This single stamp on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood is the only one I have found from this contractor so far. Although it’s from 2001, the style of the stamp resembles the style of several of the oldest stamps such as W.H. McKrill, V.D. Minnis, and yesterday’s F.H. Rounsville. Another more recent contractor who uses this style is Able. It’s an appealing look and I appreciate the retro-ness of it.
Concrete by Thompson (as that seems to be their formal name) is, or was, located on Armstrong Road in Lansing, which is on the south side in the Jolly/Pennsylvania area.
This is the most recent Cantu & Sons stamp I have found so far. Like the other 1990s one I have found, it has a handwritten date. It seems like after a certain point they decided not to bother getting new date stamps. This is on the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood.
Looking north on North Clemens with the stamp at the bottom.
It’s nice to be back in the land of milk and honey and abundant stamps. I’m struck once again by how much more common they are in Lansing than Albion. Our sidewalks are lousy with them, and I mean that in the best possible way.
This pair is on the east side of Leslie Street’s 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. They appear to be handwritten. Unfortunately, I have no information about Trendel.
Looking south on Leslie. The northern one of the pair is just visible at the bottom of the photo.
The southern stamp of the pair, which faces the opposite direction to the northern one, as is typical of paired stamps.
This handwritten mark is on the south side of Vine Street just east of Ferguson. My research-to-payoff ratio on this one was very low. I was ultimately unable to find a plausible Taylor Bros. for this to be, though I did find a probably unrelated welding company by that name in the 1913 Pictorial Souvenir of the Police and Fire Departments, Lansing, Michigan and then lost an hour to reading through the advertisements therein (check out the ad for Sam’s Place if you want to see something wild).
The marking is in the lower right corner.
Then I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what the deal is with the garage that this is in front of. It belongs to the house that faces Ferguson. I normally don’t spend too much time writing about private homes for fear that the residents might find it and feel gawked at (though if you live in a mansion in this neighborhood I think you have to expect it), but I usually try to find out at least a little about business addresses. The size of this garage made me think that it must surely have been a business at some point in the past. It makes no sense as a garage for a residence. It’s a three-car garage made of naked concrete block, and it’s comically disproportionate. It’s 748 square feet, and the house is only 1,071 square feet. (The house is also two storeys, so the garage has a substantially bigger foundation.) It must take up nearly the whole backyard.
I mean, come on now. What’s the deal with this, huh? (Looking west on Vine.)
The city’s property records say the garage was built in 1961 (50 years after the house) and I would guess the sidewalk marking could be from then. I went to the real estate cards from the 1950s and 60s that the library has scanned in their online local history collection, hoping that it would mention something about the garage. Instead it says that there is a one car garage. The card is undated, but handwritten over the top (as they did on these old cards) is “Sold 2-8-61.” The new owner must have built the garage.
I can’t find any evidence that the garage was connected with a business. Perhaps the new owner was a car enthusiast. A three-car garage is nearly unheard of in this part of town. (I’ve already mentioned another house that has one, but that house is four times the square footage of this one.)
I did find one business that has used that address, but more recently. The November 11, 2002, Lansing State Journal has a new business listing for “Gramma Bea’s,” giving the address of the house on Ferguson. I would be surprised if that street had non-residential zoning, so it may only have been an office address. I don’t remember it at all, but apparently there was once a Gramma Bea’s Deli in East Lansing, and its owner was a past owner of the Ferguson house (and the same person who filed the new business listing). Gramma Bea’s won the annual Lansing Lugnuts chili cook off with a vegetarian chili in 2001. On June 26, 2002, the Lansing State Journal reported on its 2002 “Best of the Best” awards. Gramma Bea’s had come in third in the vegetarian food category, but the notation “(closed)” appeared by its name. I don’t know what the new business listing in November 2002 was for, but I find that in 2004 a “Gramma Bea’s Properties LLC” was incorporated in Laingsburg by the same person who had owned the restaurant.
What was I supposed to be writing about, again?
None of this really tells me about the garage or about the Taylor Bros., but I wasted my time learning all of that, so the least you can do is waste your time reading all of it.
Here’s another one that looks ambiguously like either graffiti or a contractor mark. Once again I’m inclined to think it’s from the contractor since it follows the grammar of a contractor stamp, except for being freakishly large. I would have thought that the contractor would want to take more pride in their work than to mar their nice new pavement this way, but I’ve been wrong about that before. I’m not sure who or what D M is. There is currently a D & M Concrete in Michigan, but that’s probably a coincidence.
It’s on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Ferguson and Custer, out in front of the Soup Spoon Cafe, an early entrant in the east side hipster restaurant derby. When I moved to town in 1999, this rather handsome 1906 building was occupied by Bancroft Flowers and Gifts on one side and the Greenhouse Cafe on the other. I believe they were owned by the same people. Sometime in the 2000s, I forget exactly when, the Greenhouse Cafe closed and the Soup Spoon moved in. In 2014, Bancroft closed and the Soup Spoon grew to occupy the entire building.
I would guess that this building was originally a grocery store. I can’t seem to figure out who the original occupant was, but by 1928 it was the Howard Long grocery store.
Looking west on East Michigan. Note how large the mark is!
Yes, yes, I know, another Cantu & Son(s). But this one is notable for being the most recent one I have found. It’s actually a pair of them, on the north side of Prospect Street just west of Fairview.
The eastern stamp.
The style is the same as the ubiquitous 1987-88 stamps except for the handwritten date.
This very worn and craggy stamp is on the east side of Regent Street between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth (500 block). I read it as L. Miller, 1963. It looks handwritten, and could almost be taken as graffiti, but I lean away from that interpretation because the the placement and name/date format is standard for contractor stamps.
I can find evidence of a contractor and builder named Lloyd Miller in some mid-1950s Lansing State Journal classifieds pages. Miller was based in East Lansing. There also seems to have been a Lloyd Miller real estate agency during the same time period, so it seems like ol’ Lloyd would build you a house or sell you one. My guess is that this is Lloyd Miller’s mark.
Looking north on Regent, with the stamp at the very bottom here.
I have been mulling over the idea of starting a new blog feature called the Hall of Shame, documenting sidewalks which were clearly installed relatively recently without any identifying stamp. With that in mind, I stopped to observe this patch of new-looking sidewalk on the northwest corner of North Foster Avenue and East Michigan. (Whether you consider this to be on Foster or Michigan is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation.)
Looking southeast from the corner of Foster and Michigan.
Upon looking at it more closely, I spotted something. What’s this?
This rather rustic-looking stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Clifford and Holmes (but much closer to Clifford – really between Clifford and Rosamond, if Rosamond were to extend up to Michigan). It is smaller in size than most stamps, and also faces sideways relative to traffic heading east-west along Michigan.
B & B Construction no longer appears to be in business, but I find that it was based in Holt during this time period, and also that it sponsored a men’s slow pitch softball team. As I’ve mentioned before, it seems like I turn up as many of these businesses on the sports page as anywhere else. The May 18, 1985 Lansing State Journal reported that B & B lost to Popeyes, 11-8. The last reference I see to a business that is probably the same B & B is in the May 18, 1998 LSJ classifieds: “We lay block, brick, do flatwork & pole barns. Free estimates, 20 yrs. exp.” (There is a B & B Concrete Placement in the Detroit area, but I assume that is a different business.)
Facing south toward the office.
This one is out in front of the offices of the Unity Spiritual Center church, one of those charming old house-turned-office buildings that pepper Michigan Avenue. The house was built in 1906.
