Pleasant St Tower in Grand Rapids

[aadti]

Looking for info as to when the still standing brick tower was built. I'm assuming that it replaced a wood tower but I'm not sure.

Thanks
Mark Baldwin

[GP30M4216]

A close sister to this tower is the Rouge Telegraph Tower at the west end of Rougemere Yard in Dearborn. Based on the architecture, I'd guess maybe late 40s, early 50s?

[amtrak1007]

I have a photo of an older tower at that site, from the collection of Art Million, i'll try to post here, but I'd guess that it was built between 1940 and 1961. donieland or dok may know more.

[aadti]

Amtrak1007 I would very much like to see the photo of the tower, please post!
Mark

[amtrak1007]

Pleasant Street looking West down the PM Main.


Sunnyside Jct (eastern end of it..) Looking west, standing on the connection track between Wealthy Jct. and Sunnyside Jct.


Looking East on previous photo location

[aadti]

Thank you, not only shows the old one but the location also.
Mark

[Ben Higdon]

Awesome pictures, thanks for posting those!
I believe the original tower there was called 2nd Ave. The newer brick tower was built when 131 was put in, but I don't have a specific year for when that happened.

[amtrak1007]

The name change reflected the city of Grand Rapids changing the name of the streets in that platt. The tower sat on 2nd avenue (Pleasant Street) and the yard, 9th avenue became (Gram St).

[TCP]

WOW, looking at the photos I can not believe all the rail that use to be in that area.
Those were the good old days.

[GP30M4216]

Awesome old photoset from the Sunnyside/Pleasant St. area of GR. Any idea on the date of those photos? So cool!

[Ben Higdon]

Check out how close together those swiches are directly in front of the tower at Sunnyside! Seems strange the old tower at Pleasant St is so far back from the diamonds. Looks like that giant signal bridge is over the MC/PRR...?

[amtrak1007]

Check out how close together those swiches are directly in front of the tower at Sunnyside! Seems strange the old tower at Pleasant St is so far back from the diamonds. Looks like that giant signal bridge is over the MC/PRR...?

The PRR had one track that crossed on diamonds there the MC had two. The signal bridge is on the north side of the diamonds. Up until last fall, there was still a signal box over by where i'd figure the old tower was.