This pair of stamps is in front of the building that houses The People’s Kitchen on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Charles and Detroit. I previously covered a Hanneman stamp near these. The east side of the building is occupied by The People’s Kitchen; the west side currently houses JWR Health Services.
This stamp represents an Eastlund Concrete variation I had not yet recorded. Among the several stamps they have used, it’s the only one that gives their city. It’s on a bit of walk between the sidewalk and the street – what I have taken to calling a “curb walk” since I don’t know the real name for it – on the north side of Prospect Street between Bingham and Jones.
The walk – which has seen better days – is unusually long for the breed. This is because of something interesting I have observed in the Prospect Place neighborhood, though I don’t know the significance of it: the sidewalks are inset quite a bit further from the road compared with other east side neighborhoods. This gives the lawns much bigger than usual “extensions.”
“Extension,” I must explain, is the name I have always used for the grass strip between the sidewalk and the street. That’s what my parents called it, so that’s what I called it, and still do. Eventually, though, I noticed that other people didn’t call it that. I’ve heard it called all kinds of things by people from different regions, but seemingly never “the extension.” I began to wonder if it was idiosyncratic to my family, until I discovered the Wikipedia article on (as they call them) road verges. The article contains a list of some examples of regional names for road verges, and among them is “extension lawn,” claimed to be specific to Ann Arbor, Michigan (citation needed). I grew up in Ann Arbor. That said, I never heard “extension lawn,” just plain “extension.” I did a bit more poking around and discovered that Ann Arbor’s municipal code in fact uses the name “lawn extension” (not “extension lawn,” Wikipedia) for it. One thing I do remember from my youth in Ann Arbor is that the extension is a frequent cause of fights between the city and homeowners over whether anything can be planted there besides grass.
Lansing’s municipal code has its own name for this piece of land: “parkway.” I don’t think I have ever heard a Lansingite use that in conversation. I think the most common name for it here is “the-right-of-way,” which is correct but not specific: as the terms are used in the city code, the parkway as a right-of-way, but not all right-of-ways are parkways. The code also makes clear that “No plant, shrub or tree shall be planted or allowed to grow in the right-of-way unless authorized by the Director of Public Service” (1020.03, “Maintenance of Parkways”). In stark contrast to Ann Arbor, I see no evidence this rule is ever enforced. It’s nearly as common to see violation of it as compliance.
This one is in front of the vacant lot at the southwest corner of East Michigan Avenue and Charles Street, which puts it just outside the Lansing city limits in Lansing Township. It’s on the apron of one of the two driveways that used to lead into the parking lot of Theio’s diner.
Most people interested enough in Lansing to read this blog probably already know all about Theio’s, but for the sake of anyone else, it was a 24-hour diner that had been a neighborhood fixture since the 1960s. It was the only 24-hour diner in this part of town and for at least some part of my time in Lansing it might have been the only one, period. I was in there countless times, probably starting in 1999, when this stamp was still pretty new. My visits there spanned two husbands and several circles of friends. It was at its best in the earlier years, though there was an especially happy period for a few years in the 2010s when a crowd of people from the Lansing Pinball League would usually go there for conversation and hijinks after league got out.
In 2017 a new owner bought the place and it went very rapidly downhill. After a short time it was sold again, and things got even worse. The newest owner fired most of the longtime employees (and apparently forgot to get the social media passwords first, because their official Facebook page started to post angrily and entertainingly against the new ownership for a little while), the service got worse, and they started to cut back on offerings (one of the league folks tried to order a waffle and was told they had sold the waffle machine). At some point they turned around and sold it to yet another owner; Then the really unfortunate change happened: they quit being 24 hours and switched to serving breakfast and lunch only. A good chunk of their business came from the post-bar crowd and other night owls, so this was a bizarre move. Once that happened, it ended our pinball league after-parties and I never went there again. The end was very near at that point.
In March of 2018, Theio’s was condemned by the township building inspector for electrical issues. It never reopened. In October, the owner, probably encouraged by the real estate speculation that has been going on in this neighborhood, demolished the venerable restaurant and tried to put the land up for sale for something hilarious. I seem to recall it was listed for something laughably high, like $400,000, but don’t cite me on that. It’s not currently for sale as far as I can see, so it just sits there looking sad and reminding me of what I’m missing – what everyone around here is missing.
RIP Theio’s. Your coffee was as strong as a day-old kitten, but your French toast was faultless.
This stamp is on the west side of Kipling Boulevard, alongside Capital Imaging (which is located on East Michigan Avenue at Kipling). I have previously catalogued a George Hagamier stamp on the same stretch of sidewalk and written a little about the Capital Imaging building in the process.
This is the most recent example I have seen of the “1980s” style DPW stamp, and also therefore the latest use of the “DPW” name. The next style used appears to be the simple “O & M” stamps. Most of those are undated but I have found a few marked as 2005.
There are three stamps, one on either end of a run of sidewalk and one on the driveway in between.
This stamp is on the west side of Rumsey Avenue just north of Michigan, next to the Church of the Resurrection complex and amidst several E.R. Premoe stamps that have been featured before.
The date is a bit jumbled but I believe it to be 1990, due to its similarity to a 1990 Eastlund stamp that I have seen on Kalamazoo near Leslie.
I am very inclined to believe that this stamp – on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Jerome and Vine – is from the same contractor responsible for one of the blog’s early mysteries, the odd string of letters and numbers I first found on Kalamazoo Street and then later encountered versions of in a few different places. The first one looks a bit like “DAY02” but with no spacing and odd-looking characters I wasn’t sure it was a name and date or just a code of some kind. If this is the same contractor, then this is proof that is a name and date.
The case is still not settled. The first one I found had a pretty unambiguous D as the first letter. But then a later one, which otherwise bears a strong similarity to the first, is definitely a B (“BAY03”). A third one looks like it is readable either as a D or a B.
And what about this one? The style is very different from those odd mystery stamps, but the “D/BAY” and two-digit date makes it hard to resist making a connection between them. The (regrettably faint) first letter first appeared to me as a D, but on closer inspection, looks to be a B after all, and that’s what I will go with. I believe there is another one like this on Fairview, but it’s as faint or fainter. I will have to get a look at both of them at a few different times of day and see if my appraisal changes.
Here’s a cryptic one from the east side of North Hayford Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw. It’s the only one like it I’ve seen. I initially took it to read “HW” but on closer inspection I think it is “RW.” The style reminds me a little of the BWL stamps.
A name with two letters doesn’t give me much to go on. There is an RW Concrete Sawing out of Dorr, but they describe their main lines of business as “Concrete Breaking, Sawing & Drilling.” In other words, they are all about deconstructing concrete, not constructing it. Dorr is also a good hike away, though not an implausible one.
Here we are on the west side of Clifford Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus. It’s a good thing I found one clear enough to take a photo; most of the neighborhood sidewalks were obscured by a light layer of snow. This one just has a really nice, aesthetic frosting. It’s a variation of Moore Trosper I haven’t photographed yet, but it was really the pretty way the snow filled the impressions that caught my eye, truth be told.
This is the third Moore Trosper variation I have catalogued. It lacks the stylish flair of this version but is very similar to this one, differing only in the absence of the hyphen.
This stamp is on the east side of Marshall Street just north of Michigan Avenue, next to Mid-Michigan Kidney Specialists. J. A. Iszler is probably John A. Iszler Concrete Contractor, located on West Grand River Highway in Grand Ledge.
According to Iszler’s Web site, they are a family-owned business started in 1977.
This Eastlund Concrete stamp is on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Regent and Leslie. It has a different style from the one I previously photographed plus, unlike that one, it is dated.
