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E. Saginaw Hwy., Audia Concrete, 2006

This stamp is right on the southwest corner of East Saginaw Highway and Marshall Street, on the curb cut. I could equally have designated it as a Marshall Street stamp, but since it is in front of a building that faces Saginaw, the Army National Guard office, I let that break the tie.

Audia Concrete Construction (as their Facebook page calls them) or Audia Construction (as their Web site has it) is based in Milford. I know Milford best as the closest town to Kensington Park, the site of my most-loved elementary school field trip. The wild birds there would come and perch in your hand if you held out seed. Last I was there in the 2000s, they still did, and I imagine they still do. Anyway, more to the point, it’s in Oakland County, which means Audia came a long way to do this job.

The stamp isn’t visible in this photo because I am standing more or less right on it, facing the National Guard office to the southwest.

According to their Web site, Audia specializes in “concrete construction, excavation, underground utilities and site contract work” and was established in 1996.

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N. Magnolia Ave., Hosford Bros., undated

On the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Vine and Fernwood, there are two houses that share a driveway, and on that driveway are three undated Hosford Brothers Inc. stamps (one on each of the three big blocks making it up). Shared driveways are fairly common in my neighborhood, and from reading the various neighborhood social media groups, I have learned that they are an unending source of neighbor disputes. This one looks to have been repaved pretty recently, making me wonder about the logistics of shared driveway projects.

This is the rightmost of the three stamps. They all look pretty much the same, so I figured you didn’t need to see all three.

Hosford Brothers Concrete Inc. is located on Saginaw Highway in East Lansing, at least per their postal address. That actually places them closer to Haslett or Bath. Their Web site is broken but they seem to still be in business, based on recent online reviews. Their Facebook page says they have been in business since 1994.

This is the driveway in question; the photo is facing south down North Magnolia. The driveway looks wide enough for multiple cars, but (as the shrub should make clear) the right side of the pavement is actually serving as a sort of front walk to one of the houses and is not actually part of the driveway.

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The Saga of the “Bum Walks”

I discovered this article a week or so ago, after my husband showed me the Schneeberger & Koort stamp he found, and I immediately bubbled over with absurd delight. Most likely, I will never again find an article about sidewalks that will cause me to giggle and wring my hands excitedly every time I re-read it, as this one has done. I knew this one was too good to leave to the OCR version I turned up at Newspapers.com, but the university where I work has the State Journal on microfilm, so I took the unusual step of frivolously using my library privileges to get a PDF of it delivered to my account. It only adds to my delight that some student worker at my university library had to crank through microfilm finding this for me.

The article is an August 11, 1914, State Journal account of a Lansing city council dust-up. One reason it is such a gem is that it references names that have previously appeared here in the blog: not just the newly-discovered Schneeberger & Koort, but my familiar old favorite V.D. Minnis. The drama also involves John Sovey, described as “a former cement contractor.” I find John Sovey’s name suspiciously similar to that of J.F. (John Fred) Sowa. I know that Sowa’s family later changed its surname to Sova, probably because it was already pronoucned that way and they wanted it to be phonetic in English. The Sowa stamp I know of is dated 1908 which would make the dates plausible for Sowa to be a “former cement contractor” by 1914. I wonder if John Sovey is the same person as John Sowa/Sova.

I could have sworn that I had referenced brick sellers Young Brothers and Daley in the blog before, but a search shows me to be mistaken. I know I did some research on them, perhaps with the intention of photographing a stamp in front of their business at some point. They are still around and in the same location near the railroad tracks in downtown Lansing.

The city council dispute described in the report involves, in the Journal reporter’s words, “a wordy tilt between Aldermen Young and McKinley over the sidewalk construction contract.” The sparring apparently started with Alderman McKinley bringing out photographs of broken sidewalks, following up on a charge he laid the previous week that “both Young Brothers and Daley and Alderman McKale had laid a lot of ‘bum’ walk in the city” (emphasis and delight all mine). Alderman Young is described as having an interest in Young Brothers Realty, which I assume is somehow connected to Young Brothers and Daley. McKale accuses Young Brothers Realty of being the cause of 87 broken sections of sidewalk in just two blocks of a subdivision they developed. These bum sidewalks were built by Schneeberger and Koort, so Alderman Young tries to shift the blame to the contractors.

Young then tries for a turnabout. The story gets a little confusing here, but if I am understanding Young correctly, McKinley has previously stated that sidewalk-fan-favorite V.D. Minnis is the only capable sidewalk contractor, yet the city has allowed Minnis to subcontract his city-contracted sidewalk work to less reputable contractors at a profit of two cents per foot. Say it ain’t so, Verner!

The entire article is a delight from beginning to end, including some wonderful verbatim banter between the aldermen. I can’t do justice to all of it in summary, so I am just going to reproduce it below under the sincere belief that it is no longer under copyright protection. I’ll end by giving a well-deserved spotlight to one more quotation, then please, go read the rest of the article.

“You violated the ordinance, undoubtedly, and failed to put your name upon the walks,” replied Alderman McKinley. “Your name is not upon the walk in the photograph.”

Alderman McKale did not deny the charge.

For shame!

