Wyoming's New York name and 28th Street growth
Wyoming took its name from Wyoming County, New York, became a city in 1959, and grew around 28th Street, where Studio 28 expanded from one screen to 20.
Wyoming, Michigan, did not borrow its name from the western state. Many early settlers came from Wyoming County, New York, and carried that name west with them. The community spent its early years as Wyoming Township, just southwest of Grand Rapids, before becoming a city in 1959.
The city describes its growth as happening “outside in.” Instead of forming around one traditional downtown, Wyoming developed along several corridors. The biggest commercial concentration took shape on 28th Street, a five-lane road that runs for about 3.5 miles through the city.
Studio 28 makes that growth easy to picture. A local history shared by WKTV and drawn from the Wyoming Historical Commission says the theater opened on Christmas Day in 1965 with one 1,000-seat auditorium. It kept expanding and reached 20 screens in 1988. The theater closed on November 23, 2008, and the building was demolished in 2014.
The useful story is not whether Studio 28 once won a world-size title. It is that a one-screen theater kept adding rooms as 28th Street and the city around it filled in. That helps explain why Wyoming can feel less like a town built around a square and more like a set of busy corridors that grew together.
Sources
Last reviewed against the listed sources: July 16, 2026.