This mysterious stamp is on the east side of Horton Street between Jerome and the northern dead end. I can’t see anywhere that a name would have been stamped; it appears to be just a date. There is no paired stamp to explain it, either. The stamp is small and easy to overlook, almost hiding in the weeds.
Today’s entry is a direct sequel to yesterday’s, as I decided to walk to the 200 block of Regent and check whether there were any Spink stamps in front of the former house of Douglas Spink, Jacob’s son. There were not, so I continued on across Michigan to Horton Avenue and revisited the stamp that originally spurred my research into Spink. The stamp is on the front walk of a house on the east side of the street between Jerome and Vine.
J.K. Spink died in 1952, and while it’s possible that the company carried his name for a while after that, I don’t see any ads like that in the 1950s Lansing State Journal. Instead I see ads from either Douglas Spink or just Spink Builders appearing by the time of this stamp. I wonder if Douglas just didn’t bother getting a new stamp for a while after taking over the business.
This is one of those curiosities that pepper this blog, quirky stamps that I can’t quite explain. It’s on the east side of Horton Avenue between Jerome and the northern dead end. It’s an old-style Department of Public Works stamp, and it appears to have a month (May) but no year.
In the early days, the DPW stamped a full date: month, day, and year. By the 1920s they switched to stamping just the month and year, and sometime between 1924 and 1927 they switched to year only. You might think that the year has just worn off, since the stamp is generally quite worn. But that is hard to believe. There isn’t any leftover impression of it at all, for one thing. Even stranger is the placement of “May,” centered below the name. In the month/year and month/day/year stamps, the month is off to the left, not centered. It really does look like they just stamped “May”!
Tonight’s entry finds me at the very northern end of the west side of Horton Avenue, where the road that evidently once continued on toward the Armory is blocked off by a flimsy little gate. On the very last little bit of sidewalk, there is a Department of Public Works stamp, using the style that was phased out between the 1920s and 1940s.
At first blush it appears undated. But wait, what’s this? Why does that look like… a handwritten 1980?
Well, now I’m very confused. While I have discovered that there is significant overlap in the years that the DPW used particular stamps, there is no way the oldest stamp style was still being used in the 1980s. They were two or three styles past it by then. Granting the date might be graffiti, but it still would have had to be done when the cement was wet.
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).
Here’s a nice, old Department of Public Works stamp on the east side of Horton just north of Michigan, next to the Gabriels Community Credit Union on the corner. I had meant to get this one for ages and finally decided to do it tonight despite it being after dark.
I brought a flashlight with me and propped it up on some gravel alongside the sidewalk. (Flashing a light straight on the stamp usually makes it illegible. You need shadows.) I know from seeing it in daylight that the year is 1919. I had previously been complete unable to read the month, but when I came home and looked at the photo this time I realized I was pretty sure I saw September there. It’s funny how sometimes a photo can see things I don’t see with my eyes.
Able’s most recent stamps are quite minimalist, which is a bit of a shame. They do tend to read very cleanly, though. This one is on the east side of Horton Street north of Jerome.
It leads off a run of new sidewalk, and it also looks like the steps of the house this is in front of were redone at the same time. This leads me to wonder if it was done at the homeowner’s instigation rather than the city’s. If you want the sidewalk in front of your house replaced sooner than the city’s replacement schedule would have it, you can do the legwork of getting two bids and then the city will share the cost with you.
There is a paired stamp on the other end. The stamps may be simple, but I appreciate the orderliness of them.
This stamp, and an even fainter one like it, can be found on the east side of Horton Street between Michigan and Jerome.
I can’t find out much about Henry Davis. I’ve only turned up brief ads for waterproofing and concrete work (“satisfaction guaranteed”) in The Lansing State Journal‘s classifieds from 1952 until about 1955. In 1952 the ads were for Henry Davis and Sons, but after that they were just plain Henry Davis. Perhaps the sons weren’t interested in the business after all.
The stamp is alongside the Gabriels Community Credit Union on the corner of Horton and Michigan. The credit union was originally set up to serve the nearby Catholic church, the Church of the Resurrection.
There are lots of Cantu & Sons stamps on Horton Street (and indeed, everywhere in the neighborhood, as I’ve mentioned before) including this one on the east side of the street between Jerome and the northern dead end. Several just like this one are near the 1944 DPW stamp I previously featured.
What’s interesting about this one is the fact that Cantu & Sons apparently got a new style of stamp midway through 1987. Some 1987 stamps, and all 1988 stamps I have seen, just have “Cantu & Sons” and the date; other 1987 stamps, like this one, add “Cement Cont.” My guess is that this represents a name change. They may have dropped “Cement Contractors” as their business expanded beyond cement. Perhaps this was a pivotal moment on their way to becoming the Cantu Builders of today.
Update 3/11/21: I have discovered that Google maps has lied to me, and Horton is an Avenue, not a Street.
There are a half dozen or more stamps bearing a 1944 date on Horton St.’s northernmost block (between Jerome and the new Eastern High School). They caught my attention because I haven’t noticed 1940s dates anywhere else on my walks around the east side.
Horton is a nicely shady street with sturdy old houses. Its dead end is a little strange, since the street evidently used to curve around to join the Armory lot, but is now blocked with a rusty gate. The stretch of street past the gate still has wooden posts demarcating it and the pavement is visible though starting to succumb to weeds. I wonder how long it’s been inaccessible.
Most of the 1944 stamps have a clear, easy-to-read date, but a very worn name. I managed to find a legible one. It reads “Lansing D.P.W.” That would be Department of Public Works. Lansing no longer has a Department of Public Works (though East Lansing still does). I assume that it became the Public Service Department. One of the divisions of Public Service is Operations and Maintenance – so this stamp seems to be the 1940s version of the O&M stamps from the other day.
I wonder what was going on that Horton got so many new sidewalk slabs back in ’44?