Grand Rapids city guide hub

Grand Rapids is Michigan's second-largest city and the anchor of West Michigan. Built on furniture manufacturing — it was once called Furniture City — it has reinvented itself around craft beer, art, healthcare and design, with a compact downtown on the Grand River that mixes restored warehouses, new towers and the blue Calder Plaza.

The beer scene is famous: dozens of breweries inside the city earned Grand Rapids its Beer City USA nickname, and Founders, Brewery Vivant and the Eastown and Creston taprooms are institutions. Each fall, ArtPrize turns the whole downtown into an open art competition, filling museums, parks and storefronts with work from around the world.

Neighborhoods give the city its texture: Eastown and Wealthy Street for shops and restaurants, the West Side across the river for its historic districts and new development, and the Medical Mile corridor running up the hill from downtown. Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, just east of the city, is among the most-visited sculpture parks on the planet.