I don’t know what to make of this one I stumbled across on my walk tonight. It’s on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue between Michigan and Prospect, close to the corner of Prospect.
My first thought was that the “BWL” makes me think of the Board of Water and Light. Is that “d” looking character some sort of shorthand for “of”? It’s not one I recognize, but maybe. But why wouldn’t there also be a mark for “the” in that case?
I could swear I see a faint ‘9’ above the leftmost leg of the W there, but just the one digit. If I’m not fooling myself, though, that’s about the least revealing digit we could make out.
I see something there now that you say it, but I’m not confident it’s not just random noise tricking us.