Here’s an unusual BWL (Board of Water and Light, or so I assume) variation on the west side of South Clemens Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. The rounded, almost handwritten-looking font of other BWL stamps is replaced by smaller, typewriter-like letters. There also seem to be periods this time. One thing that hasn’t changed is the unique BWL custom of stamping the name in one corner and the date in the other.
I initially thought the date was 1997, but when I got down to look at it more closely it appeared to be 1987 as the bottom loop of that third number appears to come all the way up. It’s pretty hard to tell the 8 from the 9 in this font (a recurring problem with sidewalk stamps that use nearly symmetrical rounded numbers) but I am tentatively sticking with 8. If you think I’m wrong I’d be happy to hear another opinion.
Closeup of the date. I had to scrape some dirt off to get the last number.
This is one of those curiosities that pepper this blog, quirky stamps that I can’t quite explain. It’s on the east side of Horton Avenue between Jerome and the northern dead end. It’s an old-style Department of Public Works stamp, and it appears to have a month (May) but no year.
In the early days, the DPW stamped a full date: month, day, and year. By the 1920s they switched to stamping just the month and year, and sometime between 1924 and 1927 they switched to year only. You might think that the year has just worn off, since the stamp is generally quite worn. But that is hard to believe. There isn’t any leftover impression of it at all, for one thing. Even stranger is the placement of “May,” centered below the name. In the month/year and month/day/year stamps, the month is off to the left, not centered. It really does look like they just stamped “May”!
This stamp is on the east side of Bingham Street between Michigan and Eureka. No doubt it dates from the construction of the parking garage that it’s in front of. This was once the site of Bingham Street School (or just “Bingham School” as it seems to have been called in later years). Lansing apparently named all its early elementary schools after the residential streets they bordered, hence Foster Avenue School and Allen Street School. Bingham Street School holds a small but memorable place in my own personal history, as it was my polling location from when I moved to town through 2012. Thus, although I had no other connection with it, I was sad when it got knocked down. It looked so much like my own elementary school that going inside always triggered nostalgia.
The southernmost stamp. I have seen this same stamp template used by several other contractors, as well as the most recent city Operations and Maintenance stamps.
Bingham (Street) School closed in 2012 and was sold to Sparrow Hospital, who wanted the land to expand their cancer center. The school was demolished in July 2013 and if you want to see sad photos of the vacant rooms shortly before demolition – and the rubble afterward – you can find them on the still-extant Facebook page for the school. The local neighborhood was dismayed over the loss of green space, and that leads to another story for another entry, eventually. As for my polling place, it moved across the street to the Pilgrim Congregational Church, and though they seem like nice folks, voting in a church has never felt quite right to me.
Looking north toward Michigan Avenue with the Sparrow garage on the right.
Fessler & Bowman is a bigger company than usually gets featured here. They were founded in 1963 by Don Fessler and George Bowman and originally did residential flatwork and basement walls, but have subsequently become a large commercial contractor. Their corporate headquarters are in Flushing, Michigan, but they also have regional offices in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
The next-to-southernmost stamp. There are a few more spread out along the block but as they all look the same I didn’t bother photographing them all.
This single stamp on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood is the only one I have found from this contractor so far. Although it’s from 2001, the style of the stamp resembles the style of several of the oldest stamps such as W.H. McKrill, V.D. Minnis, and yesterday’s F.H. Rounsville. Another more recent contractor who uses this style is Able. It’s an appealing look and I appreciate the retro-ness of it.
Concrete by Thompson (as that seems to be their formal name) is, or was, located on Armstrong Road in Lansing, which is on the south side in the Jolly/Pennsylvania area.
What a beautiful day it was for a walk today, and what an interesting stamp I found, on the east side of Bingham Street just north of the corner of Prospect. Actually, I had seen this one before, but always at dusk when it wasn’t worth trying to photograph something so worn. Although it was daylight this time, I still couldn’t read the name, except that it ended with “-sville.” But the date is what really got my attention: 6-08, or June 1908.
At home, I showed the photo to my husband, on my small mobile screen. We both puzzled over it for some time. The first two letters were likely two initials. We both independently arrived at the idea that the last name started with an E and that the second letter might be a Q. I tried searching for various combinations based on that and found nothing. I set the project aside for dinner.
After dinner I brought the photo up again, but this time on my laptop screen. Immediately, out of the blue, a different name emerged and I realized I was looking at “Rounsville.” It’s funny how this happens sometimes. A search confirmed it. The Annual Report of the Board of State Auditors for the State of Michigan contains several estimates from F.N. Rounsville, in September 1903, for “cement walks surrounding blocks 78 and 79.” I don’t know what blocks those are, or how blocks were numbered at the time, but I do note that it’s the earliest reference I have yet found to sidewalks in Lansing.
