Nothing too special today but I had a tough day and not enough time to do any research. This 1941 Department of Public Works stamp is on the north side of Jerome Street between Ferguson and Custer. I did find some houses that still have “winter” lights up, though, and that’s something. I always appreciate the cheer.
This stamp is on the curb cut leading from Jerome Street across Marshall, on the northwest corner of the intersection. The date is a little unclear but I believe it is 1981. I can find a record for Ayala’s Concrete and Excavating at OpenCorporates, according to which it was located on Bedford Road in Lansing. It was incorporated in 1979 and dissolved in 1992.
I took a photo for you diagonally across the intersection so you could get a glimpse of the Christmas lights on the mansion on Jerome I have mentioned before.
This stamp is on North Fairview Avenue just south of the corner of Jerome Street. I can find a T L Contracting that is (or was) on South Lowell in DeWitt, and one (maybe the same one) on Industrial Parkway in Lansing. I can’t find a Web site for the company or any other information.
This was taken at night with a flash, so it’s a bit washed out, but I found it interesting enough to share anyway. It can be found on the south side of Jerome Street between Clemens and Fairview. It’s very worn and craggy, and I could just make it out.
I haven’t yet run across any other Joe White slabs. Trying to find anything out about the company was rough because, well, just try Googling “Joe White.” Even in combination with “Lansing” and “concrete” I had trouble, but eventually I turned up several newspapers.com hits from the Lansing State Journal, ads from the 1950s. I don’t have a newspapers.com subscription and I haven’t yet decided whether I should get one for the sake of cataloguing sidewalk slabs, but I have the patience to pick through the OCR text and from that I have mined out this advertisement, from 1957:
“Basement Seepage Is Specialty / If you are troubled with water seepage in your basement, Joe White, 501 N. Walnut St., offers a special water-proofing service guaranteed to eliminate the seepage. Mr. White features an ‘Ever-Dry’ installation of drain tile inside the foundation and block walls which carries water seepage. He says it completely eliminates dampness and the problem of wet basements. Mr. White, who has been in the water-proofing business here for the past 14 years, has served the needs of more than 1,000 residences in the Lansing area. An average installation takes about three to four days. All work is backed by a bonded guarantee. Free estimates will be provided upon request. / Out of State Rates Are Not the Same / For Free Estimates Phone 5-5807.”
501 N. Walnut St. is several blocks north, roughly, of the Capitol building. It is still an office building, built 1907 according to the city property records. According to other ads from 1954 and 1959, Joe White Co. was located at 1208 N. Pine., which is a pleasantly old-fashioned little house, built in 1914, and not looking much like it has ever been a business location. I’m not sure how to account for the 501 Walnut address given in the 1957 ad. In 1965, the LSJ carried an ad for “Ever-Dry Co., formerly Joe White Co.” There is no longer an EverDry location in Lansing, so I don’t know what became of Joe White’s company.
I almost passed this one by. I wasn’t looking too closely because I had already taken my photo for tonight’s walk. But as I passed it something made me stop and take a second look. And there on the south side of Jerome between Holmes and Ferguson…
I hadn’t imagined I would find one from the first decade of the 20th century. So who is J.P. “Sleicht?” Well, first of all, it seems that the C is really a G. I can find that J.P. Sleight was a coal business, “wholesale and retail,” according to a quaint advertising letter from 1921. Quite possibly they supplied the coal that once came in through the coal chute of my own house. They were located at 614 E. Saginaw St., an address which does not exist today. That would have put them just east of Larch Street; there are condos in that vicinity now. According to a 1918 Annual Report of the Michigan Department of Labor, they employed ten men and one woman. And oddly, J.P. Sleight seems also to have been a dairy cattle breeder; I find him referenced in dairy farmer publications and the Holstein-Friesian Herd Book of 1911.
Unfortunately, unlike yesterday’s 1918 slab, this one is in bad shape. I’m happy to see it and still hold out hope of going earlier yet. It does help that I can shave off months, since in the oldest days they seem to be more likely to specify a month as well as a year.
