This one is on the north side of Prospect Street between Eighth and Pennsylvania. The stamp is a clear example of the “second style” of Department of Public Works stamps. The date is much harder to read and it took me a second trip in better light before I made out enough of it to tell at least the decade. It is definitely a 1920s stamp and I am fairly confident it is 1926.
Walking on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street, between Pennsylvania and Bingham, I found a hopscotch court that someone had drawn in chalk. I was heading west, the correct direction to appreciate it, as it started with an enticement to “Have fun!” and then concluded with the valediction “Have a good day.”
I love that kids still draw hopscotch, because I love keeping folk practices alive, something kids seem especially good at. I wonder, though, whether kids still play hopscotch. While it is not uncommon for me to come across a hopscotch court on the sidewalk, I have never seen hopscotch actually being played. I wonder if kids in Lansing play the game or just draw the board, ritualistically re-enacting something they have seen older kids do. I don’t know any kids to ask.
A tired-looking building that styles itself “Kalamazoo Plaza” sits at the northwest corner of East Kalamazoo Street and South Pennsylvania Avenue, and this stamp is on the Pennsylvania side of the property. In person I do think I see the faintest impression of a name above the date, but it is hopelessly illegible.
The building was built in 1960, so the sidewalk probably had work done at the same time. Currently, the west side of the building is the closed-for-good husk of a neighborhood dollar store, Dollar Palace. The east side identifies itself as Falcon Auto Traders, though it does not really look like it is doing much in the way of auto trading. Prior to Falcon moving in, it was a pharmacy, Lansing Community Health Mart, until at least 2011.
At one point the building (I don’t know which suite) was home to Capital City Typing Service, which renamed itself Quality Typing Service later on, and may also have been known as Capitol Area Typing Service. The Lansing State Journal business pages of June 30, 1985, reported,
Capital City Typing Service, 925 E. Kalamazoo St., is under new management. The new owner, president is Lois “Jane” Joehlin, who has worked in the secretarial field for over 30 years and has an associate degree in business management.
Did you miss me yet? I’m back with some graffiti, dated October 2019, from a vacant lot on the 100 block of Regent Street, between Michigan and Kalamazoo. Sorry it got a little cut off on the right. The bright sunlight made it hard for me to see what I was doing.
This is in front of a vacant lot which used to have one of the houses I thought of as “the Triplets,” three similar Dutch colonial houses in a row, all built in 1908. The Triplets were not actually identical. The one in the middle – the nearer home in this photo – has to be considered a fraternal triplet. In addition to having a different arrangement of windows in the front, it is actually quite different seen from the side. The two on either side of it were closer to identical, but were actually mirrored, judging from the arrangement of windows and placement of the front door. One of those triplets – my favorite one because it was pink – is gone, the victim of the infamous 2013 ice storm. A large tree limb fell on its roof, significantly damaging it. For a long time afterward it had a tarp laid over the hole, but after months went by and no work was done it became obvious that it was done for. It was demolished in 2015.
This lot is now owned by Dave Muylle, who owns quite a lot of that block of Regent. He also owns the middle triplet. Other Muylle properties in the vicinity include Regent Place, the Regent Arms, and the Cottage Lane project (a cluster of small homes around a common area between Regent and Leslie).
I mentioned in my (late) anniversary post that I was thinking of changing my update schedule. This post is to announce that I am following through with that and this will mark the end of daily updates, a schedule I maintained without exception for over a year. During that time I posted at least once a day. Every day I had a sidewalk stamp or other sidewalk feature except for a scant few times when snow made it impossible to find anything. It’s hard to give up a habit so solidified, but I have to admit it is time. As regular readers will have noticed, it has become difficult for me to find stamps from contractors that haven’t already been thoroughly covered in the blog on my daily walks. (It hasn’t helped that the recent heat waves forced me to walk after dark, which limits where I can walk and how many stamps are illuminated.) I would rather update less frequently than subject you to five Cantu & Sons stamps each week.
The other issue is that in-person work has begun for me again, increasing my weekly commute from zero to eight hours. I will have less time for blogging, and my daily walks – a habit that previously intertwined with my blogging habit – will often be in the city where I work instead of in Lansing.
Previously I also had a rule that a stamp I posted had to have been captured that day. I never broke this rule, even though it sometimes meant choosing the best of several good stamps I saw on a walk and throwing the rest of the photos away to force myself to go back for the others later. A few times this caused me to temporarily lose track of where I saw one, and I had frustrating moments walking back to where I thought one was only to be unable to find it. In the future I will try to stick to stamps photographed as recently as possible, but I won’t totally bar myself from banking photos anymore.
I am planning to try doing an update schedule of three times a week, and see how that goes. I haven’t decided which days yet and may need to experiment with that a little while before settling on it. Thanks to everyone (anyone?) who has actually been reading so far.
Although it’s just about illegible, I am fairly sure this is a Lansing DPW stamp. I read the date as 1933, but 1938 is a possibility too. It’s on the west side of Allen Street between Michigan and Prospect.
This stamp is on a driveway on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Leslie and Horton. It’s what I call a ghost driveway; the house it belonged to was demolished sometime between 2008 and 2011, along with another one next door. It was one of those old houses-turned-businesses that line so much of the Avenue here. The city has an account for a business called “Digital Photo Magic” at this address, indicating delinquent taxes for 1999 and 2000, so they may have been here when this stamp was made. I can’t find much else about the history of the house except that in the 1950s and early ’60s it was home to a real estate agency called Brennan Realty Co.
There is a large and somewhat mysterious vacant lot on the northeast corner of East Kalamazoo Street and South Foster Avenue. The Kalamazoo side of it is lined with a row of handsome evergreens, and that’s where you can find this series of three graffiti-covered blocks. I assume the number on one of them represents a date, ’95, but I can’t be sure. They are facing sideways from the perspective of a pedestrian, as though meant to be read by the evergreens. Here they are, presented from east to west.
Nothing eventful today, just a nice L & L stamp from the east side of the 200 block of Regent Street between Michigan and Kalamazoo.
This stamp is on the west side of Regent Street just about midway between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. It’s in front of the same house as this J. Wilson stamp. The house itself is a cute little Dutch colonial. A decade-plus ago, I had to have part of my chimney rebuilt, and the mason who did it lived in this house. He said, “You know I’ll do a good job because I’ll have to look at it.” In fact, he did do a really nice job.
The date appeared to be 1988 when I raked it with my flashlight beam, but now that I look at the photo it seems more like 1987. I will have to look at it in daylight next chance I get.
