Greenville Downtown Historic District 3.09

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.HistoryIn 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.