This was the first day since I started keeping this blog that I wasn’t able to take a walk in Lansing and record at least one stamp. That’s because I spent the day in Albion with family. I walked in the quite cold night to look at Christmas lights on the campus of Albion College, and decided to record a stamp from Albion as a diversion and to keep up my streak.
The first thing I noticed was how rare stamps are in Albion compared with Lansing. In Lansing there will be probably three or four in front of every city lot. In Albion, I walked almost the entire length of the east side of Darrow Street without finding a single one. I presume that means Albion does not have an ordinance mandating them. I finally found this one alongside the very set-back house on East Erie Street, at the northern extent of Darrow. Unfortunately, at least under camera flash, it is illegible.
The less legible stamp, on the northern end of the east side of Darrow Street.
Fortunately, I turned the corner onto Erie and there was a similar one, probably the other half of a pair, that was readable enough. The date is a little questionable but I will stand by 1988. The company, Miller’s Cement in Jackson, is one I have not seen in Lansing, and no longer seems to be in business.
This stamp is on the curb cut leading from Jerome Street across Marshall, on the northwest corner of the intersection. The date is a little unclear but I believe it is 1981. I can find a record for Ayala’s Concrete and Excavating at OpenCorporates, according to which it was located on Bedford Road in Lansing. It was incorporated in 1979 and dissolved in 1992.
I took a photo for you diagonally across the intersection so you could get a glimpse of the Christmas lights on the mansion on Jerome I have mentioned before.
This one is on the east side of Custer Avenue, alongside the house on the corner that faces Jerome. BWL stamps usually have BWL in the lower left corner and the year in the lower right. Someone got creative this time. The two stamps are on either end of the slab, facing opposite directions.
This pair of stamps from Bearstone Construction is on the east side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine, specifically in front of the Foster Community Center.
The southern stamp of the pair.
The community center contains a small library, which is where I usually have my library holds sent to, since it’s the closest one to home and easier to park at than the main library downtown. It was originally the Foster Avenue School, as the stonework over the door still proclaims. Lansing seems to have named a lot of its early elementary schools after the street they were located on (see also the Allen Street School). I’m surprised no one wanted to be an elementary school’s namesake.
Foster Community Center, taken as I approached from across Foster.
Bearstone Construction, according to its Web site, is “a family owned and operated business in the Lansing area” offering concrete, landscaping, and construction services. Their mailing address actually places them in Bath.
The northern of the two stamps. It showed up quite well under the flash. The two are a fair distance apart, presumably on either end of a run of new sidewalk.Looking south on Foster from the edge of the northern stamp.
I think this might be my first truly unsigned mark. (The previous one I wrote about, in retrospect, was probably a BWL mark that I missed in the shadow.) It’s on the north side of Jerome Street between Custer and Rumsey. It appears to be handwritten, but the placement suggests a builder’s mark rather than graffiti. It’s very odd to date a sidewalk slab without signing. The other way around is fairly common.
I looked at the city’s property records to see the age of the house’s garage. I thought the sidewalk replacement might coincide with a garage being built, since the mark is in front of the driveway. I discovered that the house has no garage. Hooray! I can’t be tempted to spend an hour and a half chasing garage-related leads!
This handwritten mark is on the south side of Vine Street just east of Ferguson. My research-to-payoff ratio on this one was very low. I was ultimately unable to find a plausible Taylor Bros. for this to be, though I did find a probably unrelated welding company by that name in the 1913 Pictorial Souvenir of the Police and Fire Departments, Lansing, Michigan and then lost an hour to reading through the advertisements therein (check out the ad for Sam’s Place if you want to see something wild).
The marking is in the lower right corner.
Then I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what the deal is with the garage that this is in front of. It belongs to the house that faces Ferguson. I normally don’t spend too much time writing about private homes for fear that the residents might find it and feel gawked at (though if you live in a mansion in this neighborhood I think you have to expect it), but I usually try to find out at least a little about business addresses. The size of this garage made me think that it must surely have been a business at some point in the past. It makes no sense as a garage for a residence. It’s a three-car garage made of naked concrete block, and it’s comically disproportionate. It’s 748 square feet, and the house is only 1,071 square feet. (The house is also two storeys, so the garage has a substantially bigger foundation.) It must take up nearly the whole backyard.
I mean, come on now. What’s the deal with this, huh? (Looking west on Vine.)
The city’s property records say the garage was built in 1961 (50 years after the house) and I would guess the sidewalk marking could be from then. I went to the real estate cards from the 1950s and 60s that the library has scanned in their online local history collection, hoping that it would mention something about the garage. Instead it says that there is a one car garage. The card is undated, but handwritten over the top (as they did on these old cards) is “Sold 2-8-61.” The new owner must have built the garage.
