“Another Regent Street stamp?” you say. Ah, but it’s the other Regent Street this time, the Regent that resumes south of I-496, in the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. This stamp is on the west side of Regent between Perkins and the southern dead end, along with a couple of others from the same company that are less legible.
I walked over the Aurelius Road overpass to take a last few photos of the railroad bridge before construction begins in earnest. The sidewalk has been officially closed for a day, but I figured not too much had probably happened yet and I could get away with one illicit trip onto the bridge. As a side trip, I went down the sidewalk that cuts from Aurelius to Clemens, into Potter-Walsh, and took these photos.
Looking north on Regent. The other two United stamps in the vicinity are near the other end of this house’s lot.
Unfortunately I can’t be enlightening about who United was. A few contractors with some variation of the name “United” show up in searches, but none located in mid-Michigan and none with a specialization in concrete.
As threatened long ago and alluded to again recently, I am starting a new recurring feature, the Hall of Shame. My original conception of it was to point out newly-laid sidewalk that was out of compliance with marking requirements, but I am going to broaden it to include anything sidewalk-related I feel like disapproving of.
Lansing is much better with sidewalks than Lansing Township. In fact, one way to tell that you have wandered out of Lansing proper is that the sidewalks have vanished from under your feet. Nevertheless, Lansing still leaves something to be desired, in that the city seems to think that only blocks (or sides of blocks) that have houses on them strictly need sidewalks. Side streets that only have driveways on them usually have no sidewalks. I assume they were just never built there. That doesn’t surprise me, even if I don’t like it. What did surprise me was discovering, now that the snow is off the neighborhood and I can see it properly, that the city has actually been removing sidewalks from depopulated blocks.
The first example I ran across was the southern end of South Hayford Avenue. I’m not sure when the sidewalk was removed but the earth underneath still looks pretty fresh, and a photo in the city’s property records seems to show the sidewalk still present in June 2020. I’m sorry I didn’t know this was going to happen so I could have catalogued all the doomed sidewalk stamps. Speaking of stamps, here is the last one on the west side of the block, a very worn Cantu & Sons.
There are two more sidewalk blocks past this one, and then it ends abruptly, presumably at the edge of the property. Beyond it is the muddy ghost of the old sidewalk.
Looking south on South Hayford.
The obvious rationale for the sidewalk’s removal is that all the houses that were south of here have been demolished. There is now an urban farm there on the right. Hayford has a heavy concentration of them, making the street look almost rural. So why do I disapprove of removing the no-longer-needed sidewalk?
Because I reject the idea that only houses need sidewalks. This is still a public street, and anyone ought to have the right to walk down it for exercise, to amuse their dog, to admire the urban farms that the city wants us to take pride in, or for any other harmless reason. Tear down the houses if you must, but there should still be a public right-of-way.
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but removing the sidewalk strikes me as a gesture of subtle hostility toward the neighborhood. It is well known that the city would rather the Urbandale neighborhood not exist because of its susceptibility to floods and concentration of people of less means. Ever since the great Lansing flood of 1975, the city’s long-term plan for Urbandale has been to phase it out of existence, but efforts have been stepped up over the last decade or so. The city states that one of the goals of the Flood Mitigation Plan is to “keep neighborhoods strong and intact,” and yet it also states that “all property that is acquired is permanently deed restricted so that it cannot be developed again in the future.”
Google Street View shows that the sidewalk used to extend to the end of this section of curb.
The city, the county, or the Garden Project own about half of the properties on the 700 block of Hayford. Most have been turned into farms or gardens, which is their favorite way of dealing with blight (although to my eyes it’s no more aesthetic to have a neighborhood full of sheds, barrels, and plastic-sheeted greenhouses than tired homes). A few are still standing, though that might mean they just haven’t gotten the funds for demolition yet, or maybe they’re waiting for the renters to move on voluntarily. Many properties eventually fall into the county’s Land Bank due to foreclosure. The city also has a program to buy properties directly, funded partly by a FEMA grant.
The sidewalk used to end at a driveway, which is why there is a curb cut here.
The east side of Hayford also has lost some of the end of its sidewalk. It’s a smaller amount, but more awkward, since it just cuts off after the last house’s front walk instead of continuing to the property line.
The truncated sidewalk on the east side of the street.
After taking these photos I walked to the end of Foster and found that it has even fewer remaining houses on its last block, and so an even larger amount of sidewalk has been recently removed.
Not much to say about this one; just continuing to plug away at eventually cataloguing the entirety of Regent Street. This presumed pair of C. Gossett stamps (I know it looks like “O” but elsewhere I have seen clear enough ones to know it’s “C”) is on the west side of the street.
