Yesterday’s O.E. Porter entry reminded me that I had a stamp on my “to do” list – the ones I jot down to return to later – noted as “E. Porter.” I wondered if I had missed a leading O, or if this was a name variation or even a different company. I walked to the west side of Kipling Boulevard, between Michigan and Lasalle, to check it out.
This one is on a house’s front walk. Upon arriving I could see that it was certainly the same contractor and that the lack of the leading “O” is almost certainly just due to it being swallowed up into a pockmark in the concrete. The other one was undated; this one has a date, but it’s worn into illegibility. There really is no guessing a decade. So, sadly, I didn’t learn anything more about O.E. Porter from this visit.
A closer look to try to make out the date. It’s no good; it seems to end in an 0 but that isn’t much help. Why is it always the most important digit that seems to wear out first?
It’s on the font walk of this charming English-cottage-style house.
This is on the last bit of sidewalk on the north side of Larned Street, before the sidewalk abruptly vanishes to the west. It’s nearly across the street, just a couple of lots west, from where the sidewalk ends on the south side of Larned.
It appears to be O.E. Porter, but who that was is something I have yet to determine. I hope I’m reading it right. “Porter” is certainly clear, as is the E before it. I’m not sure whether this one is undated or whether those vague markings below the name are the ghost of an illegible date.
Looking back eastward on Larned from the point where the sidewalk ends.
Here is a new contractor for this blog, via a stamp located on the southeast corner of Jerome Street and Custer Avenue behind the Church of the Resurrection’s parking lot. It really is right on the corner so it’s impossible to designate this slab as uniquely on one street or the other, though the way it’s oriented would make it Custer. This is an interesting one, unfortunately undated. I can narrow down an earliest possible date – 1924 – but then things get fuzzy.
Most readers will be familiar with the legacy of Francis J. Corr, though might not know it. He was the Fran of Frandor (his wife Dorothy was the dor). He was the original owner and developer of Frandor, and one of his big wins was lining up Sears as an anchor before construction. It was a good run, Frankie. Speaking of good runs, Corr died in 1972 at the age of 92, according to a Lansing State Journal obituary on December 26 of that year. (I note that the person who clipped that article at Newspapers.com is username “mckrill” who previously supplied a source of clippings about sidewalk contractor W.H. McKrill. I don’t know what to make of this, except that there might be some connection between the McKrill and Corr families.)
This photo, facing south on Custer, demonstrates that the stamp uses a pretty large typeface, as they go.
The State Journal of January 7, 1945 has a piece titled “Executives of Corr Brothers Construction Firm.” It states that Corr Brothers Construction Firm had announced the addition of Francis J. Corr, Sr., as a partner. According to the article, Corr started in the construction business in 1911 as a partner in McHenry and Corr. When Gerald McHenry died in 1924, Corr continued the business under the name Francis J. Corr. Then in 1937 he brought his son, Francis J. Corr, Jr., into the business and changed the name to Francis J. Corr and Son. Finally, in 1944 he sold his interest in the business to his wife, Dorothy. It appears to have existed at least into the 1950s, since the May 11, 1956, State Journal reports that the Francis J. Corr company was involved in the Michigan State University stadium project. I assume that Francis Jr. stayed with the original company; the Corr Brothers business that Francis Sr. joined was run by two other sons.
This stamp is on the west side of Kipling Boulevard, alongside Capital Imaging (which is located on East Michigan Avenue at Kipling). I have previously catalogued a George Hagamier stamp on the same stretch of sidewalk and written a little about the Capital Imaging building in the process.
The southern sidewalk stamp.
Stamp on the driveway.
This is the most recent example I have seen of the “1980s” style DPW stamp, and also therefore the latest use of the “DPW” name. The next style used appears to be the simple “O & M” stamps. Most of those are undated but I have found a few marked as 2005.
There are three stamps, one on either end of a run of sidewalk and one on the driveway in between.
The northern stamp. Looks like they had a false start. I recognize that kind of misprint from my rubber stamping hobbies.
The back corner of Capital Imaging. The southern stamp is by the side door, the northern one is in the foreground here, and the other one is in the middle of the driveway apron.
Lately you haven’t been able to keep me away from Urbandale, not that anyone has tried. This stamp is on the south side of Marcus Street just west of South Hayford Avenue. It’s the earliest use I’ve seen of the second style of Department of Public Works stamps, the one I used to call the “1940s style” until I discovered one from 1927. There was a long overlap in use between the first and second style of DPW stamps. I have stamps between 1917 and 1942 for the first style, and the second style I can now push back to 1926, so they had a good fifteen plus years of overlapping use.
