This “second style” Department of Public Works stamp is on the north side of East Saginaw Street between Maryland and Marshall (closer to Maryland), in front of Marshall Park. My husband and I walked to the park tonight because I heard that the city fireworks can be seen from there (pretty well, it turns out).
Here is a curiously unsigned date stamp from the north side of Prospect between Bingham and Pennsylvania. Most of the 1940s stamps I find are from the Department of Public Works, so I am inclined to suspect their hand in this. If so, I am sorry they didn’t complete the marking, as I have no 1949 DPW stamps recorded, and I am trying to figure out when they switched to stamping DPS instead. The latest 1940s stamp I have found is a 1945 which probably says DPW but that part is worn enough to be unclear. The next prior one I have is a clear 1944 DPW stamp. After that it skips to 1950, at which time they were now identifying themselves as the Lansing DPS.
This “Type 2” DPW stamp is on the south side of Eureka Street just west of Pennsylvania. It’s in front of a really handsome 1906 Dutch Colonial house.
This stamp is on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Michigan and Vine. I can find references to Mr. and Mrs. Oren Morse, mostly in the society pages, in the (Lansing) State Journal around this time period, but nothing much of interest.
On November 6, 1956, Oren Morse advertised in the classifieds seeking to sell “Purebred Holstein, cows and heifers. Will sell herd or separate.” What is with the overlap between sidewalk contractors and cow breeders?
This stamp is on a driveway apron on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. The last name is clearly Jones, but I am not entirely confident about what precedes that. It looks like “T.Q.” or at least “something Q” or maybe “something O.”
Unfortunately, with such a common name it is usually very difficult to figure out anything about the contractor, and this is not an exception. I haven’t been able to find anything about a cement contractor named Jones operating in that time period.
Update 3/14/22: I saw this in better light the other day and I am now pretty sure it’s T.D. Jones. Still no luck figuring out who that is.
This isn’t a sidewalk or even a driveway. It’s a concrete pad on the Prospect Street side of the old L.F.D. No. 4 fire station (now home to the Davies Project). The building faces Bingham Street at the northwest corner of Bingham and Prospect.
It appears that at some point the concrete was covered with a layer of asphalt that has mostly worn away, letting the old stamp resurface. I like how it looks. 1942 is an especially common year for DPW stamps in the neighborhood, usually using the “old style” (1910s- early 1940s) stamp.
A driveway apron on the north side of Jerome between Ferguson and Custer caught my eye. It is relatively uncommon to have stamps at all on the driveway, but this one had four! The two pictured stamps are set diagonally on either corner, facing the sidewalk.
At first I was going to joke that they must have been especially proud of their work to stamp it twice, but then I realized the likely reason. There are actually two contiguous driveways here that share one big curb cut, as is common in the neighborhood. The double corner stamps are probably signaling “we did this side; the other side is some other contractor’s problem.” The other side has a single 1987 BWL stamp on it.
There are also upper and lower blocks making up each of the two sides. The DPW stamps are on the upper block, next to the sidewalk. The L & L stamp is on the lower block, next to the road.
I took my walk at Hawk Island Park today, so there wasn’t any sidewalk for me to photograph. After leaving I thought I’d try ducking into a neighborhood I haven’t covered at all yet, and ended up driving into the Sycamore Park subdivision and parking somewhere more or less at random.
I discovered this pleasant subdivision for the first time shortly after the New Year, when my husband and I decided to drive around viewing lights for a final Christmas activity. We discovered a real wealth of lights here, and were amused by how the street names (Lindbergh, Pershing, Harding) suggested a 1920s origin, though were puzzled by seeing a lot of houses looking to be from the 50s. It must have been developed in phases, probably interrupted by the War.
Sycamore Park subdivision resulted from Col. Fred E. Shubel developing a piece of land he owned called Sycamore Farm. According to an advertisement in the July 20, 1929, Lansing State Journal, Lindbergh Drive had been established and graveled, and selection of lots by the interested would begin taking place in a few weeks. Shubel is quoted as saying, “I think it was Ex-President Harding who stressed the ideal of owning a little piece of the United States of America.” I guess he really liked Harding.
I walked a little way along Pershing Drive and was frustrated to find nothing but a lot of BBRPCI stamps from 1990. Then I walked along Shubel and found a handful of frustratingly worn stamps. I could tell they were contractors I don’t recognize, but they weren’t legible beyond a few letters here and there. It seemed as though the older sidewalk stamps were all extremely worn and faded. I almost gave up and chose an unreadable one, but then suddenly this one appeared, on the east side of Shubel Avenue between Parkdale and Pershing.
I read it at the time as “R. Boyer,” but upon looking at it more carefully via the camera’s eye, I think the second name is Royer. Unfortunately I can’t find anything about the contractor. I can find that there was a Royer family in Lansing at the time, but they were in the oil business.
The neat little house this is in front of was built in 1949, so this is probably the original sidewalk.
Back to familiar territory: here is a Department of Public Works stamp on the west side of the 400 block of Regent Street, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. I believe it is dated 1942, like another nearby DPW stamp, though the 4 is hard to make out.
I noticed this one (on the west side of Horton Street, north of Jerome) during waning light on my walk this evening and made the mistake of assuming that because it was so worn it must be old and interesting. It was totally illegible to me then, but I hoped I would be able to see something in the photo. Studying it afterward I could make out a date, 1944, but not the contractor’s name.
Then I remembered something. There are a lot of 1944 DPW stamps on Horton Street. I compared this one with a previous photograph and the numbers matched exactly. It’s not definite, but I will tentatively call this a Lansing DPW stamp. So it’s only old-ish, and not very interesting (or at least not unusual).