N. L. Avery Add.

Early evening here looks best—when the light softens across the modest brick homes and the street settles into that particular quiet you only get in older neighborhoods that actually have people on them. N. L. Avery Add. is a one-acre subdivision with tight lot sizes (around a tenth of an acre each), the kind of place where houses sit close enough that you know your block by name. Downtown Grand Rapids is five minutes away, which means you're not pretending to be rural. Rasberry Field is a five-minute walk, and there are fourteen parks within a mile—enough green space that the density doesn't feel crushing. The nearest restaurant is a seven-minute walk, and seventy-eight of them sit within a mile, most of them the actual kind with names, not franchises.