The Cherry Capital

Shop ’til you drop

Front Street brings you the region’s history and one of the Midwest’s most vibrant downtowns — all in one. Buy your fashionable leather travel bag at Votruba Leather Goods, a store founded to make saddles for horses. Gaze at the tin ceilings of classic old-timey bars like Bootleggers. And catch a movie at the State Theater (founded as the Lyric), enjoying the cushy updated seats and ceiling that glows with a replica of the area’s summer night sky.

You can explore some of the 200 specialty shops, restaurants and galleries in the Front Street area. There are so many options that even locals never get through their entire checklist, notes Sara Klebba of the city’s Downtown Development Authority.

Pass street musicians and the sidewalk’s striking fruit trees decked in twinkling lights, take the offered sample of fresh-made caramel corn, linger at independent booksellers Brilliant Books and Horizon, and head into one of the more than 150 downtown boutiques and galleries mostly centered on Front Street.

Shopping and people-watching are hard to separate here, but such specialty clothing shops as Eleven the Shop, Daisy Jane and What to Wear are worth a close look for more upscale finds. Nest has everything from furniture to glassware, and Cali’s and Ella’s mix it up with hip fashions and furnishings. Backcountry Outfitters and Boyne Country Sport meet gear and even rental needs as you plan your active fun, and be sure to stop at Toy Harbor for everything you’ll need for the cabin or the beach. Afterward, hit Mama Lu’s for a cucumber habanero margarita and gourmet taco.

Some of the most popular eateries like European-focused Amical and Asian-inspired Red Ginger are situated along the Boardman River; creative newcomers like Modern Bird are a short stroll from the town’s center. Cherry Republic lets you freely sample from many of its 200-plus cherry-infused products, while the Grand Traverse Pie Company serves up memorable slices made with cherries and other local forest fruits.

As a mural reads in front of the M22 store: “It’s not just a road. It’s a way of life.”

“It’s a one-of-its-kind, extraordinary downtown,” Klebba notes. “It’s not so spread out you that you can’t walk even to the Warehouse District and Old Town. We have accessible parks, biking trails and the BATA bus. And what makes the community special — not to sound cliché — is that the people who live here and merchants love to learn more about you and make sure you have a good time downtown. We are kind and curious and hospitable. It’s in the city’s DNA.”

And its history.

City Founder Perry Hannah — whose statue in Hannah Park locals dress with a hat or scarf befitting the season or given holiday — set out to make everyone welcome in town. He even donated land to every church denomination — the reason many are clustered not far from his one-time home on Sixth Street, once dubbed “Silk Stocking Row.”

Beauty is therapy

The region’s other famous — in some ways infamous — shopping destination is a several-block walk from downtown, housed within a property that resembles a castle, and which once housed the Northern Michigan Asylum, later called the Traverse City State Hospital. This Victorian-era complex of buttery-yellow bricks and turrets that was once home to 50,000 patients and 20,000 employees is widely considered the nation’s most successful adaptive development project.

Architects fashioned the place under the progressive philosophy of the time that “beauty is therapy,” creating not just a safe but also a healing and nurturing environment for people with mental illnesses.

Today, large windows and high ceilings shelter Italian fare created by a five-time James Beard-nominated chef (Trattoria Stella), an award-winning winery (Left Foot Charley) and a progressive coffee roastery (Cuppa Joe). Upscale shops line both sides of a narrow hallway at Building 50, and those who’d rather head into nature can do that too.

Explore 260 acres of wooded trails that date back to at least the 1800s. Before “nature bathing” was a popular concept, a man named Thomas Kirkbride believed immersion in the outdoors was essential for mental health. The main walking paths were once roads back to working barns that housed dairy cattle, including Traverse Colantha Walker, a grand champion milk cow whose grave is marked with a big tombstone on-site.

The craziest adventure happens underground on a history tour into the old steam tunnels and into graffiti-covered buildings yet to be repurposed. Learn how there are 9 million bricks in the original order for the building, how this had central heat long before other spots in Traverse, and how the bocce courts are atop the original laundry. Guided Historic Walking Tours head into yet-to-be-developed areas, where signs point out features such as the “Women’s Most Disturbed Ward,” and both the walls (with its abundant graffiti) and the tour guides share poignant tales. There’s irony, too, in the juxtaposition of old and new as you see when the guide announces: “This is the fire department and every day someone lit a fire in the building.” It’s now a bakery with a brick oven — Pleasanton Brick Oven Bakery — known for its wood-fired Parmesan olive herb bread.

Like elsewhere in Traverse City proper, you find the best of the old world and new, intertwined. And, as on all the optional adventures, you’re sampling your way through elevated cuisine that’s made this area a top foodie destination and leaving with a great story to tell.