Greenmead: the 1820s farm Livonia kept

Livonia built out so thoroughly in the postwar boom — it became one of Michigan’s largest cities almost entirely on quiet subdivisions — that people forget it was farm country for 130 years first. The city didn’t forget. In its northwest corner sits Greenmead, the 95-acre homestead that pioneer Joshua Simmons settled in the 1820s, preserved with its original farmhouse and outbuildings, including an 1829 barn that was the first ever raised in Livonia Township. Around the old farm, the city assembled a historical village of rescued 19th-century buildings — churches, a general store, houses — that would otherwise have met the bulldozer.

Today Greenmead is where Livonia gathers: a summer farmers market, car shows, craft fairs, holiday walks through the decorated village, and wedding photos in front of the Simmons house. Pair it with the Wilson Barn — the city’s other beloved landmark, a century-old red barn at Middlebelt and West Chicago that hosts pumpkin patches and markets of its own — and Hines Park rolling along the city’s southern edge, and Livonia turns out to keep more of its history, and more green space, than its freeway-grid reputation suggests.