After I did a stamp in front of Mercy Ambulance, I figured I would follow up by doing one in front of the Medical Arts Building one block east, on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Ferguson and Holmes. As with Mercy Ambulance, there is something about the starkly modern building that appeals to me. In this case, the oversized caduceus on the front face, though a controversial choice, is certainly a large part of the charm.

I hadn’t realized that this building is owned by Sparrow Hospital, though I wasn’t very surprised to learn it, either. This whole area of downtown Lansing is the land of Sparrow Hospital, and it continues to spread. A clipping from the October 25, 1963, State Journal (courtesy of fellow local history enthusiast Timothy Bowman and his very useful Flickr site) has a photograph of it with a caption saying it “is expected to be completed this week.” (The city’s property records give a construction date of 1964.) The caption goes on to say “It is the largest building of its kind in the Lansing area.” In the photograph it looks just as it does now (minus some rust stains), proving the vintage of the giant caduceus, if there were any doubt. It does not appear to have been a Sparrow property at the start. I’m not sure when Sparrow acquired it.

The stamp is from BBRPCI, who have stamped quite a lot of sidewalk on this part of Michigan Avenue. I was hoping to find a stamp contemporary to the building, but no such luck. There are a few blocks of especially coarse concrete that look different from and older than most of the surrounding sidewalk, so maybe those are remnants of the original construction.