated trees under conservatory glass, plus a light show around a twenty-four-foot bronze horse.
Development
FeaturedThe City Is Rebuilding the Rapids It Was Named For
Four low-head dams come out and the rapids come back. In the meantime, the downtown riverfront is a two-year building site.
Seasonal
John Ball Zoo Runs a Season, and Visitors Keep Missing It
The most common planning mistake visitors make in this city: booking a February family weekend around a zoo that is shut until spring.
Seasonal
Seven Thousand Butterflies Fill the Conservatory Every Spring
The largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibition in the country, in a humid glasshouse, with a queue that starts before the doors open at weekends.