I have always paid attention to sidewalk stamps, but now that I’m actively looking for them for this blog, I keep seeing ones I thought would be harder to find. For instance, I had thought finding one from the 1930s would be difficult as I could not recall ever seeing one. On my walk today I realized there was a 1930 stamp right out in front of 1704 Jerome, the house I previously wrote about. This is on the south side of Jerome between Marshall and Horton (near the corner of Marshall). I stopped to look at it first because I saw that it was another George Hagamier stamp like the one I noted on the Marshall side of the property. Then I realized that instead of another 1929 stamp as I expected, it was from 1930.
Although 1704 Jerome was built in 1929 according to the city’s property records, this leads me to wonder if it was still being worked on into 1930 (likely by George Hagamier, who was a building contractor).
This stamp is much more worn and difficult to read than the quite neat and clear stamp on the Marshall side of the property, near the house’s gigantic garage. I don’t know how to account for that. Jerome doesn’t seem likely to receive any more foot traffic than Marshall, but maybe things were different in decades past.
The funny thing is that my walk later took me past a Lansing DPW stamp on Clemens that, if I’m reading it correctly, also read 1930.