By: Deborah Johnson Wood
The stone retaining wall supporting the Fulton Street Cemetery along Fountain Street is ready for reconstruction after over a year of decision making by Midtown property owners, residents, neighborhood association, the Historic Preservation Commission, City engineers, and construction experts. About 18 months ago, the ancient wall—sandstone face blocks, sandstone rubble, and lime/sand mortar—gave way causing the 20-foot-high midsection to tumble into the street.
“The wall just got old,” said Tiiu Arrak, public information coordinator for the City Engineer’s Office. “If you touch the mortar, it will just crumble and fall out.”
The cemetery lists the first official burial date as 1835. City leaders and Civil War Generals are buried there—John Ball; William Powers Innis; Joel Guild, one of Grand Rapids’ first white settlers; and Charles Calkins, whose law office at 235 State Street is the city’s oldest frame building.
This week, Consumers Energy is moving power poles from along the cemetery wall to the other side of Fountain to make way for construction. Following their work, construction crews will rebuild 500 linear feet of the wall with a poured concrete gravity wall. The new wall’s stone facade will resemble the original wall. The old lime/sand mortar will be replaced on approximately 300 linear feet of wall that did not collapse.
A temporary earth retention system will protect the gravesites by keeping soil from eroding as the new wall is built. A Terex crane will be used to construct the wall from street level to avoid damaging the cemetery.
Twenty trees will be removed and replaced with 29 new trees—Hedge Maple, Frontier Elm, Service Berry, American Hophornbean, and Red Oak.
Along the south side of Fountain, the sidewalk, curbs and gutter will be replaced. The existing curbside bulb-out planter at Eastern will be replaced and planted with low maintenance perennials.
Owen-Ames-Kimball bid the project at some $1,200,000, about $500,000 less than city engineers anticipated. Street Fund Bonds will cover $19,000 of the construction; the remainder will come from Capital Improvement Fund Bonds.
Source: Tiiu Arrak, City of Grand Rapids; Trudie Anderson, City of Grand Rapids
Photo by Brian Kelly
Deborah Johnson Wood is Development News Editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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