This 1941 Department of Public Works stamp is decades older than the building that currently occupies the address. It’s on the south side of East Michigan Avenue, just west of the intersection of Francis and Michigan. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to readily locate information about what was at that address prior to the current building’s construction in 1970. Given what I’ve come to learn about Eastmost, it was probably a car lot. In decades past, it seems that this was the car dealer district.
I have a sentimental attachment to this building because it used to be Fish & Chips, a former Arthur Treacher’s that decided to keep going after the chain pulled out. It still had the old IN and OUT signs, the big lantern, and some of the menu boards. Just the name “Arthur Treacher’s” had been removed from the signage. I loved their fries and hush puppies.
Looking west on Michigan Avenue. The stamp is at the lower center.
Fish & Chips finally closed up shop in 2018, lasting about ten years past the point when I kept thinking it would surely close anytime now (but then thought maybe it never would). For a short while afterward it was Lee Lee’s Coney Island, and now is Amanecer Mexicano. I haven’t tried it, though I hear it is good. I just can’t get past wishing it was still what it used to be, and missing those hush puppies every time I walk by.
Looking southeast. This is the opposite end of the building from the stamp.
This is a first for this blog: this stamp is not within the city limits of Lansing. It is just barely inside the convoluted borders of Lansing Charter Township. More specifically, it is on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between the two US-127 overpasses, just east of Feldman Chevrolet. S & N Contractors stamps are present at intervals all the way under both overpasses. There must have been a big overpass construction project in 2000. I have a very vague memory of the freeway being closed for a stretch when I was new in town, so that lines up.
I believe that S & N Contractors is most likely the one that was once located on Lansing Road, with a Charlotte address but located closer to Dimondale. OpenCorporates gives their dissolution date as 2005. I notice that the State of Michigan Department of Transportation’s materials source guide dated March 2014 lists them as an approved supplier. I don’t know whether or not that means they were still around in some form by then. In any case, they no longer seem to be in business.
This BBRPCI stamp is on the west side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine. There are lots and lots of these around the East Michigan Avenue corridor, many from the 1980s.
Yeah, yeah, I know. They can’t all be exciting. I was working late today and didn’t have time to seek out something novel (and well-lit after sunset) on my walk.
Looking south on Foster. The stamp is at the very bottom of this picture.
This B.F. Churchill stamp is on the west side of the 200 block of Shepard Street, between Kalamazoo and Stanley Court. I have become convinced that both the Churchill stamps I have found are dated 1908 even though, as noted in my entry on the one on Regent Street, this doesn’t seem to make sense of the personal history of Churchill as I understand it. Both have a month as well as a year, something that seems more typical of the earliest stamps I have found. The “AP” of “APRIL” is very faint; I couldn’t see it in person, but with the contrast turned up a bit in this photo I can just make it out.
I’m hoping I may still find more B.F. Churchill stamps to give a greater sample of years.
Looking north on Shepard with the stamp visible in the closest block.
These two stamps are located on the east side of North Foster Avenue just north of Michigan Avenue, beside The Tattoo Shop (which is on the corner of Foster and Michigan). They are several slabs apart, facing in opposite directions.
This is the southern stamp.
There are several B Traverse stamps on this block, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything about B Traverse. I have found one classified advertisement from them in the October 1, 1961, Lansing State Journal, offering cement work. But my knowledge of B Traverse ends there.
This is the northern stamp.
When I first started this blog, one of my early curiosities was how they decided which direction to face the stamps. Since then I have noticed a pattern wherein if there are two stamps from the same contractor in the vicinity, they will be facing in opposite directions. I have come to realize that they probably mark the beginning and end of a stretch of pavement installed at the same time.
Looking south toward East Michigan Avenue, The stamp pictured above is a bit below and to the right of center in this photo. The brick building on the left is The Tattoo Shop.
I don’t know what to make of this one I stumbled across on my walk tonight. It’s on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue between Michigan and Prospect, close to the corner of Prospect.
My first thought was that the “BWL” makes me think of the Board of Water and Light. Is that “d” looking character some sort of shorthand for “of”? It’s not one I recognize, but maybe. But why wouldn’t there also be a mark for “the” in that case?
Looking south on Magnolia. The stamp is on the closest (full) block.
This old-looking, diamond-shaped marking is on the west side of the 100 block of North Foster Avenue, between Michigan and Vine. I have taken notice of it several times and finally decided to feature it.
I don’t know for sure what the word in the middle is. There was once a George Leavens in the concrete business in Lansing; that much I know for sure, and most probably this was he. So the third word isn’t part of his name but rather the name of his company or line of work. My guess is “MAKER.”