More searching turned up some exciting connections to names that have graced this blog before. According to James McLean and Craig A. Whitford’sLansing: City on the Grand, 1836-1939(a book that has helped me with research before), F.N. Rounsville was Fred Rounsville:
Rounsville Market, established in 1891 on the corner of Cedar and Michigan. Fred N. Rounsville operated this market for ten years until starting J. Clear Company, later to be known as Rounsville Cartage, which he operated for 45 years. He was also associated with Jacob Sleight’s Artificial Stone Company and was a director of the Duplex Truck Company.
James McLean and Craig A. Whitford, Lansing: City on the Grand, 1836-1939, p. 37.
On July 12, 1973, the Lansing State Journal ran an article describing a walking tour of what they called Old North Lansing, better known today as Old Town. Among the historic properties described is 1017 North Washington: “Most famous as the former home of Fred Rounsville, the founder of the Rounsville Dray Lines and the Lansing Artificial Stone Co., the house is noteworthy for its gables, porch and steeply pitched roof.” I have checked out the house in Google Street View and it is indeed lovely. I will have to visit it in person sometime.
J.P. Sleight has appeared in the blog twice so far, for a 1907 and 1908 stamp. I have also featured a stamp from the Lansing Artificial Stone Co., which was eventually owned by J.P. Sleight. Based on my own research, the LSJ may be mistaken about Rounsville being the founder of the Lansing Artificial Stone Co. I don’t doubt that he had an association with it (I have found a lot of connections between early sidewalk contractors) but an 1880 history of Ingham and Eaton Counties by Samuel W. Durant states that the Lansing Artificial Stone Co. was founded by C.W. Stevens.
Sadly, this sidewalk is in very bad condition, with cracks like lightning striking through it. It is in front of a large and rather unusual-looking house on the corner of Bingham and Prospect, which according to the city’s property records was built in 1909. Directly across the street is the old L.F.D. No. 4 fire station. It’s a nice corner of the neighborhood, so why not visit this stamp before it has completely crumbled away?
It turns out that the 300-600 blocks of North Clemens Avenue are a trove of contractor stamps I haven’t featured yet. I jotted down several on my last walk up that way and returned for one of them today, on the east side between Fernwood and Saginaw. It was my first walk of the year with no coat, since was in the mid-sixties outside. One house I passed had its entire front yard covered with crocus flowers, and a few bees were making the rounds. It was amazing and a bit unsettling to see this early in March.
So here is the stamp, the only one of its kind I have found so far. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to turn up any information about G.R. Montague. Nothing is showing up in old Lansing State Journals. My next approach if the stamp includes a person’s name is usually to start checking Find A Grave, but FindAGrave.com has been down all evening. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Looking north on North Clemens Avenue. The stamp is actually just below the edge of the photo.
I didn’t forget you for long, fellow Minnis & Ewer fans. Check out this stamp on the east side of Jones Street between Prospect and Kalamazoo. Notice anything about it? I mean besides what a beautifully preserved stamp it is.
Exactly! It solves the mystery of the “910” date stamp found elsewhere on Jones Street. (The area near Jones and Prospect is a rich vein of Minnis & Ewer stamps.) I wrote that I had never seen a four-digit year in a Minnis & Ewer stamp, so I couldn’t figure out why “910,” and was puzzled how the “910” were perfectly clear and there wasn’t even the trace of a “1.” But in this stamp we see both a four-digit year and a fainter “1” suggesting that it had a tendency to print lighter. Of the Minnis & Ewer stamps I have found with a legible month, this is the oldest. It appears that they phased out the four-digit year stamp between July and August 1910.
This is the most recent Cantu & Sons stamp I have found so far. Like the other 1990s one I have found, it has a handwritten date. It seems like after a certain point they decided not to bother getting new date stamps. This is on the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood.
Looking north on North Clemens with the stamp at the bottom.
Here is an extremely faded 1927 Department of Public Works stamp. The name is visible mostly by suggestion, but fortunately the date is still clear. It’s on the east side of Leslie Street between Elizabeth and the I-496 dead end.
The stamp is on the closest block. It’s facing the other way, but I liked the light in this direction. There were actually two scarves abandoned on the edge of a vacant lot to the left, for some reason.
The other day while walking past the illegible mark by the old Pagoda Restaurant, I caught it in some good light (and no longer muddy) and realized I could make out an M in the name, which when combined with the legible trailing -LAIN made me suspect McLain. So when I walked past a house with “McClain” on the front walk last night (on the east side of Marshall Street between Jerome and the Armory entrance), I made a note to return in daylight, thinking it might let me crack the Pagoda stamp.
Alas, no. While the date is difficult to read, it doesn’t look like it is probably in the right time frame to be the same company as the 1950 -LAIN stamp, nor is the typography similar. It looks like it might be 1999 (it’s certainly not 1909 even if it does look like it). I can find remnant traces of a McClain Concrete (not Cement) Construction in Lansing. There are classified ads for them appearing in the Lansing State Journal from 2006 to 2009 which give sidewalks as one of their specialties.
The stamp is at the entry to the front walk of the house above.
