I stopped to check this one out because for a moment I thought it was a style of O & M stamp I hadn’t seen before, and I have been trying to catalogue all those variations. Instead I found a stamp from the mysterious G & M, on the east side of Foster Avenue between Prospect and Michigan.
I wish I could say the vignetting was an artistic choice, but it’s really because of having to use a flash since it was night. That’s also why I took this one from a bit farther away than usual.
I haven’t been able to find out much about G & M. I am guessing they were the G & M Construction Corporation, which I can find an entry for in OpenCorporates. They incorporated in June 1995 and dissolved in 2003.
This was the best angle I could find for making the date (1992) legible.
Assuming this is the same G & M Construction Corporation, they were located on Pollard Road in southwest Lansing at an address that seems to just serve as a house today.
I had an exciting find tonight: another stamp from the aughts. I’m not sure how I haven’t noticed it before, since it’s quite a clear one and I often walk this street; I can only guess that it means I usually walk on the other side. It is on the north side of Prospect Street between Jones and Holmes (just east of Jones).
Trying to find out anything at all about the J.F. Sowa responsible for this stamp has been foiled by the fact that a person with the same leading initials and last name is an important personage in computer science. If I try for “J.F. Sowa” and “Lansing,” I get a lot of articles that include citations to Sowa alongside citations to other authors who happened to publish with Michigan State University Press. Adding “concrete” or “cement” to the name does not help, for reasons I will leave as an exercise to the reader. If I exclude the word “conceptual” in order to filter out results that refer to Sowa’s most cited book, Conceptual Structures, it does cut the results down to a handful, but none of what’s left is useful.
The J.F. Sowa stamp in context, looking west on Prospect Street.
The slab is in rough shape, covered in spidery cracks. Still, it’s impressive for it to have survived 112 years, and I think it is in the best condition of the pre-1910 stamps I have found. It looks to have received a neat patch at some point, which appeals to the part of me that enjoys darning socks.
Update 10/25/21: I learned a bit about J.F. Sowa with help from my mom, and wrote an update.
Here’s an old DPW stamp, on the north side of Eureka Street between Lathrop and Clifford, and for a change I can read the month on it: May.
Figuring out when they quit stamping a month with the year will be interesting. It looks like they had already quit stamping the exact date, which they did at least through most of 1918.
This sidewalk stamp is out in front of Hunter Park, which is to say, on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Holmes and Clifford. The date is hard to read in my photo, but it is 1982.
This is the only stamp from Ameri-Const. Co. that I have seen so far. I presume that is Ameri-Construction. I can find out little about the business. There is a new business announcement for Ameri-Construction in the January 14, 1991, Lansing State Journal, giving their address as 6800 State Road, East Lansing. That address is actually in Bath Township, near Park Lake. One might assume it must be a different company due to the later date, but more likely it is the same company re-establishing, since there is again a new business announcement on January 15, 1996, also establishing Ameri-Construction at 6800 State Road.
I can’t find any earlier new business listings, but on May 20, 1981, I find a classified advertisement from Ameri-Construction seeking someone to do concrete and carpentry work, “experience preferred.” Unfortunately, no address is listed. On June 23, 1986, Ameri-Construction appears on the sports page, as their softball team was facing off against The Polack Corp. On the same page I notice that Clark Construction was also fielding a team. It seems like a good number of the businesses I’ve written about so far had softball or baseball teams. One unexpected consequence of this project has been learning how big amateur baseball and softball used to be in Lansing.
I’m sorry; this would have been a lot more picturesque had I been walking in daytime. It’s a fairly large park with a big sunny area in the center where I sometimes fly my kite, a pool near the back, a public greenhouse, and a shady grove of trees. So in other words, it’s pretty nice.
Hunter Park is the park I visit most often on my walks. It has an outdoor pool, which no doubt figures prominently in the summers of the children who live in the apartments across the street as well as the surrounding neighborhoods. According to a fascinating report on Lansing parks development from 1969 that I turned up while researching this post (and which I lost a good chunk of time to poring over this evening), Hunter Park was established in 1940.
This stamp is in front of the awfully-named Venue at East Town, the development that was dropped in from space to replace a row of early 20th century buildings on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Clemens and Fairview. This block forms a good part of my early memories of living in Lansing, not just because I spent a lot of time waiting at the bus stop there. It was formerly home to Emil’s, which until its closure was the oldest restaurant in Lansing, and hosted a fair few of my birthday dinners with my parents. Various other shops on the block came and went over the years. The one I probably spent the most time in was Capital City Comics and Books.
I would have kicked that cigarette butt out of the way had I noticed it while taking the photo, but it probably just lends authenticity.
This stamp from Clark Foundation Co. is undated, though the whole stretch of sidewalk was newly laid as part of constructing The Venue, so it must date from 2017. Interestingly, a Clark stamp further east – in front of another Gillespie development – includes a date. Clark is based in Delta Township and was founded in 1955. According to their Web site, they “specialize in residential and commercial excavating, quality poured walls and flatwork.”
The cornerstone of The Venue at East Town. The stamp is actually on the other (east) end of the building.
It’s faint but I’m confident in it: that is “- 07” beneath the company name. Most likely there had been a month in front of that, but that’s lost along with a chunk of the concrete. Too bad, as that might have allowed me to say whether this was my oldest stamp yet. The slab is in very poor condition, even worse than this photo makes clear as I only included the area around the stamp. The rest of the concrete is just as bad, fractured in several places and succumbing to weeds and dirt. Next time there is a big sidewalk replacement project, if not sooner, this will be gone. But for now it remains in the 200 block of the west side of Regent Street, between Kalamazoo and Michigan.
These mirrored stamps are on the west side of South Clemens Avenue between Kalamazoo and Prospect. There are several from this company on this stretch of Clemens.
I haven’t been able to find anything out about Al’s Utility (with or without apostrophe).
This stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Allen and Shepard. It’s undated, which is curious because I have seen other Eastlund stamps around town with dates, mostly in the 2000s if I’m remembering correctly. Eastlund Concrete of Holt is still in business and has been providing commercial concrete services since 1962, according to their Web site.
It’s out in front of Papa John’s Pizza, my longtime go-to pizza place (except when my parents are visiting because my dad prefers Jet’s). Papa John’s is no relation to the national chain. They had the name in this area long before the other Papa John’s came to town, so they had no legal obligation to relinquish it. When someone opened a Papa John’s franchise in Lansing back in the 2000s it had to go by the name Papiano’s. It’s long gone but our east side Papa John’s endures.
I’m trying so hard not to be bothered by the disorderly letters in that neon sign. I miss their previous neon, which was a cartoon chef’s face with big green eyebrows.
The stamp is on a half-sized slab right in front of the street tree in this next photo. (It’s right above a BBRPCI stamp oriented in the other direction.)