Sadly there is no date either. George Leavens was in the concrete business by 1922. I know that from the October 23, 1922 issue of American Builder, in particular an article titled “Truck-Mounted Concrete Mixer Saves Time and Labor for Contractor.” Leavens had apparently figured out a novel method for pouring concrete from a moving truck. I notice that they reference his knowledge of gasoline engines as helping him determine the optimal horsepower for the mixer. The September 14, 1933, issue of the Ingham County News includes a legal notice of the dissolution of the Lansing Cast Stone Block Company, naming George Leavens as one of the directors.Concrete sidewalks used to sometimes be called “artificial stone” so that is probably still part of his career in the concrete business.
Looking south on Foster.
Some helpful person (probably a family member) has shared their research into Leavens’s life at FindAGrave.com. He was born in Cambridgeshire, England, in 1888 and moved to Lansing in 1906. He had a surprisingly varied career according to census records. In 1910 he was an iron foundry worker in Lansing, then in 1920 he was an auto factory worker in Dewitt (there’s the source of his knowledge of gasoline engines). In 1930 he is back in Lansing as a manager at a concrete block company (that would presumably be the Lansing Cast Stone Block Company) and then in 1940 (the year he died) he and his wife were owners of a grocery store in Lansing. An interesting thing to note is that he and his wife, Ellen, had a great disparity in age, and not in the more usual direction; he was born in 1888 and she in 1866. Yet they had three children, two daughters and a son. Their first daughter was born in 1910, which is at least plausible for a biological child for Ellen, and I don’t know when their second daughter was born, but their son was born in 1923. I was puzzling over the dates here and mentioned it to my husband. He said, “They didn’t have a son. They had a relative who got embarrassed.”
I have also found George Leavens at PoliticalGraveyard.com, or at least I assume so. He ran for township supervisor of Lansing Township as a Republican in 1939, losing out in the primary. (The Democrat had no primary opponent.) This spurred me to check whether there is even a contested primary for township supervisor in Lansing anymore. I learned that in the most recent primaries, no one ran as an Republican. One person ran in the primaries as a Democrat, receiving all but one vote. (That one vote was a write-in.) Apparently the Lansing Township supervisor elections were a little more exciting in the 1930s.
I have been mulling over the idea of starting a new blog feature called the Hall of Shame, documenting sidewalks which were clearly installed relatively recently without any identifying stamp. With that in mind, I stopped to observe this patch of new-looking sidewalk on the northwest corner of North Foster Avenue and East Michigan. (Whether you consider this to be on Foster or Michigan is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation.)
Looking southeast from the corner of Foster and Michigan.
Upon looking at it more closely, I spotted something. What’s this?
I had to walk late again tonight between work and a rain shower that took up my last hour of daylight time, so it’s lucky that I ran across a well-lit stamp I haven’t done yet. This one is on the west side of Leslie Street, north of Kalamazoo and just south of Stanley Court. (“Stanley who?”) Stanley Court is a narrow, one-block street between Leslie and Shepard which avoids being one of the nameless alleys that thread through many neighborhood blocks merely because a half dozen houses do actually face it. It’s kind of an oddity since it is almost, but not quite, level with Eureka Street, which starts a couple of blocks further west.
I like how it appears to have a bolt of lightning through it.
Anyway, back to the stamp. I can find two Maxwell Const[ruction] companies in Michigan, one in Detroit and one in Lennon. I know the small town of Lennon in part because there is a delightful concrete statuary business there called Krupp’s Novelty Shop, and I bought the rabbit statue in my front garden there. Maxwell of Lennon has no Web presence, but according to Angie’s List they were founded in 2005, so that would rule them out. Maxwell of Detroit has a slick Web site and from that I learn they were founded in 2012. I suppose whatever Maxwell Construction this was, they are no longer in business.
Looking south on Leslie. The stamp is in front of a handsome American foursquare home with an interesting raised garden bed around the porch.
Here is a nice, neat one from Clark Foundation, dated this time.
Notice that the date stamp appears to be made of separate stamps lined up.
This one is on the curb cut on the southwest corner of East Michigan Avenue and South Hayford Avenue, leading across Hayford. It’s in front of another big new Gillespie building that takes up the whole block. All the sidewalk around it looks new, and has Clark Foundation stamps in several places.
Looking west on Michigan.
This corner used to have a 1925 Pulver Bros. service station, in use more recently as the Greater Lansing Ballet and Academy of Dance Arts; and before that, the Delphi stained glass supplier. Now it’s got a big, bland, hulk of a building called (I have just learned this) “Provident Place.” At least the sidewalk is nice.
