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Drury Ln., illegible (Lansing?)

I had never been to Drury Lane before to the best of my recollection, but sometime while doing some scouting for the blog I noticed its existence on the map and had been fascinated by it ever since. It’s so tiny (a block long) and yet has such a grand name. Timothy Bowman’s local history blog reports (from a 1940 State Journal article) that it was named after Drury L. Porter, son of the subdivision’s developer E.E. Porter. That’s as may be, but I would be very much surprised if it weren’t called “Lane” in order to evoke the famous Drury Lane of London. Unless, of course, Drury’s middle name was Lane, in which case he was the one with a London namesake! It actually used to be two blocks, with the western block (past Ballard) connecting to Walker Street, but (per HistoricAerials.com) the other block disappeared, houses and all, between 1970 and 1981. Now it ends at Ballard, with the former Demmer Corp. North Lansing Plant (now owned by Loc Performance Products Inc.) beyond. I wanted to see it, and find any stamps on it I could.

I parked on the slushy road (their plowing seems to have been even less effective than ours), got out of my car, and as soon as I stepped onto the sidewalk I noticed the telltale signs of a stamp among the slush. I pushed the slush aside and could see what is certainly a marking, but a largely illegible one. It looks like it might start with “Lansing,” which makes me suspect Lansing DPW, except that it doesn’t seem to match the style and has a placement near the middle of the block that I have never seen used by the DPW before. It also appears undated, but it could just be that any date has been obliterated.

This is the northeast corner of Drury and Ballard. Drury used to continue another block.

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Regent St., C.D. Chamberlain, 1950

This is an encore appearance by this hard-to-read C.D. Chamberlain stamp alongside the former Pagoda restaurant on the southwest corner of Regent and Michigan. I wanted to show how a previously illegible stamp can suddenly reveal itself under the right conditions. This one taunted me for a long time, until one day I had a eureka moment. This is the most legible I’ve ever see it, though, thanks to the perfect combination of snow-melt water and silt collecting in the shallow impressions.

This gives me an idea for my next big project, now that I’ve mined just about the entire east side for interesting stamps. I should go back and check the ones I originally tagged as illegible to see if anything has changed, ideally after a bit of wet weather has come through.

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Horton St., DPW, 1944

There are plenty of 1944 DPW stamps on Horton Street, but this one, on the east side of the street between Michigan and Jerome, is unusually placed. It’s on the sidewalk across the house’s driveway, and it faces sideways, toward the house, as though it were showing off to the homeowner.

This is in front of the same house as the nearly-gone hall of shame sidewalk from the last entry.

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Hall of shame: Horton St. mostly gone sidewalk

Today’s is the result of another to-do list failure. I had this in my notes: “East side near end of Horton – 1924? DPW (may need to be wet).” Being wet sometimes makes faded marks a little more legible. Yesterday the weather got significantly above freezing for the first time in a long time, so I thought it might be my chance. I walked up there and found that the sidewalk was wet, all right. In fact, the stretch of sidewalk near the end of Horton was under an inch of water. There would be no finding the stamp under that.

Walking back from there on Horton Street, I saw what looked like a grassy square with no sidewalk at all, which didn’t make sense. I stopped to look and realized it did have the remnants of a sidewalk, but it’s more than half gone. It has to have taken some time to let it get this bad. I am (a little) surprised the city will let sidewalks get this bad before requiring them to be replaced. This one gets entered into the Hall of Shame as maybe the worst sidewalk block on the east side. It’s on the east side of Horton between Michigan and Jerome.

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Hickory St., BBRPCI, 1985

I failed trying to collect the interesting unknown stamp on Hickory Street again. It was too dark by the time I managed to get there after work, and the nearest street light was out. I had to settle for this BBRPCI stamp next door. This is on the south side of Hickory between Euclid and Pennsylvania. It’s also quite close to the J.F. Sowa home that I wrote about previously.

Thank you, whoever lives here, for salting your sidewalk!

While I was scouting, I heard a tremendous rumbling, which was a train coming on the nearby tracks, on the other side of Euclid. I walked to the end of the street to watch it. It was quite loud as it passed, reminding me of my parents’ old house (which I lived in during school breaks from college). It was close to the railroad tracks in Chelsea, and a train would go by every night. At first it woke me all the time, but eventually it didn’t anymore.

The stamp is not really visible here, but it’s near the lower edge of the photo.
The train passing. The top of Boji Tower is visible beyond.
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Malcolm X St. sidewalk reconstruction

I had hopes of getting out to a stamp on my “to do” list for today’s entry. It’s one I spotted on a walk quite a while ago, on Hickory Street. It looked old and possibly novel, but it was too muddy to read. I thought if I got lucky someone might have shoveled the sidewalk, leaving a bit of snow in the stamp, because sometimes that makes the old ones more legible. Unfortunately, my plans came to nought due to having a very poor night’s sleep that meant I had to nap this afternoon and left me walking after dark again. So instead, I’ll just have to give you a bit of sidewalk news I ran across recently.

A segment of I-496 (the Olds Freeway) between Lansing Road and the Grand River will be undergoing a big reconstruction project that will start in April and run through the rest of 2022 and into 2023. 496 will be completely closed from June to November of this year. The reason I took notice of this for the sidewalk blog is this statement in an article from WLNS.com: “The project aims to widen I-496, resurface sidewalks, and upgrade ramps along the I-496 service drives between M-99 and Grand River.” (This is a somewhat confusing statement as it suggests Grand River Avenue, but 496 doesn’t touch Grand River. They meant the Grand River, as in the body of water.) By “the I-496 service drives” I have to assume they mean (at least in part) Malcolm X Street. Two important points for sidewalk fans. First, those new sidewalks had better be stamped, although the city’s recent track record with enforcing the sidewalk marking code has been very poor. Second, I had better get out there before April and start taking some sidewalk photos.

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Regent St., O & M, undated

The weather recently hasn’t been very conducive to hunting sidewalk stamps, so all I can do is show you something pretty. This O & M (city Operations & Maintenance) stamp is one you’ve seen before. In fact, it’s the first stamp ever featured in this blog. But this time it’s got a light dusting of snow in it, left behind after the sidewalk was cleared, and I just love how that looks.

It’s on the east side of Regent Street’s 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth.

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N. Clemens Ave., Neenah Foundry Co. water cover

This utility cover is set into the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, near the entrance to the parking lot that runs behind the Green Door bar and other businesses on that block. There is a hole through the company name, but it is the Neenah Foundry Co. of Neenah, Wisconsin.

Neenah Foundry is still in business, though these days they are part of a larger company known as NEI (Neenah Enterprises, Inc.). I’m disappointed that their Web site doesn’t have a company history on it, which is always what I hope for. It does say that they have “almost 150 years of experience” and that their “most recognizable products include manhole covers and frames, inlet frames and grates, tree grates, and cast-iron trench grates in roads and airport runways across America and internationally.”

Looking south toward Michigan. The back of Asian Gourmet and the Green Door can be seen past the parking lot.

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Marcus St., Cantu & Sons, 1988

This stamp, from the south side of Marcus Street between Clemens and Fairview, is a typical example of a Cantu & Sons stamp with the 1987 date corrected to 1988. There are a lot of ones like that around the neighborhood. The real reason I photographed it, though, was the odd graffiti, added as though an addendum to the contractor stamp: “The Butterfly.”

There is something else scrawled in the corner to the left, but I wasn’t able to make it out in the current light.

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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.