She's Preserving the History of an Entire Neighborhood.

Most people walk past an old house and wonder when it was built.

Jeny Mueller wants to know who celebrated Christmas in its living room in 1938.

She wants to know who planted the maple tree out front, who built the detached garage, and why a family that had lived there for nearly 40 years suddenly packed up and moved across town.

Those questions, and hundreds more, have quietly transformed into Brick & Kin, one of the most fascinating collections of neighborhood history in Grand Rapids.

What began as curiosity about old houses has evolved into something much bigger: a digital archive documenting the lives of the families who helped shape neighborhoods like Creston and Riverside Gardens, one address at a time.

If you've ever wondered who lived in your century-old home before you, there's a good chance Mueller has wondered the same thing.

On the surface, Brick & Kin looks like a collection of historic homes.

Spend a few minutes reading, however, and you realize the houses aren't really the point.

The people are.

Each article pieces together fragments from census records, city directories, newspaper archives, property deeds, and family histories to reconstruct lives that would otherwise be forgotten. A modest bungalow becomes the backdrop for five generations of one family. A brick foursquare tells the story of a neighborhood merchant who watched Plainfield Avenue transform from a dirt road into one of Grand Rapids' busiest commercial corridors.

The houses simply provide the address. The people provide the story. That's what makes Brick & Kin feel different. Most real estate websites tell you what a house has (Square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, etc…).

Brick & Kin tells you what a house remembers.

One of Mueller's most compelling projects follows the development of Riverside Gardens, a neighborhood that today feels inseparable from Creston's identity.

Long before mature maples shaded its streets and children rode bicycles through its quiet neighborhoods, the land was largely open farmland. Through property records and historic maps, Mueller traces how developers Clara Comstock Russell and Etta Monique Comstock Boltwood helped transform hundreds of acres into one of Grand Rapids' earliest planned residential communities during the 1920s.

Suddenly, street names, lot sizes and neighborhood layouts begin to make sense.

More than 100 years ago, The Creston News documented births, weddings, church socials and new businesses. Today, Brick & Kin preserves the places where those moments unfolded.

People don't fall in love with places because of architecture alone.

They fall in love with the stories.

And thanks to projects like Brick & Kin, those stories aren't disappearing.