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S. Fairview Ave., “Huntley” graffiti

“Huntley” is inscribed on the front walk of a house on the east side of South Fairview Avenue, between Elizabeth and Harton. The east side of this block – the 600 block – is entirely populated by nearly identical little Cape Cods. They are around 600 square feet and, according to the city, one-and-a-quarter stories. There are actually two different styles that alternate, one with a symmetrical front consisting of two windows and a centered door, the other with a single window and a door to one side. There are nine of these houses; a tenth on the corner of Harton was demolished in 2015. There is also another one just south of Harton, the only house on the east side of the 700 block. Curiously, they were built in 1941 and 1942, with the southern half of the houses having the later year. That’s a strange time to be building houses.

Despite their conformity, I really like them. Maybe it’s the coziness of a row of little cottages all lined up, or maybe it’s the way that their outline looks like the Platonic form of a house, or at least a child’s drawing of one.

The nearest house in this picture has the “Huntley” mark, at the sidewalk end of the front walk.

I haven’t been able to determine who Huntley was, though I presume a past resident of the house. While I can find references in old newspapers to people named Huntley living in Lansing, without addresses attached to them, I have no way to guess which, if any, this Huntley might have been.

The two styles of house can be seen in this shot.
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S. Hayford Ave., fire alarm/telegraph utility cover

This isn’t a sidewalk stamp and this time I don’t even have the excuse of it being on the sidewalk – it’s on the lawn extension (parkway, right of way, whatever you like to call it) at the northeast corner of Hayford Avenue and Elizabeth Street. It was just too cool not to share.

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S. Francis Ave., Terry, illegible date

This stamp is on an orphaned driveway apron in front of one of the many vacant lots (now a community garden) near the south end of South Francis Avenue. It’s on the east side of the street, just south of where Harton Street would have passed through if it had not vanished from this block at some point. There is another driveway apron (also no longer attached to a driveway) one lot south of here that has the same stamp, but in worse shape.

I tried to uncover the date from under the layer of caked dirt, but it doesn’t look like it would be legible even if it were clean. It seems to end with a 1 but that’s the most that can be made from it with any confidence. I wasn’t able to find any plausible “Terry” that this could be, either.

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S. Francis Ave., White Hawk, 2022

I was surprised to walk down to the south end of South Francis Avenue and discover a large amount of sidewalk has been replaced on the west side of the street. The scattered blocks of new concrete – there must be a couple dozen or more – can be readily seen at a distance. The work was done by White Hawk, the same contractor who recently did a similarly large replacement project on South Magnolia. What surprises me about this find, though, is that a good bit of sidewalk from the east side of Francis has been removed as the lots have vacated. I expected they would just let the sidewalk on the other side keep deteriorating while they waited out the remaining residents, but I was clearly wrong.

Many of the lawn extensions (or “parkways” as the Lansing municipal code calls them) are also covered with straw, indicating grass reseeding. The edges of some front yards have this too. I’m not sure of the reason for this.

This particular stamp (one of very many similar ones) is from the west side of Francis south of Elizabeth. It’s in front of one of the many nearby community gardens, this one calling itself the Poppin’ Fresh Community Garden.

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S. Magnolia Ave., DPW, 1930

This very worn Lansing DPW stamp (what I call the “second style” of DPW stamps) is on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue near the southern dead end. It’s in front of the second to last house on the west side, a house which is about seven years older than the stamp.

I’ve noticed a fair number of 1930-dated DPW stamps in the Urbandale neighborhood, so there must have been a big sidewalk replacement project around then. I figure I should capture interesting stamps on these blocks while I can, because they’ve recently started removing sidewalks from the areas near the dead ends.

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Hall of Shame: S. Francis Ave., removed sidewalk

Following Monday’s entry, the theme of Urbandale shrinkage continues. Here is the end of the sidewalk on the east side of South Francis Avenue, the last block before the dead end. The sidewalk that until recently served the east side of the 700 block has all been dug up. There are no houses left on this side; the land is now an urban farm.

Looking over the property records, I can see that there were still five houses south of here in 2010. That year, four of the five seem to have taken the buyout from the city. That left one house on the very south end, which fell into tax foreclosure in 2016 and was demolished by the county in 2017.

The other side of the street, the west side, still has two houses left. I note that another house on that side took the buyout in 2010 along with their east side neighbors. It’s hard not to imagine a vulture standing there, waiting patiently for the two holdouts to succumb from death or taxes. I understand that the city has its reasons, and I don’t mean to attribute malice or wickedness. It’s just that there’s something very sad about looking at doomed houses. It’s just a matter of time. Sooner or later, there will be no 700-plus addresses on South Francis.

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Mifflin Ave., Ghost Stairs

No sidewalk for you today; in fact there is no sidewalk at all on this block, Mifflin Avenue between Kalamazoo and Marcus. Instead, here is a little relic that always makes me a bit sad: the stairs to a long-gone house. (I’m not sure how long gone, but it was already gone by the earliest Google street views in 2007.)

There is only one house remaining on this (west) side of the block, and that one is so obscured by tree cover that it is hard to see. There are a few more houses on the other side, but like much of the Urbandale neighborhood, this is a sparsely-occupied block, and one that is likely to continue depopulating.

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S. Clemens Ave., L & L, 2002

There are lots of L & L stamps from 2002 along the South Clemens/North Aurelius transition, in the vicinity of the 496 and railroad overpasses. I think they are probably connected with the project that reduced Aurelius to two lanes to four as part of a traffic calming measure. This one is in front of Half Barn Farm, an urban farm on the southeast corner of South Clemens Avenue and Elizabeth Street.

Half Barn Farm is one of many urban farms in the Urbandale neighborhood. It replaced a demolished house in the 2010s.

The areas where vegetables aren’t being farmed are liberally planted with wildflowers. Here is a view from the stamp south toward the ramp to Malcolm X Street.
Here is Half Barn Farm’s farm stand, where the honor boxes for buying vegetables are located.

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S. Francis Ave., DPW, 1930

It’s not extremely old by Department of Public Works standards, but I thought I should get this one in while I can. It’s on the dead-end 700 block of South Francis Avenue, on the west side, probably just south of where Harton Street would be if it still existed there. Across the street from it, the other side of Francis has had its sidewalk recently removed, as with many southern blocks in Urbandale. The sidewalk extends half a block or so further south on this side due to two remaining houses.

This stamp is on a half-sized slab of sidewalk in front of what looks like a vacant lot. In fact, as I discovered checking the city property records, the property south of this point encompasses not two but three lots, plus the vacated section of Harton! (Decommissioned streets seem to hang around in property descriptions, which fascinates me for reasons I can’t articulate.) Historicaerials.com shows Harton still existing here in 1981 but clearly gone in 1994.

Looking north on South Francis Avenue, with the stamp plainly visible. Harton would have been in view here when it existed.
Looking more or less south. Not sure why there’s a little section of undersized blocks (including the featured one).
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S. Francis Ave., Concrete by Thompson, 2004

I was walking on the west side of South Francis Avenue between Marcus and Elizabeth when I spotted a Concrete by Thompson stamp with a reversed date. At first I thought it was one I have featured before, but then I realized I was not on the same street. No, evidently Concrete by Thompson managed to reverse their date stamp at least twice in 2004.

I wonder if these two reversed Thompson stamps were done on the same day. They were done the same year, a few blocks apart in Urbandale, so I can imagine they might have been done one after the other, accounting (somewhat) for the same stamping error.

Looking south on South Francis Avenue.