This stamp is on the east side of North Fairview Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw, along with a few more like it on this block. Unfortunately, this is going to be another unsatisfying entry; I haven’t been able to turn up anything about Mel Taylor. The name is just too common to narrow down.
I’m assuming this is not the same Mel Taylor who was a manager with REO Motors in the 1950s, nor the same Mel Taylor who was a minister around the same time. I will have to leave this one unsolved for now.
Looking south on Fairview. The stamp is bottom center.
A driveway apron on the north side of Jerome between Ferguson and Custer caught my eye. It is relatively uncommon to have stamps at all on the driveway, but this one had four! The two pictured stamps are set diagonally on either corner, facing the sidewalk.
The stamp in the left corner, seen from the sidewalk. It’s that time of year when all the trash emerges from hibernation and frolics in the wind.
The right corner.
At first I was going to joke that they must have been especially proud of their work to stamp it twice, but then I realized the likely reason. There are actually two contiguous driveways here that share one big curb cut, as is common in the neighborhood. The double corner stamps are probably signaling “we did this side; the other side is some other contractor’s problem.” The other side has a single 1987 BWL stamp on it.
Looking east on Jerome. The stamps are on the near side of the driveway apron.
There are also upper and lower blocks making up each of the two sides. The DPW stamps are on the upper block, next to the sidewalk. The L & L stamp is on the lower block, next to the road.
This sharp and tidy Knight & Wilkinson stamp is on the east side of North Magnolia Avenue between Michigan and Vine. There are several on this block.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything out about Knight & Wilkinson. In the process of not finding anything, I did turn up a very amusing page in the Lansing State Journal promoting the upcoming 1936 city Soap Box Derby. (It just happened to include a kid named Wilkinson.) It’s aimed at kids and includes a hilarious “how do you do, fellow kids” mix of formal diction and trying-too-hard slang. Regarding a film that entrants would receive a ticket to (“Warner Brothers’ latest smash-hit EARTHWORM TRACTOR”) it says, “Then, too, your jovial friend and another favorite of boys and girls, GUY KIBBEE has a big part… Boy! This will sure be one swell treat!”
Looking north on Magnolia.
So, I have nothing to tell you about Knight & Wilkinson, but I can illustrate the kinds of time-eating digressions I end up in while trying to do research for my entries.
This is a driveway rather than a sidewalk, but I’ve diluted the purity of the blog long ago, and it’s a contractor stamp I haven’t featured yet, so here you go. It’s on the west side of North Fairview Avenue between Vine and Fernwood.
The curvature is due to an odd little jog in the sidewalk, as is apparent in the next photo.
Hanneman & Fineis Concrete Construction is based in DeWitt. According to their About Us page, they started when Carl Hanneman took over a concrete business from his father in 1953. Of course, that just makes me wonder when his father’s business started. If Hanneman merely took it over, then surely the business itself is even older? They can’t be dating it to when the business was incorporated because, according to the history given here, that happened in 1986. Hanneman’s obituary (from the December 15, 2007, Lansing State Journal; he was 85) just says he started his own business in 1953, with no reference to taking over his father’s business.
Looking south on Fairview toward the driveway in question.
In any case, Mark A. Fineis bought the business in 1988, renamed it Hanneman & Fineis, and is now the sole owner. I find myself admiring Fineis for continuing to carry on the name of the business’s founder over thirty years after it changed hands.
Here is an extremely worn Department of Public Works stamp from the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. It caught my eye because the date appears to be from the teens, making it among the oldest DPW stamps I have catalogued. That penultimate digit sure looks like a one, anyway, though it’s strange that I don’t see a spot for a month. As far as I have seen, they used a month stamp through at least 1924. It might be worn away, but it’s less likely given that the year is nearly centered.
The last digit is harder to read. I took it to be a nine when I saw it in person, though on closer look at the photograph it might actually be an eight.
This stamp is on the west side of North Clemens Avenue, at the intersection of Fernwood. The date is a little hard to read in the photos but I believe it is 1980.
I haven’t been able to find anything out about E. Harmon. My best lead is an obituary for Earl Harmon, Jr. of Lansing, who died in 2018 at the age of 75. It says “He was is (sic) concrete construction having started and being a partner of M & M Concrete in Charlotte.” Maybe he stamped things under his own name before forming M & M. Unfortunately, that’s all I have on this one.
I previously showed you a 1987 Don Bates stamp from out in front of the Beverly Place Apartments (which take up most of the blocks between Holmes and Clifford on the north side of Kalamazoo, across the street from Hunter Park). The same stretch of sidewalk contains this stamp from L. Ketchum. There are also a couple more of them from the same date, so possibly part of the same project, in front of the smaller Park Terrace Apartments next door to the west. The Beverly was built in 1965, and the Park Terrace in 1961. Also during the 1960s, Hunter Park was undergoing change, first getting a swimming pool and then getting some extra land as part of the morally dubious near-destruction of Stabler Park.
My best guess is that L. Ketchum is Lyle Ketchum. In the September 24, 1947 Lansing State Journal classifieds, there is this advertisement from Lyle Ketchum of Holt: “CEMENT WORK Walls, footings, floors, drives, etc.” Then I find a reference to a “Lyle Ketchum Cement Constr.” team in the Lansing State Journal‘s “Bowling Honor Roll” column of November 28, 1971. Muddying matters is that there have been multiple Lyle Ketchums in the Michigan concrete scene: I find this obituary for Lon Lyle Ketchum of Lake Odessa, which describes him as a concrete contractor, but since he died at age 63 in 2014 he could not have been the Lyle Ketchum laying concrete in 1947. That must have been his father, Lyle Ketchum Jr., 1927-1983. The family apparently continued the business in Lake Odessa until around 2013. The timing of the corporation’s dissolution in July 2013 may have had something to do with this $16,000 fine for wage and hour violations in May 2013.
Looking northeast at the apartments, with the stamp in the lower left corner.
This stamp is on the west side of Rumsey Avenue just north of Michigan, next to the Church of the Resurrection complex and amidst several E.R. Premoe stamps that have been featured before.
The date is a bit jumbled but I believe it to be 1990, due to its similarity to a 1990 Eastlund stamp that I have seen on Kalamazoo near Leslie.
I am very inclined to believe that this stamp – on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Jerome and Vine – is from the same contractor responsible for one of the blog’s early mysteries, the odd string of letters and numbers I first found on Kalamazoo Street and then later encountered versions of in a few different places. The first one looks a bit like “DAY02” but with no spacing and odd-looking characters I wasn’t sure it was a name and date or just a code of some kind. If this is the same contractor, then this is proof that is a name and date.
The case is still not settled. The first one I found had a pretty unambiguous D as the first letter. But then a later one, which otherwise bears a strong similarity to the first, is definitely a B (“BAY03”). A third one looks like it is readable either as a D or a B.
Looking north on North Clemens.
And what about this one? The style is very different from those odd mystery stamps, but the “D/BAY” and two-digit date makes it hard to resist making a connection between them. The (regrettably faint) first letter first appeared to me as a D, but on closer inspection, looks to be a B after all, and that’s what I will go with. I believe there is another one like this on Fairview, but it’s as faint or fainter. I will have to get a look at both of them at a few different times of day and see if my appraisal changes.
