Grand Rapids

Pergiel Building
1036 Butterworth St SW
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Diligent daughter and I were looking at the Pergiel building (zoom in and you can read the name in the stone near the top) on Google Maps the other day. Today we want to look at it again, but we can't remember where it is or what led us to it last time. Went and rooted through my files and couldn't find anything. Finally pulled up Google Maps and searched for Sacred Heart church. Then I remember that the building was built at an angle, and there was a big dirt parking lot there. I noticed Butterworth runs at an angle, so I pulled up the satellite view and presto - there it is.

I writing this down so I will have some record of where it is. My grandfather built this building to house his bakery before WW2. Rumor has it that back then he was a competitor to Sunshine, but then the war and rationing and the draft came along and running a bakery got to be pretty thin. My dad worked there for a while before the army gobbled him up and shipped him off to Alaska and the Pacific.