The Pioneer Park

Placemaking in an old neighborhood

The Pioneer Cemetery marker (1960) arrived amid long-term changes in the Vine neighborhood. The houses that predominated in the neighborhood were no longer new. Many of the larger homes had become multi-family units. The growth of Western Michigan University and the rise of the suburbs, trends of the postwar period, accelerated neighborhood change in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.[1]

Local anxieties about the present and future of a proud neighborhood, class and racial fears affecting all American cities, and a national preservation ethic combined in the 1960s and 70s to shape the blocks around South Westnedge Park. The Vine Neighborhood Association, incorporated in 1981, emerged to "promote the welfare and well-being of all Vine Neighborhood residents by assisting in the prevention of crime, providing information on home rehabilitation, encouraging historical preservation, and combating community deterioration." This included a historical study project in 1986 and the drive to create the largest historic district in the city. A ten-year plan called on the city to use zoning regulations to encourage single-family housing and for tighter regulation of people and animals in the neighborhood.[2]

Revitalization

The Vine Neighborhood Association's efforts, alongside its non-profit subsidiary in Vine Ventures, had tangible results. "Nowhere else in Kalamazoo County is there such a mix of renters, home owners, and businesses," a Gazette correspondent wrote in 1993. “And it combines some of the most expensive real estate in the community with some of the most reasonable.” At the time, the average selling price of a three-bedroom house was $40,000. There were two cafes, a coffee shop, and many other small businesses. When Bruce Long studied at Western Michigan University, he daydreamed about buying a house across from the park. Twenty-years later, he purchased and restored 1019 Park Place. “I love living here,” he told reporters. “Look at my front yard. I have 3 ½ acres in front of me and I don’t have to mow it.”[3]

Preservation as boosterism

Historic tours played a role in the neighborhood association’s boosterism. “Pioneer Park,” a term the neighborhood association popularized, was one the few non-residential spaces on the tours. On May 17, 1981, tour organizers listed Pioneer Park as its second stop. "An historical marker designates this early Kalamazoo cemetary [sic] site," it reads. "The park is bordered by gracious Colonial Revival homes built during the first two decades of this century.” For National Historic Preservation Week in 1989, the Vine Neighborhood Association used the tours as a broader open house into the neighborhood. “Own a Part of Kalamazoo History,” the pamphlet declared. “There are a growing number of persons who are buying homes in the neighborhood for use as single-family homes, and who are reestablishing the stable, family oriented atmosphere which characterized the Vine Neighborhood for many years.” That year “Pioneer Cemetery” was stop #23. In addition to telling a celebratory version of the cemetery’s transformation, volunteers told listeners about restoration plans. Local events, from historic tours to fundraisers and free movies in the park, have continued through recent years.[4]

Other individuals and organizations began to interrogate the written and oral traditions of the cemetery that tended to gloss over more-difficult questions about the park. How many people had been buried there? How many were removed? Who was still there? Inadvertent discoveries, alongside increasing interest in local public history, may have pushed along this neighborhood reflection. "Playground equipment in what’s been known both as ‘Pioneer Cemetery’ and ‘Five Points Park’ will be removed by council order,” the Gazette reported in 1981. “Swings and a slide were installed there last year before officials knew that graves from the 1830s to 1850s remained at the site. Workers struck an unexpected tombstone while installing the equipment and officials discovered a court order later where a judge had ordered the graves to be covered by two feet of soil in the 1920s.”[5]

Robert Brewer's study, Kalamazoo's First Cemetery, 1833-1862, marked a revisionist impulse that pushed back against the dominant narrative of children desecrating the cemetery, widespread reburial, and blameless local government. Working from the 1882 record of the graves, probate records, and local history books, Brewer published short descriptions of all known burials. He then went further by identifying known deaths in Bronson and Kalamazoo between 1833 and 1862. Sometimes contemporary records indicated burial in the village cemetery. Other times local deaths were simply not accounted for in Mountain Home or Riverside cemeteries. Brewer's work suggested that very few people had been reinterred. Brewer’s method had its own limitations, but it created an upper range of extant burials at South Westnedge Park far beyond what was known at the time. [6]

Notes

[1]. "History of the Vine Neighborhood," 2000, Vine Neighborhood, Vertical Files, Local History Room, Kalamazoo Public Library.

[2]. "History of the Vine Neighborhood," 2000, Vine Neighborhood, Vertical Files, Local History Room, Kalamazoo Public Library; “Ten Years Goals and Objectives for the Vine Neighborhood,” undated, Vine Neighborhood, Vertical Files, Local History Room, Kalamazoo Public Library.

[3].  Laurie A. Cerny, “Venture into Vintage Vine,” Kalamazoo Gazette, July 11, 1993.

[4]. "Historic Vine Area Walking Tour," May 17, 1981, Vine Neighborhood, Vertical Files, Local History Room, Kalamazoo Public Library; “Historic Homes Tour,” 1989, Vine Neighborhood, Vertical Files, Local History Room, Kalamazoo Public Library; Vine’s Revitalizers Plan Park Perk-Up,” Kalamazoo Gazette, March 10, 1989; “Art Fair Celebrates City Life,” Kalamazoo Gazette, September 12, 2004; “Historic Homes Tour is Saturday,” Kalamazoo Gazette, September 12, 2005; Weekend Watch,” Kalamazoo Gazette, September 15, 2005; Ministry to Host Open House,” Kalamazoo Gazette, September 30, 2010; “Watch free movies under the stars Kzoo Parks will kick off the outdoor summer cinema series on Friday at Upjohn Park,” Kalamazoo Gazette, June 9,2022.

[5]. “Constantine sets village millage rate,” Kalamazoo Gazette, May 10, 1981

[6]. Robert L. Brewer, Kalamazoo’s First Cemetery, 1833-1862 (Kalamazoo Valley Genealogical Society, 1987), 48.