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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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Marigold Ave., East Lansing, T L Contracting, 2021

On Sunday I decided to walk around the Flowerpot neighborhood in East Lansing after dark, out of the belief that there might be a lot of Christmas displays still up there. This turned out to be a mistake on several counts: the neighborhood has few streetlights, so it was unsettlingly dark; only part of the neighborhood has sidewalks, and they were as perilously icy as the roads; and there were only a scant few Christmas displays. It was a pretty miserable walk, one that took nearly an hour despite covering only about a mile and a half of ground, and near the end of it I realized I had dropped my lens cap and couldn’t be bothered to retrace to look for it.

Still, I did have one success: I found an interesting sidewalk stamp that was near enough one of the few streetlights to register in a photograph. It’s a T L Contracting stamp, and while I’ve found one before, it was a lot plainer than this one. This one is on the north side of Marigold Avenue between Hicks and Larkspur.

This new T L stamp uses the modular style – I think of it as the “hamburger” – that a lot of more recent stamps share, including the more recent O & M stamps. It adds something I have never seen in another contractor stamp, the contractor’s phone number. It makes sense for them to use a stamp as advertising in this way, and I’m just surprised I’ve never seen it before. The phone number is a little hard to make out in this light but it is (517) 669-0600, which I can link with the T L Contracting (or as they actually style it, TL Contracting) located on Industrial Parkway in Lansing. They don’t have a Web site I can find, but they do have a Facebook page.

The last line seems to be “Lansing, MI” and a hard-to-read zip code, probably 48906, since that’s what their zip is. 48906. I find it odd to include the zip when they don’t have the rest of the address and I wonder if they thought “Lansing, MI” on its own just didn’t take up enough space on the line.

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Elizabeth St., survey monument

I must have passed this disc, in the sidewalk on the north side of Elizabeth Street between Regent and Clemens, hundreds of times, and yet I’d never noticed it before. For some reason I stopped to look at it this time, thinking it was a groundwater well cover. To my surprise, it is something cooler (at least if you have my temperament): a survey monument, specifically a benchmark.

I don’t know much about survey monuments, but this one seems plainer and less informative than ones I have stumbled on elsewhere. I wonder what is hidden beneath the lid? It appears to be open up if a screw is removed. I also don’t know what the code on the rim means.

The marker is just at the edge of the snow-covered area closest to the viewer in this photo.

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Allen St., McNeilly Const., 1980

Here’s a glamour shot for you. You’ve seen the J. Carter stamp before. The McNeilly stamp hasn’t appeared here before, though others just like it from this vicinity have. But the real reason I wanted this photo is that it just looks so aesthetic when a dusting of snow puddles inside the letters of a contractor stamp. They’re such wonderful little artifacts in all seasons.

You can also see my boot print on the left, revealing the cleats I have to strap on to avoid wiping out on ice.

This is from the east side of Allen Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus, next to the Neogen building.

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Call St., missing sidewalk

Today’s entry wraps up my brief tour of the 800 block of Call Street on the old north side. I suppose this could be a “hall of shame” but since I don’t know when it dates from or what the story is behind it, I’ll file it under “curiosities” instead. It’s on the north side of the block, close to the corner of Seventh Avenue.

Inexplicably, despite the rest of this block of Call Street having sidewalks, this section has none. It doesn’t appear to be subsided under the grass, or crumbled away. No, it appears that there has never been a sidewalk here. The sidewalk disappears (just after a 1940s DPW stamp) and then reappears before the intersection, and I cannot fathom any reason for this.

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Call St., Eastlund Concrete, 2005

Continuing my brief tour of the 800 block of Call Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues: this stamp is from the south side of the block. Eastlund Concrete stamps are common enough, but it’s the misprint of the date that got my attention.

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Call St., Cleghorn Const., 1962

Continuing my look at the 800 block of Call Street between 7th and 8th Avenues: this stamp is on the north side of the street and is a new contractor for this blog! Hooray! The stamp is dated 1962, which is the same year the house it is in front of was built. Perhaps the sidewalk was laid during the construction of the property. The house is the newest one on the block. The next oldest ones are from the 1940s. The majority of houses on the block are from the 1920s, but their next-door neighbor to the west is a house from 1880! It pre-dates the next oldest house on the block by 40 years. Intriguing.

I haven’t had much luck turning up information about Cleghorn Construction. From old State Journal classifieds, I can see that there was a John Cleghorn associated with Capitol City Realty around this time, but I don’t know if there is a connection.

Happy new year to both of my readers!

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Call St., C. Wilkinson, 1964

I picked a street I hadn’t been to before to scout for sidewalk stamps today. The lucky street was Call Street, on the old north side, chosen for being somewhat near an errand I was on. The next few days of blogging will be stamps and curiosities from the 800 block of Call.

Pardon the poor legibility; it was underwater thanks to snow melt.

