East Paris

The name is older than the city beside it. "East Paris" comes from Paris Township, one of Kent County's original townships, settled beginning in the 1830s and bounded by Grand Rapids, Cascade, Gaines, and Wyoming. When the township incorporated as the City of Kentwood in 1967, the Paris name came off the map — but it held on through East Paris Avenue SE, the north–south corridor road the area is still organized around. So East Paris today is really the East Paris Avenue corridor, a surviving echo of the old township geography rather than a single platted subdivision. There's no official municipal line drawn around it; the name describes the belt of neighborhoods flanking the avenue, and the pocket covered here sits on its wooded northeast edge, in the Grand Rapids mailing area (49546) on the Cascade side, near Calvin University.