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E. Malcolm X St., Schneeberger & Koort, undated

My husband found this stamp first, and showed me a photo of it. It’s on the south side of East Malcolm X Street just west of Parker Street, on a little spur of Malcolm X. Much of Malcolm X (née Main Street) has become various I-496 service roads, and in places splits away from itself (while somehow still technically being “the same road”). It’s really a mess, in map terms. This stub is at the end of a block-plus of what must be the original neighborhood street. West of this point one can continue on the sidewalk, but it is a dead end for vehicles. I haven’t walked these blocks before, despite them being within my usual walking-from-home radius, mainly because the area around 496 gets very pedestrian-unfriendly (deserving of its own Hall of Shame entry).

I was really excited when my showed me the photo of this stamp because of the name Schneeberger. I had previously found several E. Schneeberger stamps from the 1920s, but had been unable to read the name on them until finally having an epiphany while walking past one in favorable light. My husband jokingly referred to the second name as “Oort,” knowing there was a preceding letter but finding it illegible. I decided it looked like a very faint K and did a search for “Schneeberger & Koort.” That got one exactly one hit, but oh what a hit. It’s easily the greatest article about Lansing sidewalks I have seen. It deserves, and shall have, its own entry.

Facing the western semi-dead-end of Malcolm X Street. Past the barricade is… also Malcolm X Street.

Unfortunately, beyond the above State Journal article from 1914 which references them, I was unable to find anything about Schneeberger & Koort. I assume it’s the same Schneeberger who went into business on his own later, or a relative. It’s also unfortunate that this stamp is undated, but I would guess it pre-dates the Schneeberger solo stamps and might be from around the time of the State Journal article.

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N. Clemens Ave., Ed [B]rackins, undated

I found this one in a driveway on the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw. I took it to read “Ed Crackins,” but looking at the photo at home, I was bugged by the fact that it really looks much more like “Drackins.” When I zoom in on it, the dubious letter resembles the “D” of “ED” more than the “C” of “-RACKINS.” The trouble is that “Drackins” is a less likely name and I can’t find a reference to an Ed Drackins or any other Drackins in Michigan.

I can find three classified ads (in 1959, 1967, and 1971) from Ed Crackins for basement floors and driveways, so that inclines me back to my initial judgment. There is a little bit of uncertainty because I am relying on Newspapers.com’s OCR scans and they often contain errors, especially in the fine print of the classifieds. (After all this time I am still too stingy to pay them for an actual subscription that would allow me to view the original pages.)

Looking south on North Clemens. The stamp is quite small, in the lower right corner of the upper driveway.

Updated 6/5/21: I now realize the name is Ed Brackins.

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N. Clemens Ave., [T.Q.?] [T.D.] Jones, 1946

This stamp is on a driveway apron on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. The last name is clearly Jones, but I am not entirely confident about what precedes that. It looks like “T.Q.” or at least “something Q” or maybe “something O.”

Unfortunately, with such a common name it is usually very difficult to figure out anything about the contractor, and this is not an exception. I haven’t been able to find anything about a cement contractor named Jones operating in that time period.

The stamp is on the near end of the driveway apron, oriented to face the street.

Update 3/14/22: I saw this in better light the other day and I am now pretty sure it’s T.D. Jones. Still no luck figuring out who that is.

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Hall of Shame: unstamped new sidewalk at Foster Park

The City of Lansing is, in one respect, more powerful than God: the City is not compelled to obey its own laws.

Looking east on Kalamazoo with Foster Park on the right.

This new stretch of sidewalk was laid as part of the installation of a new bus shelter in front of Foster Park, on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Francis and Hayford. The new shelter is a welcome amenity, and looks sharp in its shiny red paint and decorated windows. But I disapprove of the absent sidewalk stamp, and that is what lands this in my Hall of Shame.

There is a similar new shelter, with a different decoration in the windows, at Hunter Park.

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N. Magnolia Ave., [Illegible] West, 1954

This tough-to-read stamp is on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. I can be fairly confident that the last name is “West,” but what comes before that is illegible. It looks like two initials.

The only lead I have is a series of classified advertisements that ran in the Lansing State Journal in March and May of 1953: “CEMENT – And concrete work… Phone Dick Connick, 97392, or Dick West, 23050.” Searching for references to Dick West in the LSJ are stymied by the existence of a UPI correspondent by that name.

Looking north (and a bit west) on North Magnolia.

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S. Francis Ave., DPW, 1930

It’s not extremely old by Department of Public Works standards, but I thought I should get this one in while I can. It’s on the dead-end 700 block of South Francis Avenue, on the west side, probably just south of where Harton Street would be if it still existed there. Across the street from it, the other side of Francis has had its sidewalk recently removed, as with many southern blocks in Urbandale. The sidewalk extends half a block or so further south on this side due to two remaining houses.

This stamp is on a half-sized slab of sidewalk in front of what looks like a vacant lot. In fact, as I discovered checking the city property records, the property south of this point encompasses not two but three lots, plus the vacated section of Harton! (Decommissioned streets seem to hang around in property descriptions, which fascinates me for reasons I can’t articulate.) Historicaerials.com shows Harton still existing here in 1981 but clearly gone in 1994.

Looking north on South Francis Avenue, with the stamp plainly visible. Harton would have been in view here when it existed.
Looking more or less south. Not sure why there’s a little section of undersized blocks (including the featured one).