I encountered this stamp walking west on the south side of Vine Street between Custer and Ferguson. It was an unfamiliar one to me, so I stopped to check it out. I could make out that the second word of the name was Rite, but couldn’t figure the first word out. (It’s actually possible in the photo, I think, so maybe you can.)
Luckily, stamps usually come in pairs, presumably on either end of a run of new sidewalk, so often the second one fills in the obscurities in the first. This was one of those cases. I walked a short distance further and found this one.
Either the date or the name is upside down, and I’m going to say the name, based on the placement within the slab and the orientation relative to the eastern stamp. (Paired stamps usually face opposite to each other.)
Looking east on Vine Street. Closest to the camera is the upside-down stamp. Further east is a copy of the Lansing Community News (motto: “All the News That’s Fit to Fling”).1
I was quite surprised to discover that Bilt-Rite is still in business, on East Street in Lansing. According to their About Us page (and I do love a business Web site with an About page) they were founded in 1952 by Hugh Zweering and are currently run by his son and grandson. They seem to specialize in home construction and renovation now, which might be why I haven’t seen any more recent sidewalk stamps from them.
1Maybe I should have gone with “Democracy Dies in Plastic.”
Earlier today I told my husband that I was starting to doubt I would ever find a new “oldest” stamp. At least, I said, not as long as I keep walking in the same neighborhoods on the east side. I was beginning to think all the really interesting stamps had been mined out. That was 3 pm, this was 6:30 pm.
That’s 8-07, or August 1907.
This is on the west side of Custer Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, and may be the oldest dated stamp I’ve found. The fact that the earliest stamps usually include a month makes it possible for me to say that this is older than a previous record-holder, the October 1907 J.P. Sleight stamp on Jerome Street. I can’t know whether it is older or younger than the 1907 V.D. Minnis stamp on Regent Street because the date on that one is lost to time.
Still, while I’d have loved to see an undisputed new champion, this was my most exciting find in weeks, and it’s been right under my nose, on a street I frequently walk on. Apparently I have been in the habit of walking on the other side. I actually thought it was a V.D. Minnis stamp when I was coming toward it, since the style is quite similar.
Looking south on Custer Avenue. The stamp is on the nearest slab (only half visible, my fingers were cold and I didn’t have the patience to retake it).
At first I wasn’t able to find much about W.H. McKrill besides that he provided a testimonial for the Aladdin Company, a Bay City manufacturer of kit homes, in an advertisement in the March 1921 issue of Illustrated World magazine. Then I made a guess that W.H. might be a William, and that got me a very useful hit. The February 24, 1955, Lansing State Journal included a human interest piece: “Oldsters Vie for Honor: ‘Bill’ McKrill Beats Lewis J. Bugbee: Has Lived in Lansing 344 Days Longer.” Evidently, William McKrill turned up in the LSJ offices to complain because they had profiled Lewis J. Bugbee with the claim that he was “believed to be Lansing’s oldest son” when McKrill was older.
According to the article, William McKrill worked in the Bement factory until it closed about 1907, and then “later… entered the construction business and helped to build the first pavement on Michigan Avenue. For this he was paid $1.35 for a 10-hour day.” This initially made me think that he must be the very same W.H. McKrill, but then I became less certain. Would he really have gone straight from working at Bement to running his own paving business (and getting such an important job as paving Michigan Avenue) the same year? I wondered if William was instead a relative of W.H. and worked in the latter’s business. William’s father’s name did not begin with W, but it could have been some other relative. But I have found some evidence that W.H.’s wife was named Ida, which would indeed make W.H. the same person as the “Bill” in the above article. I know because of their grave in Mount Hope Cemetery. (William died the same year the article was published.)
One last tidbit about William, and I do know this is the same William based on the reference to his address (which I saw listed as the address of Ida in her obituary). According to the January 17, 1931, Lansing State Journal, he was arrested after having been found intoxicated while serving as a school traffic guard at the intersection of Bingham and Michigan. He must have been in a visibly bad state because the police were called by a nearby service station attendant who advised them that the crossing guard was in “no condition to take care of school traffic.” No doubt that crossing guard post served students going to Bingham Street School (the original one, not the 1950s replacement that used to be my polling place before being demolished in 2013).
