This very worn Cantu & Sons stamp is located on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Clemens and Regent (pretty close to Clemens). It’s the only stamp I can find on the stretch of sidewalk in front of King World. The date is extremely hard to read in the photo, but in person it is just possible to make it out as 1988.

It’s in front of King World, which is an eccentric combination of a convenience/party store and a beauty and barber supply shop. When I first moved to town in the summer of 1999, this building was empty, but it was still easy to see that its most recent occupant had been a coin laundry. About a year later King World moved in.

The building dates from 1962. I can find advertisements for a Norge Village laundromat at that address in the 1970s, and most likely it was built originally as part of that chain, which was booming by 1962. Norge Village is famous among fans of old signs and the like for its lit-up, polka-dotted globe signs, popularly called “Norge Balls.”

It apparently remained a laundry through at least one changeover, as it appears in the December 30, 1989, Lansing State Journal new businesses listings as Kalamazoo St. Laundry. The last reference I can find to a laundry business there is in a sidebar of “Unsolved Fires of 1991” accompanying an article (“Fatal Fire Remains Unsolved”) on page 1B of the January 15, 1992, Lansing State Journal. The list includes “September 30 – Fire in laundry dryer at 1918 E. Kalamazoo” and honestly, that one really sounds like it solved itself.

Advertisements trying to sell the building (no mention of a laundry business) start showing up in 1996, and then again in 1998. Whether it was used for anything during that time period is not clear but seems doubtful. The sale to King World is recorded in the city’s online records in July 2000.