This one’s almost illegible, but I assume it the partner of the other.
Looking south on Regent. The stamps are somewhere in this stretch…
I took time out from visiting family in Albion for Easter to take a walk in and around Victory Park. I know from past experience that stamps are much rarer in Albion than in Lansing, suggesting they are not required by ordinance there. Most of the ones I found were Miller’s Cement, the same one I found during my Christmas visit. I found one other, on the curb cut leading from the east side of South Ionia Street south over West Oak Street. It’s our old friend Eastlund Concrete, a familiar sight in Lansing.
There’s a vacant lot here now, though Google’s street view shows a house here as recently as 2012. They cut the trees in front of it down too, more’s the pity.
More Urbandale meandering today. Near the southernmost end of South Fairview Avenue, just south of the barely-existing-street known as Harton, I found this curb walk stamped by W.P. Bowerman. It’s in front of the only house on the east side of the 700 block, and near the southern end of the sidewalk there. The west side still has sidewalk to the end, at least for now. (And that’s foreshadowing of something I plan to get to soon.)
Where the sidewalk ends, South Fairview. (The stamp is nearest to the curb.)
Tonight I’m returning to the E.M. Vannocker driveway apron from the west side of Shepard Street between Marcus and Elizabeth. The reason for this return visit is that I realized on a later walk that it is not just one stamp but a series of three. The first three houses south of Marcus all have this stamp in their driveway apron, yet I haven’t found one anywhere else yet.
I expected to find that all three houses were built at the same time, but sadly it wasn’t as neat as that. From north to south, they were built in 1924, 1923, and 1926. The ’24 and ’23 houses are similar, possibly identical, bungalows. The ’26 house is an American foursquare. Perhaps Vannocker was the builder of all of these houses, or someone the builder worked with regularly.
This is a new contractor for me, found on the west side of South Fairview Avenue between Elizabeth and Harton, in the Urbandale neighborhood. I can’t seem to find out anything about H. Widman the contractor. There was a Harry Widman who was active in the Capitol Grange in the 1940s and 50s, but I don’t know if there is any relation.
The stamp is in front of a house with a walk-out basement, which is very unusual for the neighborhood. I don’t think I’ve seen another like it around here.
The stamp isn’t visible in this photo, but it’s just out of frame at the lower right.
Today’s stamps are kitty-corner to each other on the northwest corner of North Magnolia Avenue and Vine Street, meaning that one is really on Magnolia and the other on Vine.
This one almost looks like it says “1960,” but the other one makes the “8” clearer.
H. Plummer can be found advertising concrete work in late 1960s and early 1970s Lansing State Journal classifieds pages. It turns out his name was Henderson Plummer and he lived in Mason, that is, when he lived in Michigan. He seems to have spent at least some of his time in Texas. While trying to find more about him, in hope of turning up a history of his contracting business, I found some pictures of apparent relatives, and was surprised to discover that they were Black and thus he probably was too. I say surprised because so far whenever I have managed to turn up a picture of a contractor featured in the blog it has been a White man. So, it is nice to find some diversity in the business. (I will also be very excited if I ever find a woman, but I’m not holding my breath in the meantime.)
Henderson Plummer will complete his tour of duty in Texas, where he works on the toll-road in Houston. He will return to his extensive contractor business in Michigan where his family resides.
Reunion News, June 23, 1987, p. 7.
The reference to the contractor business gives me confidence that it is the same Henderson Plummer who had a concrete business in Mason and who poured this sidewalk.
There is a squat brick storefront, built in the 1950s but attached to a rambling older house behind it, on the north side of East Michigan Avenue at the east corner of Custer. It currently houses the Applause Salon. I don’t know what was in it before that, only that in the 1960s it was Stasi Hair Fashions, a wig shop. Out front is this stamp.
The sidewalk also hosts a bit of graffiti from Lisa W. of the salon. The building and the house are currently owned by a Lisa and Jon W., so I assume Lisa is the owner. (They don’t live in the house, though. They apparently rent it out, disappointing me in my desire to see an old fashioned owner-resident situation.)
The stamp is on the block blow and to the left of the fire hydrant.
I took a late walk after a lousy day, so this is the best I can do. It’s a Paul Wright stamp on the south side of Jerome Street between Clemens and Fairview. My brain wants to fill in the mis-struck final digit to make a 3, but when I compare it with the other Paul Wright stamp I’ve collected from North Magnolia Avenue nearby, it looks like it matches the shape of the 2 from that one. I’m inclined to guess they’re both 1952.
