Michigan is a beautiful state. Even though The Castle stands on a busy Rust Belt thoroughfare, it’s possible to escape into the serenity of nature nearby: a turn right onto 28th Street, past Exit 70,
After our tour of The Castle last summer, my cousin and I grabbed some food at a diner down the street and went for a walk by the Grand River to talk things over. It
Michigan is a beautiful state. Even though The Castle stands on a busy Rust Belt thoroughfare, it’s possible to escape into the serenity of nature nearby: a turn right onto 28th Street, past Exit 70, underneath I-196, and onto a little one-way street tucked in
After our tour of The Castle last summer, my cousin and I grabbed some food at a diner down the street and went for a walk by the Grand River to talk things over. It made sense for both of us. He had let me
A plague laid siege to the land, and I moved into a castle. What was old is new again. Mask use is intermittent at best in The Castle. It’s easy to get paranoid standing in a slow elevator with a few maskless people, or even
Most of the amenities at The Castle are typical for modern apartment complexes. Stone European castles may not have a pool, a bike storage room, a dog park, exercise rooms with cardio and weight machines, or a coffee shop, but this concrete American castle does.
WARNING: POLITICS. The focus of this blog will be on The Castle, of course, but also its surroundings — Grandville, Grand Rapids, West Michigan more broadly. This has always been my home, and the story I want to tell extends past the concrete walls and
Part of The Castle’s core pitch to potential residents is how quickly people can drive to Grand Rapids from there. It’s tucked in just off of I-196, and two right turns brings you from the property onto the fastest route to GR. There are only
The vision that animated The Castle clearly had its flaws. It’s much bigger than it should be. The sheer size of the building made it virtually impossible for the developers to avoid using cheap materials at scale. Had The Castle been built half as big,
The story of The Grand Castle starts in Bavaria. In 1868, King Ludwig II cleared the ruins of two castles in the foothills of the Alps to build a castle of his own. Young King Ludwig’s authority was diminished after a military defeat, and he
