Zeeland: a tiny Dutch town that builds world-famous things

Zeeland is Holland’s smaller Dutch sibling, and it has the same roots. It was founded in 1847 by a group of Dutch immigrants led by Jannes Vande Luyster, a wealthy landowner from the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands who sold everything he had to pay his neighbors’ way to America. They named the new town after the home province they’d left, and — like Holland down the road — built it around their Reformed faith. The town today is small, only about 6,000 people, but it’s proud of its tidy, walkable Dutch downtown.

What’s surprising about a town this size is how much gets made here. Zeeland is the headquarters of MillerKnoll — better known by its original name, Herman Miller — the world-famous furniture company behind design icons like the Eames chair and the Aeron office chair, and it has been based in Zeeland since it started here in the early 1900s. Zeeland is also home to Gentex, which makes the auto-dimming mirrors found in millions of cars and aircraft, and to Howard Miller, long known for its clocks. For a small Dutch farm town, that’s a remarkable amount of design and manufacturing muscle.

To dig into the local history, the Dekker Huis Museum, run by the Zeeland Historical Society, tells the town’s story inside an 1876 home on Main Avenue, with recreated old storefronts and thousands of artifacts. It’s at 37 E. Main Avenue, Zeeland, admission is free, and its website is zeelandhistory.org.