I’ve been watching this sidewalk being replaced in front of the Allen Place (née Allen Neighborhood Center) development, on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Allen and Shepard. I’m pretty sure it’s going to end up being a Hall of Shame candidate, since even more has gone in since I took this photo and there is no sign of any stamp yet, but I suppose until it’s completely finished I can’t say so definitively. Anyway, it’s still interesting to get to see a new sidewalk slab from the side. I wonder if they’re always this thick.
Now, at the end of a several day run of Hickory Street stamps, I have gotten to my reason for walking that block. Not the stamp itself – E.F. Sheets stamps are common enough and I’ve covered them before in the blog – but the house it’s in front of. To explain why the house is significant, I have to back up a bit.
One of my major finds in the early days of the blog was a 1908 stamp from J.F. Sowa on Prospect Street. As I noted at the time, I was unable to find anything out about Sowa because of the confounding existence of another J.F. Sowa who had authored a notable book in computer science. It turns out there was another reason. I asked my mom if she could use her Ancestry.com membership to make a quick check for a J.F. Sowa in Lansing in the early 1900s. Mom went above and beyond and worked really hard on it, sending me frustrated updates from time to time. Then, at last, in an email titled “BINGO!!!” she reported finding him in the 1910 census: John Fred Sowa, born in 1862 in Prussia, immigrated in 1896, currently living on Hickory Street with his wife Minnie (formally Anna Wilhelmina, according to other sources). Here’s what made the search harder for both of us. Between the 1910 and 1920 census, he changed his surname’s spelling to Sova. This would have been more phonetic (in English) for the Polish and German pronunciation of Sowa. (I also wonder if he might have been the John Sovey mentioned in the famous article about the Bum Walks.)
Speaking of bum walks: sadly, and ironically, the sidewalk in front of Sowa’s house is in bad shape due to having subsided.
I then went to the city’s tax records look at the house it said he lived in, to see if it was still standing. Upon looking at the record, without exaggeration, I squealed with excitement. Someone with the last name Sova still owns the house! I don’t mean to sound like I am prying into the family’s business, but I am truly delighted that his family still has the house, and I wonder if they have any idea that a sidewalk in another neighborhood is still marked with their ancestor’s name. (Based on the names involved and other cursory research, I believe the current owner is a grandson of J.F.) While digging around, Mom communicated with another Ancestry user in Germany who is doing a family tree for Sowa’s wife’s family, and that person mentioned that Sowa showed up in the previous census at a different address on Hickory. He wondered if the street had been renumbered. I have another explanation. The house was only built in 1908, so wherever Sowa was living in 1900 could not have been this house. It seems that Sowa just liked Hickory Street, and evidently the Sovas still do. He must also have been doing well for himself since he seems to have moved into a brand new house.
J.F. Sowa’s house: staid but handsome in its way.
Ever since I found this out I’ve been meaning to make a pilgrimage to see the Sowa/Sova house, but it is just a bit far away for me to walk on my usual routes, so I kept putting it off. I finally stopped there, by car, on my way home from work. I was hoping so much that there would be an old Sowa stamp on this block, better yet in front of the house itself, but I didn’t find one. So I snapped a picture of the oldest stamp in front of the house, which sadly is only this one, from 1963. The house, by the way, is on the south side of Hickory between Euclid and Pennsylvania. It’s on a double lot and seems to have both a garage and a shed; I wonder how old the shed is and whether it might have been used in Sowa’s business.
Sowa/Sova died in 1934 at the age of 74, according to his stone in the Mount Hope Cemetery. It puts his birth year as 1859, which is slightly off the year given in the 1910 census, but I am pretty sure it is the same person.
This is a new contractor for the blog, and one of the newest stamps on the block of Hickory Street between Euclid and Pennsylvania. The stamp is on the north side of the street. It’s very sharp looking, with a hollow-letter style that I appreciate. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out who the contractor is. If you know, drop me a line.
I love running across really old, really worn stamps like this, even if there is an element of frustration to it when they are illegible. I almost didn’t see this one because it is so worn that only someone really looking for it (like me) would probably notice it at all. I can just make out “Stone Co.” as probably the second line. If there had been a date, I don’t see any sign of it now. The first line is totally illegible. My first thought is is of the Lansing Artificial Stone Co., but it has a very different style from the one I have found from that company, and the illegible part also doesn’t look long enough.
Alas, it will not be giving up its secrets to me. This is a block of houses that date from the late 1890s to early 1900s, so I would guess that this is one of the original pieces of sidewalk here.
Spots like this, where the sidewalk curves in to avoid an obstruction that is no longer present, are fairly common, but I notice them every time. I always wonder what was there and how long it’s been gone. I usually figure it’s a tree (because I have seen spots where the sidewalk does curve just like this for a tree), although this would be a somewhat odd placement for a street tree.
The driveway apron used to be narrower, as I can see from an old tax assessor’s photo, so apparently when it was widened the contractor added a little piece to fill in part of the semicircle.
This bit of sidewalk is on the north side of Hickory Street between Pennsylvania and Euclid. I walked this block for the first time this evening, so get ready for several days of Hickory photos.
