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.
This stamp is on the ramp that connects North Aurelius Road to East Malcolm X Street, on the west side of Aurelius. This is the only way to get from Aurelius to Malcolm X now that they have removed the ramp that used to serve the northbound traffic.
There are a lot of L & L 2002 stamps in the vicinity of the Aurelius overpasses, probably all the result of the project that reduced Aurelius from four lanes to two.
The street sign makes the claim that this is the 1900 block of Malcolm X Street, which really stretches the definition of a “block.” It’s more of a service road between the two streets than a proper part of Malcolm X. Then again, very little of Malcolm X Street can be called “proper” given how disjointed it is.
I would say this might be the most forlorn stretch of sidewalk in Lansing, except I’m not sure I should dignify this narrow strip of asphalt by calling it a sidewalk. It’s along the former ramp that serviced East Malcolm X Street from northbound Aurelius Road. It must have been laid along the ramp with the intent of serving as a sidewalk, yet I don’t know why. Until I walked on it to take these pictures, I had never walked down there myself and was surprised to discover it even had a sidewalk. It makes a sharp turn under the overpass and eventually comes out in the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. There are at least two better and shorter ways for a pedestrian to get to Potter-Walsh from here, and walking so close to the ramp when there was any traffic on it must have been unpleasant to say the least.
Looking north along the ramp. The raised area on the left is Aurelius Road.
I walked it, though, and since I’m a rules-abiding person (probably to a fault) I got a little thrill from this laughably minor transgression. This ramp has been amputated from Aurelius Rd. and, despite still having street lamps beaming down on it at night, it now has no purpose. When they rebuilt the railway overpass recently, they also quietly decommissioned the ramp. The southern end of it, where the ramp splits off from Aurelius, has been removed. The rest has been left alone, with a surprisingly neat curb capping its new end.
And looking back south, from whence I came. The curb they put in to (needlessly?) cap off the start of the road is visible in the distance.
When I moved to town and for a while after, there was a sign on northbound Aurelius directing downtown traffic to use what was then the Main Street ramp. I was mystified by this when I first saw it. What crazy person would use that spooky alley to get downtown when you could just go up to Michigan and turn left? And why the heck is that nothing road called “Main Street”?
What I was looking at was the remnant of some previous attempt to stop traffic on Aurelius, which was then a four-lane road, from blazing right into a residential neighborhood at highway speeds as Aurelius became Clemens Avenue. This had been a sore point for Clemens residents for a long time by then. The ramp was an attempt to funnel downtown-bound traffic away from Clemens. As far as I can tell, no one was fooled. I’m not sure when the sign went away but it might have been when they tried the next (and possibly more successful) traffic calming measure: around 2002, they reduced Aurelius to two lanes and lowered the speed limit.
I guess they must have decided that the ramp was a failed experiment and took the bridge reconstruction as an opportunity to remove it. Northbound traffic headed for Malcolm X can still get there by the more direct route, taking a left turn a little way further north.
This blog is adopting Oscar L. McKinley (1866-1923) as its symbol (“mascot” sounds undignified). McKinley is best known to regular readers as the alderman who spoke these famous words to Alderman McKale during a “wordy tilt” about sidewalks: “You violated the ordinance, undoubtedly, and failed to put your name upon the walks. Your name is not upon the walk in the photograph.” Often when I see a new sidewalk laid without being properly stamped, I shake my head in disapproval and say, “Your name is not upon the walk!”
According to a report of his death in the State Journal of July 28, 1923, in addition to being the second ward alderman for 16 years, McKinley was also the manager of the Lansing branch of the Wynkoop, Hallenbeck & Crawford printing concern for 25 years, and for more than 30 years was involved with the Lansing City Directory.