Update 8/18/20: I perused the Holstein-Friesian Herd Book a little more and noticed a couple of delightful things. One is that Sleight seemed to like to call his high-bred cows “Lady So-and-So,” such as “Lady Ophelia of Carnelian.” Another is that he owned a cow called Olive Sprig Colantha Daughter, listed as the offspring of (naturally) Olive Sprig Colantha. This stands out to me because Traverse Colantha Walker, often referred to simply as Colantha, is a very famous champion dairy cow, famous enough that I have heard of her. She resided at the farm that was part of the Northern Michigan Asylum, a Kirkbride plan mental hospital in Traverse City. I assume that Olive Sprig Colantha was a relative, possibly even a progenitor (as Traverse Colantha Walker was born in 1916).
Some years back I was part of an “art ambush” (rapid drawing challenge) and the theme given was fairs. I attempted to draw a carousel figure representing Traverse Colantha Walker, in the style of a Bayol carousel cow. It’s rough and unfinished but here it is.
I have always paid attention to sidewalk stamps, but now that I’m actively looking for them for this blog, I keep seeing ones I thought would be harder to find. For instance, I had thought finding one from the 1930s would be difficult as I could not recall ever seeing one. On my walk today I realized there was a 1930 stamp right out in front of 1704 Jerome, the house I previously wrote about. This is on the south side of Jerome between Marshall and Horton (near the corner of Marshall). I stopped to look at it first because I saw that it was another George Hagamier stamp like the one I noted on the Marshall side of the property. Then I realized that instead of another 1929 stamp as I expected, it was from 1930.
Although 1704 Jerome was built in 1929 according to the city’s property records, this leads me to wonder if it was still being worked on into 1930 (likely by George Hagamier, who was a building contractor).
This stamp is much more worn and difficult to read than the quite neat and clear stamp on the Marshall side of the property, near the house’s gigantic garage. I don’t know how to account for that. Jerome doesn’t seem likely to receive any more foot traffic than Marshall, but maybe things were different in decades past.
The funny thing is that my walk later took me past a Lansing DPW stamp on Clemens that, if I’m reading it correctly, also read 1930.
Today’s stamp is on Marshall St. between Michigan and Jerome. Jerome is a curious street. It crosses north-south streets full of modest homes on Lansing’s east side, lots of two-storey dwellings hovering around 1200 or so square feet, built in the 1890s to 1920s. Yet Jerome St. itself is peppered with grander homes, a few even approaching mansionhood. This results in the incongruity of a stately old pile standing right next to an honest little house. Such is the case at Jerome and Marshall.
I have long admired this house, 1704 Jerome St. I think of it as Tudor Revival and have always thought it looked quite a bit like the English Inn, the 1927 Tudor style mansion built as the country home of a GM executive which happens to be where I had my wedding. The City Pulse profiled 1704 Jerome as part of its Eye Candy of the Week feature and called it Georgian style. I have a very rudimentary grasp of architectural styles but I still think it looks like a Tudor. The first time I saw it while driving around my neighborhood I was flummoxed: what is this doing here? Moreover, I wondered to myself, how did they manage to build that obviously modern three-car garage and yet blend it so well into the existing architecture? Even the bricks match perfectly. It can’t be original, because no one would have had a three-car garage in the 1920s when that was probably built.
Since then I have learned to use the city’s online property search to satisfy my curiosity about such things. From it I have learned that the house, yes, was built in 1929. And the garage, according to city… was also built in 1929. How strange.
Today’s stamp is near that garage, on the Marshall St. side of the property. George Hagamier was a contractor who did a lot of building in Lansing, including being hired to put an addition on the Hotel Kerns (which later burned down). I can find a reference to him being a contractor as early as 1906, when he was mixed up with some sort of fiasco involving a business called the National Supply Company. Yet, according to an article on the English Inn in the City Pulse, George Hagamier was the contractor for an addition that was put on the English Inn in the 1950s. Could it possibly be the same person? The 1940 census lists a George Hagamier of Lansing as being 69 years old. This would imply that Mr. Hagamier was still working as a contractor into his 80s, unless it is actually a father and son.
In any case, my guess is that George Hagamier was involved in building 1704 Jerome. Perhaps he was the person you called when you wanted to build a big stack of Tudor (or Georgian) bricks.
I had expected this one to be the oldest one I saw for at least a little while, but my husband has already located several 1924 pavements and when my walk takes me in the right direction you’ll be seeing them here.