This is a C. Wilkinson stamp in front of a house on the north side of Call, at the northwest corner of Call and Eighth Avenue. Yes, Lansing has an Eighth Avenue, a much smaller street than the better-known Eighth Street. There is also a longer Seventh Avenue one block west, but no other numbered avenues I know of. Eighth Street is sensibly named: it is (more or less) the eighth street from the dividing line downtown. I have no idea how Seventh and Eighth Avenues come by their names.

The stamp is located in the puddle seen in this photo. The cross street ahead is Eighth Avenue.

I have found a few C. Wilkinson stamps before, all from the 1960s. I still haven’t been successful finding anything out about C. Wilkinson. I wonder if it might be the Charles H. Wilkinson (1907-1981) who is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, but I have no basis for connecting them other than the name and date, so it’s a long shot.

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The City Code on Sidewalk Clearing

This wasn’t a good night to hunt sidewalk stamps because so many sidewalks were covered in snow and ice. The ice is the worst, but that’s inevitably what the snow becomes, left long enough. Last year I slipped on an icy walk and fell flat on my back without a chance to brace myself. I cracked my head so hard that my extremities went numb and I had to lie there for a few minutes, so I have gotten very gunshy about icy sidewalks and very judgmental of people who leave them that way.

So, today’s entry is the city code on sidewalk clearing.

1020.06. – Snow and ice.

(a) No person shall permit any snow or ice to remain on any public sidewalk adjacent to any house, building or lot owned or occupied by that person, or on the public sidewalk adjacent to any multifamily dwelling or unoccupied house, building or lot owned by that person, for more than 24 hours after the same has fallen or formed. The property owner, as used in this section, shall be the owner of record whose name appears on the City’s property assessment records.

(b) No person shall place or cause to be placed ice or snow upon a right-of-way so as to impair vehicular or pedestrian traffic.

Codified Ordinances of Lansing, Michigan, part 10, Street and Sidewalk Areas

Note the 24 hour rule in (a). They used to give you 24 hours after the snow had stopped falling, but several years ago this was changed to 24 hours after the snow starts. This is because we had a year so snowy that a few times it essentially fell continuously for days, leaving them unable to cite people who left it to pile up on the sidewalk.

Part (c) just gives the penalties for violations, and that’s long and dull, so I’ll skip to (d):

(d) It shall be the duty of the Public Service Department to give general notice to every owner, possessor or occupier of land and every person having charge of any land within the city by publication at least once in a newspaper of general circulation in the city of the requirements that (1) property owners must remove snow or ice from a public sidewalk as stated in subsection (a); (2) causing ice or snow to be placed upon a right-of-way so as to impair vehicular or pedestrian traffic is prohibited as stated in subsection (b); and (3) the city may remove or cause to be removed the snow or ice and the property owner will be assessed the City’s removal cost, including an administrative fee, as established by resolution from time to time as stated in subsection (c). In addition to this published notice, the Public Service Department shall give notice to every owner, possessor or occupier of land, and to every person having charge of any land within the city by placing a posting on the property at least 24 hours after snow or ice has fallen or formed. said posting shall include at minimum the following provisions: [recap of the rules and penalties, plus the date and time the snow violation notice was posted] … The failure of any person to receive the notice shall not affect the validity of any action taken under this section.

Codified Ordinances of Lansing, Michigan, part 10, Street and Sidewalk Areas

Part (d) is the part that the local alt-weekly the City Pulse probably loves, since they seem to have ended up as the paper of record for legal notices that have to be published in a general circulation newspaper. I guess they’re cheaper than the Lansing State Journal.

On to enforcement:

(e) Any person in violation of subsection (a) or (b) of this section shall also be responsible for a municipal civil infraction and may be fined in accordance with Section 203.06 of this Code. For purposes of establishing civil fines, all public sidewalks and rights-of-way shall be divided into two tiers, as follows:

(1) Tier one shall be every public sidewalk adjacent to a roadway with a speed limit of 30 mph or more.

(2) Tier two shall be all public sidewalks which are not tier one.

(f) A police officer or duly authorized agent of the City shall issue a snow violation citation to the occupant or owner of any property in violation of this section.

Codified Ordinances of Lansing, Michigan, part 10, Street and Sidewalk Areas

It’s interesting to note that failure to clear the sidewalk apparently results in a higher fine on a street with a speed limit at or above 30. I suppose that’s because the hazards to pedestrians from having to divert into the street become higher.

Finally, my favorite part:

The Director of Public Service shall designate personnel to be authorized to enforce this section. After such authorization, each designated person shall subscribe to an oath and place the same on file with the City Clerk. The oath shall be in substantially the following form:

“I do solemnly swear (to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and) that I will faithfully discharge my duties in enforcing the provisions of Section 1020.06 of the Codified Ordinances of the City of Lansing.”

Codified Ordinances of Lansing, Michigan, part 10, Street and Sidewalk Areas

That’s right, anyone deputized to post a snow violation notice on your door is supposed to be made to swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. That same language appears in other places in the ordinances that deal with people being deputized for property code enforcement. Fealty to the Constitution really seems to be above the pay grade of a code compliance officer. I do wonder what the meaning of the parenthetical clause is. Is that part optional? If so, why is it here at all?