At one point this sidewalk bordered a 1937 house at 504 South Hayford Avenue, which fell into the city’s hands due to a tax foreclosure in 2011 and was presumably demolished around then. CADL’s local history collection has an old assessor photo of the house, which was tiny. I am fascinated by this mysterious house. According to 1950s real estate cards digitized by CADL, it had a one-car garage and a double lot, yet it contained only two rooms: a 10 x 12 living room and an 8 x 10 kitchen. Zero bedrooms, it states specifically. All right, so there was really just one all-purpose room plus a kitchen. But, but, but… where was the bathroom? The real estate card leaves blank the area where it would usually say how many bathrooms there were and with what fixtures. Surely this house must have had a bathroom, but if the real estate agents refused to regard it as its own room, what am I to picture? And why did someone build a garage for a house this tiny instead of using the materials to make more house? Why stick the smallest house in Lansing onto a double lot? So many unanswered questions, and I can’t use the city’s property records online to check into any of this because the records get wiped out when a house is demolished.
Looking southwest into the former yard of 504 from Marcus. The stamp is visible.
What’s here now is, of course, a community garden, specifically a raspberry patch. The same fence that once guarded the tiny house (as can be seen in the 2007 Google Street View) serves the raspberries now.
Looking into the raspberry patch from the Hayford (front) side.
This stamp is on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect. There are several of them along this stretch of Bingham. As noted on my previous McClain entry (that one depicting a very different stamp), I haven’t been able to learn much about the company.
The date is quite unclear, but one of the other ones on the block has a clearer “8” that makes me confident it is 1980s. It looks like 1983 to me but I can’t be confident of the last digit.
A nice, sunny May Day on Bingham Street, looking north.
I did some more Urbandale rambling today, as I wanted to return to a stamp I had made note of, but found illegible, in the past. It’s on the east side of South Hayford Avenue between Elizabeth and Harton. Initially I didn’t find it any more legible today, but when I looked at it mediated through my camera suddenly I thought I made something out. It seems that sometimes having less information lets my brain find letters in the noise. It appeared to read “Kegle.” Could that be a name?
In front of the vacant lot south of 605.
Yes it could, and it was. Kegle Construction Company Inc. advertised in the February 8, 1981, Lansing State Journal: “Kegle Construction Company has been serving the highway industry in Michigan since 1957.” The ad promises “Concrete Roads, Streets, and Parking Lots” and gives the address 3508 Wood Street (today home to Sanches Construction). The business was founded by Howard S. “Red” Kegle (who had previously run Kegle Dairy Company) and continued by his son, James F. Kegle. According to the May 21, 1978, Lansing State Journal, James was elected president of the Michigan Concrete Paving Association, meaning this stamp has a real pedigree. Sadly, according to an obituary posted at Find A Grave (titled “James F. Kegle, Road Builder, Weightlifter”), James died in 1984 at the unripe age of 44. Weightlifting was his hobby and he won many awards in competitions.
Looking south on Hayford. On the left is a vacant lot (really, probably a few vacant lots) that is (what else?) an urban farm. The stamp is on the nearest pictured full block.
I haven’t been able to determine a date for Kegle going out of business, so I don’t know if the company survived James’s death. Unfortunately the stamp is undated.
A typical Urbandale view. The stamp is on the block of sidewalk in the center of this photo, though not visible here.
This stamp is on the west side of Virginia Street just south of the Eureka intersection. Unfortunately, it’s undated, which is true of all the George Leavens stamps I have found. There is another one further south on this side of Virginia, though it’s not as clear.
Unfortunately I don’t have anything new to say about George Leavens, but I’ll take this opportunity to point to my previous post about George Leavens because I learned a lot of interesting things about him. Last time I wasn’t quite sure what the word in the middle of the stamp was, but this stamp is quite crisp in that regard, so I have confirmed my guess that it says “MAKER.” It seems like an unusual but less awkward version of the “MFGR’S” that appears in Minnis & Ewer stamps. (It took me ages to notice that the “G” in that does not stand for anything!)
Facing south on Virginia Street. This is on the corner lot with Eureka.
This stamp is on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue between Marcus and Horton. (It’s just north of where Elizabeth Street would be, if it didn’t disappear for a couple of blocks.) My husband actually found this one first and told me about it, but I forgot where he said it was, and then ended up running across it on my own.
What happened here? Yes, the date was accidentally reversed, but how? This forces me to admit that I have no idea what these stamps actually look like such that it’s possible to reverse them. I always picture something that looks like a branding iron, but then how could this happen?
Looking around a bit, I find this site selling name stamps for contractors. Here’s another example from a different company. The stamps pictured have holes so that a new year stamp can be inserted. That makes sense, but I still don’t see how the date can end up mirrored. The raised numbers are only on one side of the stamp as far as I can tell. Upside-down is a more obvious way this could go wrong.
Looking south on South Magnolia. This is in Urbandale, so of course what’s up ahead is an urban farm.
I had one of those lucky moments today in which I walked past a previously illegible stamp at a different time of day and it revealed itself to me. It suddenly became apparent that this stamp, previously catalogued as illegible, is in fact from L. Ketchum. Like the other L. Ketchum I’ve found, it looks to be from the 1960s, and if I’m reading it right, 1961.
