Nothing too special here except the charming practice I have seen a few times from other contractors, stamping both ends of the same square, facing opposite directions. It seems to be a way of indicating that they are only laying a single block. This double-stamped block is on the north side of Jerome Street between Custer and Ferguson.
I mistakenly thought that this pair of Department of Public Service stamps – on the west side of North Francis Avenue between Vine and Fernwood – had the earliest date I’d seen for a DPS stamp, which is why I photographed it. Checking later, I discovered I have previously done one other 1950 DPS stamp.
This very worn Cantu & Sons stamp is located on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Clemens and Regent (pretty close to Clemens). It’s the only stamp I can find on the stretch of sidewalk in front of King World. The date is extremely hard to read in the photo, but in person it is just possible to make it out as 1988.
It’s in front of King World, which is an eccentric combination of a convenience/party store and a beauty and barber supply shop. When I first moved to town in the summer of 1999, this building was empty, but it was still easy to see that its most recent occupant had been a coin laundry. About a year later King World moved in.
The building dates from 1962. I can find advertisements for a Norge Village laundromat at that address in the 1970s, and most likely it was built originally as part of that chain, which was booming by 1962. Norge Village is famous among fans of old signs and the like for its lit-up, polka-dotted globe signs, popularly called “Norge Balls.”
It apparently remained a laundry through at least one changeover, as it appears in the December 30, 1989, Lansing State Journal new businesses listings as Kalamazoo St. Laundry. The last reference I can find to a laundry business there is in a sidebar of “Unsolved Fires of 1991” accompanying an article (“Fatal Fire Remains Unsolved”) on page 1B of the January 15, 1992, Lansing State Journal. The list includes “September 30 – Fire in laundry dryer at 1918 E. Kalamazoo” and honestly, that one really sounds like it solved itself.
Advertisements trying to sell the building (no mention of a laundry business) start showing up in 1996, and then again in 1998. Whether it was used for anything during that time period is not clear but seems doubtful. The sale to King World is recorded in the city’s online records in July 2000.
Here is a beautifully preserved Department of Public Works stamp on Vine Street, just east of the northeast corner of Vine and Ferguson. I’m surprised that I hadn’t captured this one before and I had to double check to make sure.
This pair of stamps is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Fairview and Magnolia. It’s hard to read the date in one of them, but the other is quite clear and I am going to assume they were done together.
The stamps are in front of the closed Hotwater Works building, until recently a neighborhood staple. It was, somehow, both a hot tub retailer and a jam space for local musicians. The side facing the now-vacant lot was painted with a couple of different murals over the years, the first one depicting a fairy with the command “RELAX” and the second one featuring a group of Japanese macaques bathing. I never had any reason to go in there, but in a way, I just liked it being there. It seemed like an offbeat place to anchor an offbeat neighborhood. Here is a short article about the history of the business from radio station WDBM.
Sadly, they closed up in early 2020. Surprisingly, this wasn’t a COVID loss: they were having their liquidation sale already in February. I suspect the beginning of the end actually came in 2017 when the original owner, James McFarland, died. I note from city records that the property was sold by McFarland’s estate in January 2020 to “McFarland Sisters Enter L L C.” I imagine that the hot tub business wasn’t what it once was, and the family decided the real estate was more valuable.
As for the history of the property, it was built in 1947 as Bagger Trailer Sales, and was sold to George H. Rowley in 1952 to become an auto agency. It spent a while as a B.F. Goodrich tire shop in the 1970s, and then in the 1980s and 90s was Delphi Stained Glass. Hotwater Works moved in around 1997.
This stamp is in front of a vacant lot on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street, just west of South Hayford Avenue. I didn’t get a picture of it because it was dark, but you might know this vacant lot as the one that hosts the teepee-like art installation(?) made of logs.
KMI Road Maintenance LLC is based in Burton, Michigan. According to their Web site, “KMI Road Maintenance LLC is a hard surface repair contractor serving Genesee and the surrounding counties. KMI Road Maintenance specializes in concrete and asphalt repair and maintenance of both commercial and residential properties.” I’m a little surprised to find their stamp here, since this county doesn’t border Genesee, but it’s not too far away. Interestingly, their Web site also states that their maintenance division serves as research and development for their equipment manufacturing business in North Branch.
This stamp is very faded but the best I can figure is that it is “M & D Const.” It’s on the north side of Hickory Street between South Pennsylvania and Jones (close to Jones). Unfortunately it is undated.
According to OpenCorporates, there is an M & D Construction Company, Inc., based in Dearborn Heights. It was incorporated in 1968. It previously used the name “M & D Concrete Contractors, Inc.” I can also find the Facebook page of M & D Concrete LLC, based in Romulus. I’m not sure whether those are two different businesses. I’m also not confident they have anything to do with this stamp, since this would seem to be outside their likely service area.
I made a foray into the Potter-Walsh neighborhood today and found this stamp on the west side of Shepard Street between Malcolm X and Walsh. Yes, I know, this blog is lousy with Cantu stamps, but it’s a variation I haven’t shown before, one that seems rare in the neighborhoods I normally walk.
This variation is the only one so far that includes a city, East Lansing. The current company, Cantu Builders, is located in Lansing. They apparently had added a second son to the business by 1984. The earliest stamp variation I’ve found is from 1980 and reads “Cantu & Son”, singular.
I was walking on the west side of South Francis Avenue between Marcus and Elizabeth when I spotted a Concrete by Thompson stamp with a reversed date. At first I thought it was one I have featured before, but then I realized I was not on the same street. No, evidently Concrete by Thompson managed to reverse their date stamp at least twice in 2004.
I wonder if these two reversed Thompson stamps were done on the same day. They were done the same year, a few blocks apart in Urbandale, so I can imagine they might have been done one after the other, accounting (somewhat) for the same stamping error.
This stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Charles and Detroit, just outside the city limits of Lansing in Lansing Township. It’s in front of the building on the corner of Detroit Street that now houses the People’s Kitchen restaurant. The building was built in 1958 and for most of its existence it housed various offices. Prior to the building’s construction, the site was (of course) a Bud Kouts used car lot and before that it was Bill Otto Buick.
In 2017, a food truck called Street Kitchen moved in, which was started by a former co-owner of the (in)famous Old Town breakfast spot The Golden Harvest. In 2019 Street Kitchen remade itself as the People’s Kitchen, a full-fledged restaurant.
Hanneman is most likely Carl Hanneman, who started a concrete business in 1953 and then sold it to Mark A. Fineis in 1988. The business is still in existence today as Hanneman & Fineis. I wrote a little bit about them in a previous entry. This allows me to date the stamp between 1953 and 1988, which I admit is not narrowing it down much. I wonder if it was connected to the office building’s construction.
