Posted on by bunnyhugger

E. Michigan Ave., Unknown

When I started this sidewalk project I don’t think I realized how much time I would end up sinking into researching local business history. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I also need to tone it down a little. I’ve developed a particular fascination with the stretch of East Michigan Avenue I’ve begun thinking of as “Eastmost.” From what I can tell, it used to be the car sales district. Tonight’s stamp comes from the north side of East Michigan between Kipling and Lasalle Court.

It’s another mystery stamp in the vein of this mystery stamp, but the two of them help fill in the gaps with each other. The faint area on this one matches the Y in the earlier one, and the clear A in this one matches the faint area of the other. Since the other ends in 02 and this one in 03 it’s tempting to treat that as a date. But who or what is “DAY”? And why the odd spacing (or lack thereof)?

This is close to the corner of Kipling, in front of the Avis/Budget car rental agency. The office building was built in the 1990s. The garage on the property (they don’t share a street address, but are part of the same lot according to city records) dates from 1940. I don’t know who the original occupant was, but by in the 1950s it was Hodgson & Osborn Used Cars, as pictured in this 1958 photo filed in the Capital Area District Library’s local history collection. “Note arborist in tree in center of photo,” directs the caption. It appears that the arborist is in the act of taking the tree down. They evidently didn’t replace it, as there is no street tree there now.

Sometime after Hodgson & Osborn, certainly by the 1970s, it became Spartan Auto Sales. In 1981 the address starts showing up in newspaper ads still attached to Spartan Auto Sales but also as the address for Ugly Duckling Rent-a-Car and Ugly Duckling Car Lot. I’m not sure how it was both Spartan and Ugly Duckling at the same time, but that seems to be the case.

Sometime in the late 1980s it became Thrifty and then eventually Budget/Avis. Thus it went through the same progression from a car lot, through a less respectable car lot, to a car rental agency, as the current Enterprise location.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

E. Michigan Ave., Christman, 1960

This one gives me a lot to write about, almost all of it about cars. Out in front of Feldman Chevrolet are several of these neatly-inscribed marks from The Christman Co. Builders, all dated 1960, and that got me thinking about what this stretch of pavement was like in 1960. Since I moved to Lansing in 1999 this – the corridor on either side of the US-127 overpass – has been seen as a bleak, forsaken stretch of Michigan Avenue. But in 1960 the nearby Frandor was a new, shiny, ultra-modern shopping center, instead of a vast plain of traffic and sadness fronted by a dead Sears.

Christman apparently laid this entire stretch of sidewalk alongside the dealership. Their stamp appears back-to-back like this, every few slabs.

In those days, this was Bud Kouts Chevrolet. Bud Kouts had bought the dealership in 1954, prior to which it had been called Wolverine Chevrolet. Wolverine had originally been located in downtown Lansing. Capital Gains magazine says that it moved “just after World War II,” and the Lansing property records show the current dealership office as dating to 1946, though it has been renovated into unrecognizability.

The Iding family purchased Bud Kouts in 1977, but the name must have carried a good reputation, because the Idings kept it until they sold the business in 2014 to established Detroit-area dealer Feldman. In turn Feldman branded itself as “Feldman’s Bud Kouts Chevrolet” for a few years, though that seems to have ended at some point. I notice that the business property ownership, according to Lansing records, is still in the hands of “Feldkouts LLC.”

Looking east on Michigan Avenue. This stretch of sidewalk has all been stamped at regular intervals.

So this bit of pavement was laid in what must have been a strikingly different Michigan Avenue corridor, yet in front of a business that still had many more years ahead of than behind it.

The stamps in my above photo appear on the two nearest slabs shown here.

As for Christman Co., they have done even better than Wolverine Chevy. They were established in 1894 in South Bend, Indiana and today have numerous offices in various states. Their Lansing office, still downtown, opened in 1919, though by then they had already done major projects for both MSU (then MAC) and Olds. In 1920 they built the Verlinden Street plant for Durant, later bought by GM and known formally as Lansing Car Assembly Plant #6 or colloquially, Fisher Body. The very last Oldsmobile was built there. I remember hearing about its demolition, which happened in 2007, but I was too absorbed in personal crisis to pay it as much attention as I now wish I had.