Good news! The wait is over and I am finally featuring the Minnis & Ewer stamp on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect that I teased back in January. You know, the one adjacent to the surprising-to-me 1927 DPW stamp. There’s nothing unusual about it, aside from being over 110 years old, but I will never pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp.
The month is illegible, though with the snow brushed out it looks like a 6 or 8.
Looking south on Bingham. The stamp is near the center of the photo, with the previously featured DPW stamp just this side of it
I took the establishing photo from further away than usual because I had to record something odd and a little funny. There is about a foot of completely uncleared sidewalk around the border between two houses, with cleared stretches on either side. I can understand there being a dispute about where the boundary is, but whoever cleared theirs second was being petty even by my standards. I want to know what history has led to this point.
I walked a bit around the neighborhood west of Hunter Park, and fortunately got a stamp photographed before the heavy snow started in the second half of my walk. I haven’t surveyed this neighborhood for sidewalk stamps very much yet, so I was delighted to find a Minnis & Ewer stamp I haven’t recorded yet, on the north side of Hickory Street between Pennsylvania and Jones.
The western stamp.
Most Minnis & Ewer stamps are very clear and crisp. This is the most faded one I’ve encountered. It’s not entirely legible, and I could recognize it mainly by shape. I could not read the month, but at least I could make out the 11 for the year.
Looking east on Hickory. This is quite close to the Pennsylvania intersection.
There is a second one, even more worn, in front of the next house to the east, which might be the other half of a pair. Supporting this is that it faces in the opposite direction. I haven’t observed any obviously paired Minnis & Ewer stamps before, but it might just reflect how many of them have been lost over the years.
This one, on the south side of Kalamazoo Street between Pennsylvania and Bingham, has been on my list for ages. Back in October, I wrote about another Minnis & Ewer stamp nearby (with the same date, if I’m reading it right) and mentioned that on my way to it I passed this one and would feature it another time. There is also a third, undated one in the vicinity, which I featured in August. Assuming that one was also done around the same time as the other two – August 1910 – I photographed it during its 110th anniversary month.
I think this says “8-10,” anyway. It looks like the clearer 8-10 stamp around the corner on Pennsylvania. I never stop admiring the crispness of these very old Minnis & Ewer stamps.
After my recent embarrassment at having a commenter point out that the “undated” Minnis & Ewer curb walk actually has a (faint) date, I resolved to take a closer look at other Minnis & Ewer stamps. On my walk tonight I passed one I had previously blogged about on Kalamazoo. I took a closer look and I am still confident it is undated (or at least that the date is completely worn off). But a short way further on I saw another one that did have a date, worn but readable. So much for my previous claim that “all the ones I’ve seen are undated” – apparently I was not looking hard enough. I was going to use that one for tonight’s entry, but something unexpected happened. I turned the corner northward on Pennsylvania and found another Minnis & Ewer stamp, this one with a very clear date. So that one will be tonight’s entry. (I’ll probably feature the other one another time.)
That date, August 1910, makes this the oldest dated Minnis & Ewer that I have found so far. It is on the east side of South Pennsylvania Avenue between Kalamazoo and Prospect.
Looking south on Penn toward Kalamazoo. The stamp is on the closest slab in this photo.
It seems I generalized too quickly about Minnis & Ewer leaving stamps undated. This is a beautifully preserved stamp for being 110 years old and the slab is in good shape too.
Joseph pointed out, in a comment on my recent allegedly undated Minnis & Ewer “curb walk,” that it was not undated. The date was just very faint, surprisingly so in contrast to the very deep impression of the name. I made a point to walk past it again today during the late-afternoon sun that does such a good job bringing out previously illegible marks and it was very clearly dated “6-11”, June 1911.
I am led to wonder whether all the “undated” Minnis & Ewer stamps I have seen around town were originally dated and I either overlooked the date for being so much fainter than the name, or else it has just worn off for the same reason. I will have to revisit some of them and see what I can see.
Meanwhile, I was wrong to say this was the only “curb walk” on the street. There is another one almost but not quite across the street from it. I will cover that one in a future update.
This is a first for the blog, but one that I have been planning on dropping in eventually. This neat and clear Minnis & Ewer stamp looks like it could have been left there last week, but it could very well be over 100 years old, based on the age of the only dated Minnis & Ewer stamp I have found (1911). That in itself makes it interesting, but the real reason I am posting it is because it represents something I find curious and don’t yet understand, the existence of bits of pavement leading from the sidewalk to the curb. This one is on the 200 block of Regent Street, between Michigan and Kalamazoo, on the east side of the street.
I grew up calling the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb “the extension” as that was what my parents called it. I still use it, but have come to realize no one else around me does. Google has let me know that this is because it is not just specific to Michigan but pretty well localized to Ann Arbor, where I grew up. It appears in the city code of a few towns in Michigan but only Ann Arborites actually seem to use it in conversation.
