It’s nice to be back in the land of milk and honey and abundant stamps. I’m struck once again by how much more common they are in Lansing than Albion. Our sidewalks are lousy with them, and I mean that in the best possible way.
This pair is on the east side of Leslie Street’s 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. They appear to be handwritten. Unfortunately, I have no information about Trendel.
Back to familiar territory: here is a Department of Public Works stamp on the west side of the 400 block of Regent Street, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. I believe it is dated 1942, like another nearby DPW stamp, though the 4 is hard to make out.
My last night walking in Albion for a while and I stuck close to the same blocks as the last couple of nights. Again I saw very few stamps. There are virtually none on the side streets. There are more on Erie, almost approaching a normal number of them, except that they are all from the same contractor, Miller’s Cement of Jackson.
Apparently Miller’s is (or was) a rare company who takes enough pride in their work to stamp sidewalks even when there is (I assume) no oridnance compelling it.
Once again I went for a walk this evening in Albion. It was quite cold (below 20F) but I managed a decent ramble to look at Christmas lights under falling snow.
Unfortunately, that pretty white dusting left me unable to show a stamp taken today for the first time since I started keeping the blog. Any stamps would be hard to find because there was a layer of snow on all the sidewalks. It isn’t like in Lansing, where I was able to just walk along a block brushing snow from the ends of slabs aside with my boot until I found a legible stamp. Stamps appear to be so infrequent in this area that it would not be worth the effort. I am assuming Albion does not have an ordinance about stamping sidewalks as Lansing does. I am still surprised that it isn’t done as a matter of course by most contractors.
It’s the end of a very good streak, but I will keep up my daily updating streak anyway by showing you an interesting couple of curved sidewalks I found on my walk. The first is on the northeast corner of Elizabeth and Erie. I find it interesting that the sidewalk curves here instead of squaring off the corner as it turns onto Erie. I have not seen one like that in Lansing. It would help prevent people killing the grass by cutting the corner, though would nibble a bit into someone’s property.
Further south on Elizabeth, the sidewalk jogs to avoid a tree, which I also find charming. The tree must have been there first.
This was the first day since I started keeping this blog that I wasn’t able to take a walk in Lansing and record at least one stamp. That’s because I spent the day in Albion with family. I walked in the quite cold night to look at Christmas lights on the campus of Albion College, and decided to record a stamp from Albion as a diversion and to keep up my streak.
The first thing I noticed was how rare stamps are in Albion compared with Lansing. In Lansing there will be probably three or four in front of every city lot. In Albion, I walked almost the entire length of the east side of Darrow Street without finding a single one. I presume that means Albion does not have an ordinance mandating them. I finally found this one alongside the very set-back house on East Erie Street, at the northern extent of Darrow. Unfortunately, at least under camera flash, it is illegible.
Fortunately, I turned the corner onto Erie and there was a similar one, probably the other half of a pair, that was readable enough. The date is a little questionable but I will stand by 1988. The company, Miller’s Cement in Jackson, is one I have not seen in Lansing, and no longer seems to be in business.
This stamp is on the curb cut leading from Jerome Street across Marshall, on the northwest corner of the intersection. The date is a little unclear but I believe it is 1981. I can find a record for Ayala’s Concrete and Excavating at OpenCorporates, according to which it was located on Bedford Road in Lansing. It was incorporated in 1979 and dissolved in 1992.
I took a photo for you diagonally across the intersection so you could get a glimpse of the Christmas lights on the mansion on Jerome I have mentioned before.
This one is on the east side of Custer Avenue, alongside the house on the corner that faces Jerome. BWL stamps usually have BWL in the lower left corner and the year in the lower right. Someone got creative this time. The two stamps are on either end of the slab, facing opposite directions.
This pair of stamps from Bearstone Construction is on the east side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine, specifically in front of the Foster Community Center.
The community center contains a small library, which is where I usually have my library holds sent to, since it’s the closest one to home and easier to park at than the main library downtown. It was originally the Foster Avenue School, as the stonework over the door still proclaims. Lansing seems to have named a lot of its early elementary schools after the street they were located on (see also the Allen Street School). I’m surprised no one wanted to be an elementary school’s namesake.
Bearstone Construction, according to its Web site, is “a family owned and operated business in the Lansing area” offering concrete, landscaping, and construction services. Their mailing address actually places them in Bath.
I think this might be my first truly unsigned mark. (The previous one I wrote about, in retrospect, was probably a BWL mark that I missed in the shadow.) It’s on the north side of Jerome Street between Custer and Rumsey. It appears to be handwritten, but the placement suggests a builder’s mark rather than graffiti. It’s very odd to date a sidewalk slab without signing. The other way around is fairly common.
I looked at the city’s property records to see the age of the house’s garage. I thought the sidewalk replacement might coincide with a garage being built, since the mark is in front of the driveway. I discovered that the house has no garage. Hooray! I can’t be tempted to spend an hour and a half chasing garage-related leads!
This handwritten mark is on the south side of Vine Street just east of Ferguson. My research-to-payoff ratio on this one was very low. I was ultimately unable to find a plausible Taylor Bros. for this to be, though I did find a probably unrelated welding company by that name in the 1913 Pictorial Souvenir of the Police and Fire Departments, Lansing, Michigan and then lost an hour to reading through the advertisements therein (check out the ad for Sam’s Place if you want to see something wild).
Then I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what the deal is with the garage that this is in front of. It belongs to the house that faces Ferguson. I normally don’t spend too much time writing about private homes for fear that the residents might find it and feel gawked at (though if you live in a mansion in this neighborhood I think you have to expect it), but I usually try to find out at least a little about business addresses. The size of this garage made me think that it must surely have been a business at some point in the past. It makes no sense as a garage for a residence. It’s a three-car garage made of naked concrete block, and it’s comically disproportionate. It’s 748 square feet, and the house is only 1,071 square feet. (The house is also two storeys, so the garage has a substantially bigger foundation.) It must take up nearly the whole backyard.
The city’s property records say the garage was built in 1961 (50 years after the house) and I would guess the sidewalk marking could be from then. I went to the real estate cards from the 1950s and 60s that the library has scanned in their online local history collection, hoping that it would mention something about the garage. Instead it says that there is a one car garage. The card is undated, but handwritten over the top (as they did on these old cards) is “Sold 2-8-61.” The new owner must have built the garage.
I can’t find any evidence that the garage was connected with a business. Perhaps the new owner was a car enthusiast. A three-car garage is nearly unheard of in this part of town. (I’ve already mentioned another house that has one, but that house is four times the square footage of this one.)
I did find one business that has used that address, but more recently. The November 11, 2002, Lansing State Journal has a new business listing for “Gramma Bea’s,” giving the address of the house on Ferguson. I would be surprised if that street had non-residential zoning, so it may only have been an office address. I don’t remember it at all, but apparently there was once a Gramma Bea’s Deli in East Lansing, and its owner was a past owner of the Ferguson house (and the same person who filed the new business listing). Gramma Bea’s won the annual Lansing Lugnuts chili cook off with a vegetarian chili in 2001. On June 26, 2002, the Lansing State Journal reported on its 2002 “Best of the Best” awards. Gramma Bea’s had come in third in the vegetarian food category, but the notation “(closed)” appeared by its name. I don’t know what the new business listing in November 2002 was for, but I find that in 2004 a “Gramma Bea’s Properties LLC” was incorporated in Laingsburg by the same person who had owned the restaurant.
None of this really tells me about the garage or about the Taylor Bros., but I wasted my time learning all of that, so the least you can do is waste your time reading all of it.