Commercial Real Estate in Ithaca, Michigan

About Ithaca

John Jeffery of Niagara County, New York, acquired this land in 1853 and arrived in 1855, when the site was still wilderness. He cleared what became the business district and platted the village in 1856, naming it for his hometown. That March the county board chose Ithaca as the seat of Gratiot County, even though the settlement had barely begun. It became a village in 1869, the railroad reached it in 1882, and it became a city in 1961.

Its commercial heart is one block of East Center Street between Main and Pine River Streets, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Fires in 1888, 1890 and 1905 wiped out the wooden storefronts, so the block filled in with red brick, mostly Late Victorian buildings from 1875 to 1906. The three-story J. Jeffery and Sons Block anchors the corner of Center and Main.

County government and schools are steady presences here, with the Gratiot County Courthouse and the Gratiot-Isabella Regional Educational Service District both in town. Roads and farmland shape the rest. Commercial and industrial development in the county centers on the US-127 corridor around Ithaca, Alma and St. Louis, and that highway gives Ithaca its link to the rest of Mid-Michigan.