Here’s another one that looks ambiguously like either graffiti or a contractor mark. Once again I’m inclined to think it’s from the contractor since it follows the grammar of a contractor stamp, except for being freakishly large. I would have thought that the contractor would want to take more pride in their work than to mar their nice new pavement this way, but I’ve been wrong about that before. I’m not sure who or what D M is. There is currently a D & M Concrete in Michigan, but that’s probably a coincidence.

It’s on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Ferguson and Custer, out in front of the Soup Spoon Cafe, an early entrant in the east side hipster restaurant derby. When I moved to town in 1999, this rather handsome 1906 building was occupied by Bancroft Flowers and Gifts on one side and the Greenhouse Cafe on the other. I believe they were owned by the same people. Sometime in the 2000s, I forget exactly when, the Greenhouse Cafe closed and the Soup Spoon moved in. In 2014, Bancroft closed and the Soup Spoon grew to occupy the entire building.

I would guess that this building was originally a grocery store. I can’t seem to figure out who the original occupant was, but by 1928 it was the Howard Long grocery store.