I don’t know what to call these bits of sidewalk that appear on extensions erratically around my neighborhood. I have used the keyword “curb walk” just so I can find this entry again later, but that’s something I just made up as a placeholder until I come up with something better.
I originally thought, when I saw a bit of pavement like this, that the owner must have had it installed so they had somewhere to set out their trash bin for collection without messing up the grass. On consideration this does not seem to entirely explain it, both because of how old this one likely is (though perhaps contemporary to the old house it’s in front of) and because on some streets they appear at regular intervals as though they were considered a functional part of the sidewalk when it was constructed. This is not one of those places and I believe this is the only one on the block. I rather wish I had one, especially if it had a cool old stamp like this. I would set a planter on it (but not on the stamp).
Update 10/11/20: Joseph has pointed out that there is a date on this one. I revisited it with better light and was able to see that it is dated “6-11” – June 1911.
Here’s an old DPW stamp, on the north side of Eureka Street between Lathrop and Clifford, and for a change I can read the month on it: May.
Figuring out when they quit stamping a month with the year will be interesting. It looks like they had already quit stamping the exact date, which they did at least through most of 1918.
Earlier today I was talking to my mom on the phone and mentioned my frustration that Minnis & Ewer didn’t date their stamps (and neither did V. D. Minnis on his own). I knew they were likely older stamps, as Minnis sadly died young in 1919, but I would have liked to know how old. Well, tonight on my walk…
(Sorry again for having to take this with a flash. It’s quite a bit clearer in person. You can even make it out pretty well in Google Street View!)
I found this slab on the west side of Custer, between Jerome and Vine (just north of the intersection with Jerome). As with other Minnis & Ewer work, both the slab and the stamp are in fine condition. The year is clearly “11.” Amusingly, the first half-formed thought that crossed my mind was “that can’t possibly be right” followed by “oh… nineteen eleven.” The only trouble is that what I presume to be the month is illegible. It is something rounded on both sides, a single digit. It is so worn in the center that there is no telling what. My immediate impression was 9, but I suspect some psychological bias in that. It could be 6 or 8.
As often happens with my best finds, I had already taken a picture I intended to use for today’s entry when I saw this. Because of that I almost didn’t pay attention to it. It was on the street I was passing rather than in my direction of travel, and I glanced at it, thinking, “Oh, another Minnis & Ewer stamp; if only it were dated.” But for some reason I gave it a second glance and saw something was stamped below the logo, and I stopped short, and saw that it was a date.
This raises some interesting questions. Did Minnis & Ewer start out dating stamps, then abandon that practice? Or was it the other way around? If I knew which it was, this could have some bearing on resolving the question of whether V.D. Minnis was on his own before or after working with Ewer, because Minnis’s company didn’t date stamps either.
Well, now, look what I found on the south side of Prospect between Magnolia and Fairview – close to the corner of Prospect and Magnolia. Remember this 1918 Department of Public Works stamp from N. Fairview? I was pretty sure it said 1918, anyway, though it was very worn. I feel even more confident in that judgment now, since I have found another 1918 DPW stamp.
This one is much clearer, but the previous one gets to retain its place as the oldest I’ve found so far, since it was dated August. Still, finding another 1918 mark so soon does give me hope that I have older ones yet to find. It’s interesting that they marked not just the month but even the day. Almost all the other dated stamps I have found have only the year.
Comparing this one with the August slab yields another interesting observation. This one has month/date/year, in that order. The other had year/month/[something illegible]. I also notice the crookedness of the year. I am led to the conclusion that the month and year stamps were separate from the name stamp, and that the two workers chose to stamp them in different orders. (I am not sure if the date is a stamp or hand written; it looks disproportionately large.)
This slab is in much better condition than the Fairview one, not cracked or unduly worn. I would expect it to last decades yet to come.
Today found me walking up Fairview to find the 1924 marking my husband directed me to. I did find it – actually, there are a few – but by the time I did, I had already found something else I wanted to share today. I’ll get back to the 1924 slabs another time.
A sunny morning on N. Fairview Avenue. Why do the streets east of Clemens get to be Avenues instead of Streets? It sounds much grander, doesn’t it?
I found this on the east side of Fairview between Vine and Fernwood. It’s easy enough to read “Department of Public Works” but the line underneath is nearly worn out and obscured by plant growth. Still, that year…
It reads to me as 1918. I stopped and felt it with my fingers (I wonder if any of the neighbors were watching) and this seemed to confirm it. I can’t be sure because of how worn it is but I’m not sure I see a plausible alternate interpretation either. The rest of the bottom line is largely illegible due to the plants, which were growing through the pavement. At the time, in the sunlight, I couldn’t make anything out of it at all, but my photograph seems to reveal that the next word might be August. If I’m right, I happened to stumble upon something from another August and another pandemic.
