This stamp is on a driveway apron on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. The last name is clearly Jones, but I am not entirely confident about what precedes that. It looks like “T.Q.” or at least “something Q” or maybe “something O.”
Unfortunately, with such a common name it is usually very difficult to figure out anything about the contractor, and this is not an exception. I haven’t been able to find anything about a cement contractor named Jones operating in that time period.
The stamp is on the near end of the driveway apron, oriented to face the street.
Update 3/14/22: I saw this in better light the other day and I am now pretty sure it’s T.D. Jones. Still no luck figuring out who that is.
This tough-to-read stamp is on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. I can be fairly confident that the last name is “West,” but what comes before that is illegible. It looks like two initials.
The only lead I have is a series of classified advertisements that ran in the Lansing State Journal in March and May of 1953: “CEMENT – And concrete work… Phone Dick Connick, 97392, or Dick West, 23050.” Searching for references to Dick West in the LSJ are stymied by the existence of a UPI correspondent by that name.
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).
This neatly-rendered smiley face often adds a note of whimsy to my walks. It is on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
The smile welcomes visitors to the front walk of this house.
Nothing too special here except the charming practice I have seen a few times from other contractors, stamping both ends of the same square, facing opposite directions. It seems to be a way of indicating that they are only laying a single block. This double-stamped block is on the north side of Jerome Street between Custer and Ferguson.
One end of the slab…
… the other end. I realize now that I failed to take an overview showing the whole thing.
I mistakenly thought that this pair of Department of Public Service stamps – on the west side of North Francis Avenue between Vine and Fernwood – had the earliest date I’d seen for a DPS stamp, which is why I photographed it. Checking later, I discovered I have previously done one other 1950 DPS stamp.
The southern stamp of the pair.
The northern stamp. It’s on the next lot north.
Looking north on North Fairview, with the southern stamp of the pair roughly in front of the house’s front steps.
This very worn Cantu & Sons stamp is located on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Clemens and Regent (pretty close to Clemens). It’s the only stamp I can find on the stretch of sidewalk in front of King World. The date is extremely hard to read in the photo, but in person it is just possible to make it out as 1988.
It’s in front of King World, which is an eccentric combination of a convenience/party store and a beauty and barber supply shop. When I first moved to town in the summer of 1999, this building was empty, but it was still easy to see that its most recent occupant had been a coin laundry. About a year later King World moved in.
Taken from the corner of S. Clemens and E. Kalamazoo.
The building dates from 1962. I can find advertisements for a Norge Village laundromat at that address in the 1970s, and most likely it was built originally as part of that chain, which was booming by 1962. Norge Village is famous among fans of old signs and the like for its lit-up, polka-dotted globe signs, popularly called “Norge Balls.”
It apparently remained a laundry through at least one changeover, as it appears in the December 30, 1989, Lansing State Journal new businesses listings as Kalamazoo St. Laundry. The last reference I can find to a laundry business there is in a sidebar of “Unsolved Fires of 1991” accompanying an article (“Fatal Fire Remains Unsolved”) on page 1B of the January 15, 1992, Lansing State Journal. The list includes “September 30 – Fire in laundry dryer at 1918 E. Kalamazoo” and honestly, that one really sounds like it solved itself.
Advertisements trying to sell the building (no mention of a laundry business) start showing up in 1996, and then again in 1998. Whether it was used for anything during that time period is not clear but seems doubtful. The sale to King World is recorded in the city’s online records in July 2000.
Here is a beautifully preserved Department of Public Works stamp on Vine Street, just east of the northeast corner of Vine and Ferguson. I’m surprised that I hadn’t captured this one before and I had to double check to make sure.
Looking east on Vine; the stamp is on the first block past the corner. (It faces a BBRPCI stamp.)
This pair of stamps is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Fairview and Magnolia. It’s hard to read the date in one of them, but the other is quite clear and I am going to assume they were done together.
The stamps are in front of the closed Hotwater Works building, until recently a neighborhood staple. It was, somehow, both a hot tub retailer and a jam space for local musicians. The side facing the now-vacant lot was painted with a couple of different murals over the years, the first one depicting a fairy with the command “RELAX” and the second one featuring a group of Japanese macaques bathing. I never had any reason to go in there, but in a way, I just liked it being there. It seemed like an offbeat place to anchor an offbeat neighborhood. Here is a short article about the history of the business from radio station WDBM.
Sadly, they closed up in early 2020. Surprisingly, this wasn’t a COVID loss: they were having their liquidation sale already in February. I suspect the beginning of the end actually came in 2017 when the original owner, James McFarland, died. I note from city records that the property was sold by McFarland’s estate in January 2020 to “McFarland Sisters Enter L L C.” I imagine that the hot tub business wasn’t what it once was, and the family decided the real estate was more valuable.
Looking east on East Michigan Avenue.
As for the history of the property, it was built in 1947 as Bagger Trailer Sales, and was sold to George H. Rowley in 1952 to become an auto agency. It spent a while as a B.F. Goodrich tire shop in the 1970s, and then in the 1980s and 90s was Delphi Stained Glass. Hotwater Works moved in around 1997.
This stamp is in front of a vacant lot on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street, just west of South Hayford Avenue. I didn’t get a picture of it because it was dark, but you might know this vacant lot as the one that hosts the teepee-like art installation(?) made of logs.
KMI Road Maintenance LLC is based in Burton, Michigan. According to their Web site, “KMI Road Maintenance LLC is a hard surface repair contractor serving Genesee and the surrounding counties. KMI Road Maintenance specializes in concrete and asphalt repair and maintenance of both commercial and residential properties.” I’m a little surprised to find their stamp here, since this county doesn’t border Genesee, but it’s not too far away. Interestingly, their Web site also states that their maintenance division serves as research and development for their equipment manufacturing business in North Branch.
