This rugged and worn stamp from the north side of Larned Street between Jones and Holmes seems hopelessly illegible at first blush. A comparison with other stamps, however, reveals that it is probably a William Meister stamp from 1921.
Here is a mystery from the west side of Rumsey Avenue between Jerome and Vine, in the Eastfield neighborhood. The name is illegible but the layout looks like it might be an arch. I don’t recognize the style as matching one of the usual suspects, and it’s also placed strangely, close to vertically centered, but off on the right side of the block.
Yes, it looks like several Minnis & Ewer stamps I’ve done before, but this one is new, I promise. It’s on the east side of South Pennsylvania Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. There are a lot of Minnis and Ewer stamps with the same date (8-10) in this vicinity.
Actually, there are a pair of them, roughly on either end of a residential lot. At the moment they are copiously decorated with mulberries that have fallen from a tree that shadows the sidewalk.
It’s not clear whether this stamp on the west side of Shepard Street (south of Elizabeth, before the I-496 dead end) is a contractor’s mark or graffiti. It’s done so crudely that I’d be inclined to say graffiti, except that it reminds me of this handwritten L. Miller stamp, which I have reason to believe is a contractor’s mark. The last name is definitely Wagner. The first name is rather obscure but might be Dan or Dave.
I can’t find anything about a contractor named Wagner working in the area in the right sort of time period, so if this is a contractor’s stamp it’s a mysterious one.
This barely-visible stamp is on the east side of South Francis Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. Although it’s not much to look at, I thought I would record it because I haven’t collected many from Francis and because it’s not going to be legible much longer. It’s just possible to make it out as a T.A. Forsberg stamp from 1962, and only because I can compare it to other Forsbergs I’ve seen.
Here is a newer stamp from the city’s Operations and Maintenance Department. It’s on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Leslie and Regent. The stamp is in front of Heartdance Studio, which hosts dance and yoga classes. I still think of it as “the scuba store,” though.
That’s because when I moved to town it was ZZ Underwater World, who apparently figured that the beginning of the alphabet was too crowded in the Yellow Pages. They were the reason for the mural of dolphins on the second floor. The dolphin mural disappeared for a while around the time Heartdance moved in, but then it reappeared. Whether it was covered and then uncovered, or is on a board that got taken down and put back up again, I don’t know. However it came to be, the dolphins have been back for a long time and serve to remind me of the former occupants of the building every time I see them.
The building was constructed in 1942, making it young for this stretch of the Avenue. In the 1950s and 60s it was Bendlin’s Shoe Clinic. The proprietor, John Bendlin, also lived at this address (above the shop, I assume) with his wife. By 1978 it was home to Michigan Divers Supply. I’m not sure if ZZ Underwater World was just a renaming of this business or a new business. ZZ Underwater World closed in 2013 according to the business that bought their assets, Capital City Scuba in Old Town, but Google Street View reveals that Heartdance had already moved into this building as of June 2011.
This stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Shepard and Leslie. It’s in front of one of the various old homes, mostly American Foursquares, that have been converted to retail. This is a particularly old house – 1880, according to the city’s records. The most recent business here was Kimlan Flowers and Gifts, but it has been out of business as long as I can remember, the awning out front getting more and more tattered until finally the last remnants of the cover on it were removed. The sign offering it for sale or lease has been there at least ten years.
I have found surprisingly little about the history of the property. The earliest reference I can find to a business at the address was in the 1970s, when it was Better Properties, Inc., a real estate business. Better Properties sold it in 1995, but in the the city records, the field that should say whom it was sold to is blank. They have an undated photo of the business as ACD Computers (the predecessor of internet provider ACD.net), which I assume came between the Better Properties and Kimlan eras.
The stamp is nothing too special. There are a lot of Isabella Corp. stamps from around 2016 on this stretch of Michigan Avenue.
This is an intriguing mystery, on the west side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine. I have walked past this pair of stamps at different times of day, hoping I would find some combination of light and shadow that would make one of them legible, but I have given up. They are just too worn to give up their identity. The part I can make out, or at least I think I can, is the bottom arc: it appears to be “LANSING MICHIGAN.”
The style, typeface, and inclusion of the city and state are features characteristic of early stamps. Unfortunately, I can’t make out either the name or a date. The top arc is surely a name, and the depressed area in the center could well be a date, but there’s not enough left to have even a clue what it is. There are two stamps. The southern one has the somewhat readable bottom line, but the rest is hopeless. The northern stamp is deeper but no more readable, except that the first letter of the first line might be a K.
I’m sorry to say that this one is probably totally lost, except as a reminder of how old the sidewalks are and how many little mysteries are written on them.
Sorry, this is blatantly a placeholder (though I could rationalize it as part of an eventual project to exhaustively catalogue Regent Street, since I’m probably about halfway there at this point). The reason is that I went to Cedar Point today, my first time at an amusement park since 2019. It was a big day for me, so I hope you’ll forgive the modest entry. (By “you” I mean “my dear husband,” as I think he is the only person who reads these.)
Anyway, this is on the west side of the 400 block of Regent Street, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth.
This stamp is at the edge of the street, on the driveway belonging to Innova Salon and Day Spa, on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Allen and Shepard. L & L stamps are plentiful; I am more interested in the building this is in front of. Like several of the businesses in this stretch of Michigan, it is a big old house that has been converted into retail.
It has an impressive second floor porch, and the surprising part is that it isn’t original to the house. Google’s street view of the house taken in 2007 shows it with no porch on the second story (and thus looking like a more standard-for-the-neighborhood American Foursquare). No windows on the second story either; they apparently got covered over at some point in its retail history. The street view from 2008 shows it being renovated, with windows reappearing on the second floor and the previous first-floor storefront addition now absent. It looks much handsomer now than it did before the renovation.
I’m not sure when it went from residential to retail, but it spent a few decades as MacLaughlin’s Piano Mart (later MacLaughlin’s Piano and Organ Mart). On November 30, 1980, a Lansing State Journal ad reads, “DOUG BROWN MUSIC (formerly MacLaughlin) – serving Lansing over 30 years.” By 1997 the address was home to Print King. There really does seem to have been a time when this stretch of Michigan Avenue was the print shop district. I can think of at least four former print shops in the vicinity. A photo in the city’s property records dated March 2001 shows the Print King signage in place but a “FOR SALE” sign in the window. The 2007 Google street view shows Rapid Appliance Service here instead. Innova Salon moved in soon after.
