This neighborhood, down near the railroad tracks and I-496, is a short walk from my house, but I haven’t explored it thoroughly yet. I will probably correct that soon, since I’m getting a bit bored with my usual rambles. The neighborhood was developed by the Lansing Improvement Company and has many interesting old houses. Check out some old Lansing Improvement Company letterhead courtesy of the Capital Area District Library’s digital local history collection. There are some names you may recognize on there, including Edward W. Sparrow, Eugene Cooley, and one Horatio H. Larned.

This stamp is on the south side of Larned between Jones and Holmes. There is a stretch of sidewalk here, but no homes on this side of the street. Instead there is a park-like area behind which I-496 looms. I was surprised to find sidewalk here, since as I have noted, blocks or side of blocks with no houses commonly have no sidewalk. I deduced that this side of the street once had houses, and they were probably removed during the 496 project. Afterward I checked HistoricAerials.com and that confirmed my theory.

It’s surprising that the sidewalk was never removed in the intervening years, given how they have been tearing sidewalk out of the depopulated blocks of Urbandale. It doesn’t serve much purpose now. It stops suddenly before reaching any useful destination, and anyone actually trying to get somewhere on Larned will surely be walking on the other side, where the remaining houses are. For some reason they just never decided to pull it out, despite it being an orphaned vestige since the late 1960s. The most recent stamps on it are a pair of E.F. Sheets stamps from 1963. I expect they won’t bother repairing anything there again.