This is another cryptic one. It reminds me of those “BAY03” ones that pop up here and there. The style is similar enough that I wonder if there is a connection. It’s on the east side of Clifford Street between Prospect and Eureka. Is the “80” a date or part of the contractor’s name? I don’t know how to begin figuring it out. It will likely remain a mystery.
I get quite bothered by how poorly cleared the sidewalks are in Lansing. This is after a couple of days above freezing, too. Anyway, this is facing south, and the stamp is in the second closest block to the camera.
I know, I know, it’s a plain old Cantu & Sons 1987. They’re everywhere. I can’t help it; there was a dusting of snow over almost everything and I got desperate and took something I could actually see, if barely. There is a pair of them in front of StateSide Wellness, on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Regent and Clemens. They are very worn, almost certainly due to being next to the building’s driveway.
A very, very worn stamp. This is the eastern of the two.
I’m still not quite used to the place being a marijuana dispensary, as it recently remade itself. When I moved to town, it had been Lucky’s Market, a convenience store. I thought it was nice having a shop close by my house in case I ran out of pop, though it was pretty disorderly inside, had an off-kilter selection, and took only cash. I gathered that it had a bit of a reputation on the east side. Someone in my pinball league once said to me, “You know, they used to sell little balls of steel wool there for a dime each.” My husband likes to say that it became much more reputable as a pot shop than it was as a convenience store. I will admit that it looks neater and does a better job shoveling its sidewalk.
This is the western of the pair. Sorry it’s not a better photo, but I had to take it in a hurry as I was in the way of traffic. The place was positively jumping. They have a recreational permit now too, so…
Another longtime resident told me that she remembered when it had been a fried chicken place. She said people used to like to get their fried chicken there and then eat it while doing laundry next door. (The place next door is now a convenience store – for a long time there were two of them side by side taking up that side of the block – but had been a coin laundry before I moved to town.) I looked into it, and it appears it was one of several Lansing locations of Famous Recipe Chicken (sometimes called Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken). It seems to have been that from around 1966 to 1991, so during the era of these stamps. After that, it seems to have been something called Steak 2 U for a while before becoming Lucky’s in 1994.
It’s a far less sketchy looking building now, but it sure is drab as heck, with that dark gray, corrugated siding.
The building was built in 1956. While Lucky’s was shedding its old cladding and plastic roof trim (during the transformation to StateSide Wellness) we got a chance to see the building naked. It was a surprisingly tiny pillbox of a building made of concrete block. This revealed bricked-over remnants of garage bay doors, suggesting an early existence as a service station.
Here we are on the west side of Clifford Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus. It’s a good thing I found one clear enough to take a photo; most of the neighborhood sidewalks were obscured by a light layer of snow. This one just has a really nice, aesthetic frosting. It’s a variation of Moore Trosper I haven’t photographed yet, but it was really the pretty way the snow filled the impressions that caught my eye, truth be told.
This is the third Moore Trosper variation I have catalogued. It lacks the stylish flair of this version but is very similar to this one, differing only in the absence of the hyphen.
I love the way the footprints look, tracking the thin dusting of snow around. It’s like seeing a ghostly remnant of the last hour. Anyway, the stamp is near the center of this stretch, looking north.
This one might not, scratch that, probably will not excite anyone as much as it did me. But I’ll try to explain. This DPW (Department of Public Works) stamp is on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect. It’s a little worn, but that is definitely 1927.
Why does that matter? It’s not even close to the earliest DPW stamp I’ve found, so that’s not it. No, it matters because I previously had not seen this style of stamp used with a date this early. Stamps I had collected from 1918 through the early 1940s had used a different style. I already knew there was some overlap, in that the earliest style (call it “Style A”, with a larger typeface reading “DEPARTMENT OF / PUBLIC WORKS”) can be found on stamps as late as 1942, and the style I think of as the 1940s-50s style (call it “Style B.,” with a smaller typeface reading “LANSING D.P.W.”) had previously turned up on stamps as early as 1936. This stamp pushes the earliest date for Style B backward almost another decade. As Popeye would say: “I kin not savvy.”
