It’s another 2016 stamp today, on the north side of West Michigan Avenue just south of Capitol, in front of Lansing City Hall. There are paired stamps on either end of a short run of new sidewalk.
Looking north on West Michigan. There is the Capitol, of course, and the State Holiday Tree on the left.
City Hall is a beautiful, mid-century modern building, evocative of a prosperous time in the city. I am very fond of it, which might put me in the minority (many residents seem to consider it ugly). The city has not always been a good custodian of it and has been trying to get rid of it. One of the last acts of Virg Bernero’s mayoral administration was to broker a deal to sell it for renovation into a hotel, with the plan being to move City Hall into the former Lansing State Journal building. The Schor administration put the brakes on that, leaving City Hall to continue indefinitely in its state of deferred maintenance.
The northern stamp.
I checked the copious pavement all around City Hall in hope of finding a stamp from its glory days, but to my surprise and disappointment, the only stamps I found were these new ones from Isabella Corp.
Lansing City Hall. This photo was taken from the approximate site of the northern stamp.
Able’s most recent stamps are quite minimalist, which is a bit of a shame. They do tend to read very cleanly, though. This one is on the east side of Horton Street north of Jerome.
The southern stamp.
It leads off a run of new sidewalk, and it also looks like the steps of the house this is in front of were redone at the same time. This leads me to wonder if it was done at the homeowner’s instigation rather than the city’s. If you want the sidewalk in front of your house replaced sooner than the city’s replacement schedule would have it, you can do the legwork of getting two bids and then the city will share the cost with you.
Looking north on Horton.
There is a paired stamp on the other end. The stamps may be simple, but I appreciate the orderliness of them.
This stamp is on the west side of the 100 block of Regent Street, next to the office building on the corner of Michigan and Regent. Unfortunately, I can’t make out the name, except that it starts with a C and ends with “lain” and is probably two words.
The northern stamp.
I’ve learned to check for a paired stamp, especially when there are legibility issues. Well, I found it a little way south, but it didn’t help. It’s just as worn and it’s also very muddy at the moment.
The southern stamp.
The building this is next to currently houses a few unmemorable offices, but I have always been rather fascinated by it because of the fact that the one-story storefront part of the building clearly surrounds and nearly hides a two-story building, likely older and possibly a fairly grand house. According to the city’s records, it was built in 1924.
When I first moved to town, a neighbor told me the building used to be a Chinese restaurant. This made sense to me as the roof on the one-story part of the building has jade tiles, but I never learned any more about it. While researching this post, however, I ran across a couple of old Lansing State Journal advertisements for the Pagoda Restaurant at this address. That, I thought, must have been the restaurant my old neighbor was referring to. Then again, was it? In a stroke of luck for me, someone on eBay is currently selling a menu from Gallagher’s Pagoda Restaurant. Dishes on offer include fried chicken, roast chicken, veal cutlets, steer liver, pork chops, grilled ham, grilled sirloin, and various seafood dishes. There isn’t the slightest hint of anything Chinese about it. Still, I would bet that a vague and understandably confused memory (or secondhand information) led my neighbor to describe the Pagoda as a Chinese restaurant.
This driveway leads to the parking behind the office building, the former Pagoda restaurant. The northern stamp is on the nearest sidewalk block (upside down).
I don’t know what was here when this was stamped in 1950, since the earliest reference I can find to the Pagoda was from 1953. On April 24, 1953, an advertisement in the Lansing State Journal promised a “KIDDIE KARNIVAL – Special Family Dinner Rates – Pogo the Clown in Person.”
I also don’t know for sure when the Pagoda closed. I found an obituary for Charles Gallagher in the December 31, 1996, Lansing State Journal; he had died on December 29 at the age of 91. According to it, “Charles may be best remembered as co-owner, with his mother, Ida, of the Pagoda Restaurant in Lansing until 1969.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Pagoda closed in 1969, but it is suggestive.
Update: I finally managed to read this one! It is C.D. Chamberlain.
This L & L stamp is on a walking path that cuts down from the west side of North Aurelius Road to Clemens. To the north of this, Aurelius “becomes” Clemens and crosses I-496 as an overpass. To the south, it is an overpass over the railroad tracks. In the early 2000s there was a project that both reduced the number of lanes on Aurelius to try to calm traffic, and made the overpasses more pedestrian-friendly. I would guess this sidewalk installation was part of that.