The Capital Area District Library’s local history collection online has a booklet titled Pictorial Souvenir of the Police and Fire Departments (well worth perusing in full for the vintage ads) from which I have drawn the photo of Alderman McKinley that now decorates the blog. I am reproducing the pictures of the entire City Council below. The booklet dates from 1913, and the “wordy tilt” happened in 1914, so now you can picture the City Council as it was then. The two aldermen called out by McKinley for laying “bum walk” were McKale and Young.
I have tried so many times to get this old-looking stamp and today I failed yet again. It was too muddy the first time I saw it, then it was too icy, then it was too dark, then there was a dog loose and I was afraid to get close enough, now it’s too icy and too muddy. Here’s what I got, after peeling a stuck leaf off. I need the ice to finish melting and then a good rain to come and wash the grime off it.
I hope the resident here hasn’t noticed how many times I have pulled up in front of their house, stared at the sidewalk for a while, gotten back into the car, and driven off.
I noticed this handsome water meter cover on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Magnolia and Hayford, in front of the vacant lot next to the old Hotwater Works building.
The company is the Ford Meter Box Co., so I assume Wabash Box is the name of a model. (Wikipedia’s entry for Ford has a picture of an even handsomer meter cover with “Crescent Box” on it instead.) The Ford Meter Box Co. started in 1898 and is still around and still located in Wabash, Indiana. And it turns out that the founder, Edwin Ford, was not just a meter box seller – he was the inventor of the in-ground outdoor water meter.
I think this says 2001, but I can’t be sure what with it being underwater. It might be 2021, but it looks too worn. This is another one from the vicinity of the doomed camelback bridge, this time on the south end of the bridge.
On Friday I went out to photograph the 1924 camelback bridge over the Red Cedar River in Okemos, as I had heard it was slated for demolition on Monday. Everything I might say about the loss of the bridge and the general destruction of the town of Okemos has been said first and better by HistoricBridges.org. Interestingly, a contributor to that site was out documenting the bridge on Tuesday, and they report that demolition has not started and it is still carrying traffic, with an unknown actual demolition date.
While I was there I took a couple of photos of sidewalk stamps in the vicinity of the bridge, which is on the east side of Okemos Road between Mount Hope Road and Clinton Street. This one is on the north end of the bridge in front of Ferguson Park. As muddy and worn as it is, it appears to say “HTC,” but I believe it is an H & C stamp, like one of similar vintage I photographed in front of the Meridian Mall.
The stamp is front and center in this photo, though difficult to make out. Up ahead is the doomed camelback bridge.
Here’s another one from Drury Lane between Ballard Street and High Street, this time from the south side of the street. It’s very worn and the mud doesn’t help either, but I am pretty sure it is an E. Schneeberger stamp. There is also a paired stamp a few steps away, but that one was even harder to see due to slush.
Here’s an even closer view of the stamp.
Another interesting thing about this stamp is that the house it is in front of is the only house that currently has an address on Drury Lane. Drury is a small, one-block street to begin with, and it has several vacant lots. The only other house that appears to face the street rather curiously has a Ballard address, as previously reported. So the occupants of this house have the unique pride of a Drury Lane address. Personally, I think it would be neat to be the only house with an address on a specific street.
The stamp is on the closest (full) sidewalk block.
This one is just a couple of paces further west from Wednesday’s, on the northeast corner of Drury Lane and Ballard Street. Though Cantu & Sons stamps are extremely plentiful, this is the first Cantu simpliciter I have found. I would estimate its age at 1980 or earlier, because the earliest Cantu & Son (singular) stamps I have found were from 1980, and the earliest Cantu & Sons (plural) were from 1984. This one appears undated, which is unusual for Cantu.
There’s something else odd about this spot. The house it’s in front of, an exceedingly plain little box, has a Ballard street address, but unambiguously faces Drury, which breaks the usual numbering rules. There is no door on the Ballard side at all. My guess is that the property acquired the number of the first house built there and kept it even when a newer house was built that faced the other way. This one was built in the 2000s, making it a very new house for the neighborhood. I wonder why the builder chose to make it a Drury house instead of a Ballard house?