Eastlund seems to have been erratic about stamping the date. This one is on the east side of Lathrop Street just north of the corner of Lathrop and Elizabeth.
I realize now that I have actually done the paired stamp to this one before, the one around the corner on Elizabeth, but this is what I have and this is what you’re getting. If you look at the previous post, you can see the corner by day instead.
The pictured stamp is on the slab that is center right in this photo, on Lathrop Street. The one closer to me is actually the stamp I previously catalogued a while back.
This stamp, found on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Clifford and Lathrop, has many twins along this stretch. I took a photo of it mainly to showcase the sad, abandoned storefront it’s in front of.
The stamp in context (near the center bottom of the photo), facing east toward Lathrop Street.
The City Pulse made this building its Eyesore of the Week on August 29, 2019, writing, “The storefront housed Rapid Printing, Rapid Publications & Advertising and finally Michigan Avenue Printing. Its last Facebook post dates from January 2014 and the business seems to have collected dust since then, with printing equipment visible from the window.” I’m not entirely sure it did close in 2014. The evidence is ambiguous: the building sold in 2014 to its current owner, but a Google street view from August 2015 shows a seemingly lit “OPEN” sign in the front window, though the sign over the awning is gone. It is definitely gone by the time of the next street view picture in August 2016.
A west-facing view of the abandoned storefront.
A [Lansing] State Journal clipping from December 13, 1935, shows an advertisement for Trilby bath soap which reveals that the address was currently an A&P. In the early 1970s it was apparently an upholstery shop.
I love that old-fashioned sign art.
The front windows are uncovered for anyone to peer in, and it’s a bizarre sight. A copy machine is still sitting in there along with other office equipment, and a bulletin board just inside the window has faded business cards and advertisements. There is a desiccated potted plant just inside the door that can be made out, already dead, in the August 2015 street view images.
This graffiti on the east side of North Fairview Avenue between Saginaw and Grand River got my attention because of the lettering style. Most sidewalk graffiti is just plain lines. This one’s hollow block lettering is unique and ostentatious. The grass clippings from a recently mown lawn were giving it a little extra definition.
I didn’t notice the + at first and thought it was just four letters, TKSD, but when I looked at my photo later I realized it was a declaration of love: “TK + SD.”
My eyes are always drawn to an old Department of Public Works stamp, no matter what kind of shape it’s in. This one is on the east side of North Fairview Avenue between Saginaw and Grand River. I’m fairly sure it is 1920s, but can’t read the last digit. My gut says 1925, but I’m by no means confident about that.
The stamp may be nothing too special, but it does represent a breakthrough: I finally made myself walk across the pedestrian bridge over Saginaw. Many years ago when I was in grad school I ended up in this neighborhood for reasons I can’t recall or guess at. What I do remember is that I tried to cross on the pedestrian overpass and though I was able to walk to the top, my legs went weak and locked up and would not let me cross. I’m afraid of heights, and it feels flimsy, but mostly it’s the traffic roaring underneath that terrifies me. It doesn’t help that when I was buying my house, the real estate agent drove us underneath one of them and commented about how there was an accident when a truck hit one and knocked it down while some children were on it. (I thought I remembered him saying someone was killed, but either I misremembered or he did. Six children were injured, however.) I ended up descending the steps again in defeat and walking to a traffic light to cross. This time, though, I walked across it at last, and did it again on the way back. I was given some practice by having to walk across a larger one over a busier road in Mexico City a few years ago.
Looking south on Fairview. The stamp is on the block in front of the street tree, but facing the other way.
In case you thought this blog had strayed too far from its roots, here’s a Cantu & Sons 1988 stamp. I can tell this the faded date is 1988 mainly because I can see the extra line they were in the habit of putting in to change the 7 to an 8 before they finally got around to getting a 1988 stamp. The stamp is in front of the only house that faces the 1900 block of Prospect Street. It’s on the south side of Prospect Street west of Clemens.
When I was new in town I very often had to walk home from the bus stop at Michigan and Clemens, usually by walking south on Clemens and then west on Kalamazoo. This walk got so dull from repetition that I wished I could vary it, and was disappointed by the abrupt disappearance of Prospect west of Clemens. (It then reappears at Allen Street.) There is just a little stub end of Prospect that continues a short distance past the intersection, serving the single house to the south, a driveway to the north, and straight ahead… this.
I was very puzzled by this stark, concrete block building. What is it doing here? Who does it belong to? It looks out of place and doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the house next to it or anything else on Prospect. I always wondered about it but never thought to try to figure it out until I started all this walking and blogging. That’s when I realized that it might belong to a house on the next street west, that is, Regent Street.
And so it does. I worked out that it belongs to a house on Regent Street and that the city has it accounted as a garage, built 1910, the same year as the house. But the supposed garage is bigger than the house, 1,660 square feet versus 1,120. Viewed from the house side, it appears that there is a normal (for the neighborhood) single-car garage with painted siding attached to it up front, which the city labels “shed” in their sketch of the property. The whole setup is very odd. There must be a story behind this.
