This pair of stamps is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Fairview and Magnolia. It’s hard to read the date in one of them, but the other is quite clear and I am going to assume they were done together.

The stamps are in front of the closed Hotwater Works building, until recently a neighborhood staple. It was, somehow, both a hot tub retailer and a jam space for local musicians. The side facing the now-vacant lot was painted with a couple of different murals over the years, the first one depicting a fairy with the command “RELAX” and the second one featuring a group of Japanese macaques bathing. I never had any reason to go in there, but in a way, I just liked it being there. It seemed like an offbeat place to anchor an offbeat neighborhood. Here is a short article about the history of the business from radio station WDBM.

Sadly, they closed up in early 2020. Surprisingly, this wasn’t a COVID loss: they were having their liquidation sale already in February. I suspect the beginning of the end actually came in 2017 when the original owner, James McFarland, died. I note from city records that the property was sold by McFarland’s estate in January 2020 to “McFarland Sisters Enter L L C.” I imagine that the hot tub business wasn’t what it once was, and the family decided the real estate was more valuable.

As for the history of the property, it was built in 1947 as Bagger Trailer Sales, and was sold to George H. Rowley in 1952 to become an auto agency. It spent a while as a B.F. Goodrich tire shop in the 1970s, and then in the 1980s and 90s was Delphi Stained Glass. Hotwater Works moved in around 1997.