This stamp is on the south side of Prospect Street between Jones and Bingham. It is a very worn Department of Public Works stamp and though the date is illegible in this photo, I think it is 1935, based on the times I have seen it in better light.

Did you know that Lansing has a Prospect Park? Neither did I, until last year when I started walking regularly. I was looking at a route-plotting site for interesting places to walk to from home, and saw a sliver of land labeled as “Prospect Park.” My brother used to live near the Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and a favorite carousel is there, so the name caught my attention.

It turns out that, online maps aside, it might not properly be called Prospect Park after all. It’s owned by the county Land Bank rather than being under the Parks Department, and the (rather temporary-looking) sign on the site calls it “1112 Prospect Playground.” To me, it will remain Prospect Park. It takes up a city lot, and so it is narrow and deep. The main features are at the front: an evergreen tree with a small garden around it, and a set of playground equipment. The back half is just grass until you get to a couple of small garden beds in the back corners.

Although I have a strange fondness for this little pretender, I have to tell you that it is built on a tragedy. The residents of the house that previously stood here – a young engaged couple – were killed in a double homicide, at home, in 2008. Their heirs did not, or could not, keep up with the taxes on the house and it ended up in the hands of Ingham County. It sat derelict in the Land Bank for a while until, in 2015, Sparrow partnered with the Land Bank to demolish the house and create the playground. Sparrow’s involvement in this is due to the fact that residents were unhappy when Sparrow bought Bingham School and razed it to build a parking structure, as I have written about before. They lost a place for neighborhood kids to play. Prospect Park is supposed to rectify that.

The side of the big tree facing away from the street has a cryptic memorial to the murder victims: a cross with two sets of initials. The house they lived in was built in 1890 and was staid but handsome, with oddly symmetrical front porches on either corner. A few signs of the former residence can still be seen: some old, twisted fencing at the back, a driveway apron, a bit of rope that has grown into a tree.