Looking down from Aurelius toward Clemens. Most people say that Clemens “turns into” Aurelius as it goes south but in some sense that isn’t true because they do exist side by side for a couple of blocks.
I refer to the streets here as “the other Clemens,” “the other Regent,” and so on, or sometimes “the alternate universe streets,” because they seem to be in a different world from the streets of my neighborhood despite sharing their names. It’s always hard to believe that they are just down the way as the crow flies, and once upon a time they would have been been one unbroken street. That ended with 496.
This stamp is on North Fairview Avenue just south of the corner of Jerome Street. I can find a T L Contracting that is (or was) on South Lowell in DeWitt, and one (maybe the same one) on Industrial Parkway in Lansing. I can’t find a Web site for the company or any other information.
Here’s another one that looks ambiguously like either graffiti or a contractor mark. Once again I’m inclined to think it’s from the contractor since it follows the grammar of a contractor stamp, except for being freakishly large. I would have thought that the contractor would want to take more pride in their work than to mar their nice new pavement this way, but I’ve been wrong about that before. I’m not sure who or what D M is. There is currently a D & M Concrete in Michigan, but that’s probably a coincidence.
It’s on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Ferguson and Custer, out in front of the Soup Spoon Cafe, an early entrant in the east side hipster restaurant derby. When I moved to town in 1999, this rather handsome 1906 building was occupied by Bancroft Flowers and Gifts on one side and the Greenhouse Cafe on the other. I believe they were owned by the same people. Sometime in the 2000s, I forget exactly when, the Greenhouse Cafe closed and the Soup Spoon moved in. In 2014, Bancroft closed and the Soup Spoon grew to occupy the entire building.
I would guess that this building was originally a grocery store. I can’t seem to figure out who the original occupant was, but by 1928 it was the Howard Long grocery store.
Looking west on East Michigan. Note how large the mark is!
Here’s a very worn one on the west side of Regent Street midway between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. The date is definitely 1963, in a big, stylish typeface. It’s always a bit strange when the date is bigger than the name.
As for the name, I believe I can make out “J Wilson.” The name is too common for me to learn much by trying to search the Lansing State Journal, so the contractor will have to remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.
I didn’t forget. I’ve just been up all night writing an exam, and this was my first chance to get this posted. I took a lightly snowy walk in the early evening, enjoying some early Christmas lights (even while mildly disapproving).
There are a bunch of these Eastlund Concrete stamps on Elizabeth Street, but none of them are dated. Scofflaws, I tell you. This one is on the north side of Elizabeth Street, just on the east side of the corner of Lathrop.
Here is my first downtown stamp. It’s on the south side of West Ottawa Street between Capitol and Washington, next to the Anderson House Office Building. I actually stopped briefly during my Silver Bells Virtual 5K Walk to take the photo. I was hoping to find something more unusual downtown, but disappointingly all the ones I passed were fairly recent and familiar. This one is impressively clear and sharp, but unfortunately undated.
It’s interesting how some stamps seem more common in some areas than others. I noticed quite a few Moore Trosper (or Moore-Trosper as it is rendered here) stamps downtown, but they are very uncommon in the east side neighborhoods.
Looking west on West Ottawa Street. The stamp is somewhere near the bottom of this photo, too dark to see.
This nice, sharp BBRPCI (BBR Progressive Concrete Inc.) stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue just east of Fairview.
This corner has been a vacant lot for so long (that For Lease sign has been there since at least 2011, per Google Street View) that I had to jog my memory about what used to be there. It was two buildings, one of them an old house and the other a low-slung, dismal commercial building which most recently was the home base of Shaggin’ Wagon Taxi. Recently it has been the temporary quarters of the Allen Farmers Market during construction on the Allen Neighborhood Center.
Looking east on East Michigan toward the vacant lot’s neighbor, Hotwater Works.
Searching the Lansing State Journal, I turned up perhaps the most unusual business to have occupied the address. In March 1993, a late-night music venue called The Ibex Sings opened. In May 1993 it closed with a farewell party.
They say if you put your ear to the gravel you can still hear a punk show.