Looking north on Bingham. The stamp is on the nearest full slab. The nearest partial slab has a sneak preview of a Minnis & Ewer stamp that is definitely going to show up here at some point. It’s not an accident that I got the house with the nice holiday lights in this shot too.
The many species and subspecies of DPW stamps deserve a full taxonomy. Unfortunately I don’t have the time for that just now, but I am planning on doing it soon.
This one, on the south side of Kalamazoo Street between Pennsylvania and Bingham, has been on my list for ages. Back in October, I wrote about another Minnis & Ewer stamp nearby (with the same date, if I’m reading it right) and mentioned that on my way to it I passed this one and would feature it another time. There is also a third, undated one in the vicinity, which I featured in August. Assuming that one was also done around the same time as the other two – August 1910 – I photographed it during its 110th anniversary month.
I think this says “8-10,” anyway. It looks like the clearer 8-10 stamp around the corner on Pennsylvania. I never stop admiring the crispness of these very old Minnis & Ewer stamps.
I headed to a different area tonight in search of more late holiday lights and found a few good ones. One display was in front of this rare, dated O & M stamp. It’s not rare for being an O & M stamp – they’re very common in this style – but rare for being dated. The only other one I’ve found is also 2005 (and nearby).
This was mostly an excuse to show some more neighborhood cheer, so enjoy some lights. I did. (The stamp is about midway along the lot in front of this house.)
This is a frustrating one. It’s just west of the corner of Vine Street and Rumsey, on the south side of Vine. I had noticed it a few nights ago (I’ve been walking through the Rumsey/Vine/Custer area a lot lately to admire the cluster of late holiday lights there) but it was too dark for a photo. I could almost make it out, and thought in daylight it would be easy to read. I was wrong.
It’s “Herb [Something] Cont” (meaning contractor). That much is clear. Of course the most useful part for research is the part I can’t figure out. The first part looks like RIEBO, but then there is at least one more letter and I can’t make sense of it. It’s too small and the wrong shape and slant to be R (compare it with the R at the start), which is what I initially considered. I can’t see it as anything else either. Then there’s the question of whether it’s one or two letters. It looks like two distinct marks, but they’re too close together compared with the spacing of the rest of the letters. The dark mark in the midst of it is a hole (seemingly a pretty deep one, as I poked it with my finger to see if it was part of the stamp and didn’t find the bottom under the mud).
Facing northwest. Cropped out: the neighbor giving me a suspicious look. Left in: a dog who wasn’t worried about me.
Sadly, with the last name unknown I can’t tell you anything about this contractor.
This rather small stamp is on the east side of Shepard Street just south of Kalamazoo, next to the sad hulk of the former halal market. The W and Scott look strangely far apart, making me wonder if there is a missing letter and it should be Wm. Scott. Either way, I wasn’t able to find anything out about the contractor. The date isn’t visible much in the photo, but with my flashlight I determined that it is 1950-something. The last digit is completely unreadable.
Since I couldn’t find anything about W. Scott, I switched to trying to find out what business was in this building in the 1950s. I had better luck there. The building was built in 1935, but G.A. Strickland’s grocery store was at this address (401 Shepard) by 1928, according to advertising in the Lansing State Journal. Strickland’s was there at least until 1941. By 1949 it was C & S Food Market and then by 1959 it was Parr’s Market. I find the announcement of a quitting-business auction for Parr’s in November 1962.
Looking toward Kalamazoo. The stamped block is the one closest to camera.
The more recent history remains obscure. By 1989 until at least 1995 it was a Volunteers of America Thrift Store. I remember it being a halal market (apparently the Alharamain Halal Market based on city records) for as far back as I remember the neighborhood, while it was still anything at all.