I can’t find any evidence that the garage was connected with a business. Perhaps the new owner was a car enthusiast. A three-car garage is nearly unheard of in this part of town. (I’ve already mentioned another house that has one, but that house is four times the square footage of this one.)
I did find one business that has used that address, but more recently. The November 11, 2002, Lansing State Journal has a new business listing for “Gramma Bea’s,” giving the address of the house on Ferguson. I would be surprised if that street had non-residential zoning, so it may only have been an office address. I don’t remember it at all, but apparently there was once a Gramma Bea’s Deli in East Lansing, and its owner was a past owner of the Ferguson house (and the same person who filed the new business listing). Gramma Bea’s won the annual Lansing Lugnuts chili cook off with a vegetarian chili in 2001. On June 26, 2002, the Lansing State Journal reported on its 2002 “Best of the Best” awards. Gramma Bea’s had come in third in the vegetarian food category, but the notation “(closed)” appeared by its name. I don’t know what the new business listing in November 2002 was for, but I find that in 2004 a “Gramma Bea’s Properties LLC” was incorporated in Laingsburg by the same person who had owned the restaurant.
What was I supposed to be writing about, again?
None of this really tells me about the garage or about the Taylor Bros., but I wasted my time learning all of that, so the least you can do is waste your time reading all of it.
I found this Paul Wright stamp on the east side of North Magnolia Avenue, a short distance north of Michigan. It’s only just occurred to me to observe that most contractors (based on my experience) put the date below their name, but some put the date above, as in this case.
Mr. Wright must have been at it a while, as in the April 16, 1971, Lansing State Journal classifieds, I find this advertisement: “CEMENT WORK From 6 cents a sq. ft Driveways, patios, sidewalks, etc. Ph Paul Wright, 663-4185. Free estimates.” Earlier references are uncertain. I see various advertisements from 1948 (e.g. November 29) for a Paul Wright offering to haul away rubbish and ashes, and “also trucking.” In an advertisement of December 10, 1954, close to the date of this stamp, I find Paul Wright still engaged in trucking: “PAUL WRIGHT TRUCKING Located directly north of Bancroft park on David St. Call 27123.” I am not sure whether the Paul Wright of the trucking business is the same as the cement contractor.
Looking south on North Magnolia, with Michigan in view.
Today we had our first significant snow of the season, and I suddenly realized how much harder this blog is about to get. I have been holding myself to a rule that each photo has to be taken the day of posting. I know that will have to get interrupted eventually, but it’s been such a long streak of daily updates (since day one!) that I won’t let it go easily. I set out for my walk today and immediately went to the first patch of sidewalk that was clear of snow, photographed a stamp there, and continued on my way.
The flash makes the snow-filled letters stand out in a neat way, though the date isn’t as visible.
Only when I got home did I realize that I had already photographed that stamp less than a month ago. So I threw my coat and boots back on and proceeded to walk down the sidewalk, periodically stopping and using the side of my boot to scrub snow from the ends of sidewalk slabs in well-lit spots. Fortunately it did not take too long before I found something recognizable enough, this classic Department of Public Works stamp, on the east side of Regent Street’s 500 block, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. I could make it visible enough with my boot, but I could not read the date that way. I was forced to bend down and run my index finger in the depressions to reveal it.
The date is a bit easier to read without the flash.
So, crisis averted: I have one more day of rigorously daily updates. How long I can keep that up into winter remains to be seen.
Looking south on Regent Street. You can see how I was trying to expose the ends of slabs, where the stamps usually are.
I noticed this one (on the west side of Horton Street, north of Jerome) during waning light on my walk this evening and made the mistake of assuming that because it was so worn it must be old and interesting. It was totally illegible to me then, but I hoped I would be able to see something in the photo. Studying it afterward I could make out a date, 1944, but not the contractor’s name.
Then I remembered something. There are a lot of 1944 DPW stamps on Horton Street. I compared this one with a previous photograph and the numbers matched exactly. It’s not definite, but I will tentatively call this a Lansing DPW stamp. So it’s only old-ish, and not very interesting (or at least not unusual).
This one is on the west side of Kipling Boulevard between Michigan and Vine. Not sure why Kipling gets to be a boulevard. Looks like a regular old street to me.
It’s another one of those cryptic stamps, made famous in a couple of past entries. Now, though, I think the first letter is a B rather than the D that I thought I saw before. That doesn’t get me any closer to figuring this one out, though.
