No stamp here, just an oddity. The sidewalk at the southwest corner of Leslie and Malcolm X Streets splits. What is presumably the original sidewalk heads inconveniently away from the intersection, so a new strip (asphalt, not proper sidewalk) has been added that better follows the curve of Malcolm X.
I assume that the concrete sidewalk follows the original alignment of Malcolm X, when it was Main Street, and before it got moved around during the construction of I-496. The house directly across Leslie, which the concrete sidewalk seems to aim at, was only built in 2005.
This isn’t the only oddity in the vicinity. The nearby houses violate my sense of orderliness, as they don’t follow Lansing’s code for house numbering (which is usually very well observed). For some reason, house numbers to the south jump abruptly from 910 to 948. Blocks usually top out at 37.
Yesterday I made a largely failed attempt to scout a new neighborhood for interesting stamps. I decided to go to the Flowerpot neighborhood, which I had heard of but never been to before, to the best of my recollection. It is a cluster of streets mostly named for flowers (hence the name) located at the western edge of East Lansing south of Kalamazoo. This little pocket of land is an area of town that has always been vague and fuzzy in my mental map of Lansing. I tend to think of Kalamazoo as leaving the east edge of Lansing, going through a sad little slice of Lansing Township near the freeway overpass, and then just cutting through a short, indistinct area of nothing before getting to MSU. The Flowerpot neighborhood is hidden away in that “short, indistinct area” which isn’t quite as “nothing” as my mental map makes it out to be.
I thought it would be interesting to see the neighborhood and perhaps find stamps that are contemporary to the development of the streets, but my trip wasn’t so lucky. First of all, nearly all the streets are marked as no parking at any time on both sides, so a quick stop on my way home from work turned into a parking hassle. Second, I quickly discovered that most of the streets have no sidewalks (and no curbs either, giving it a rural look). Only the two longest ones, Marigold and Narcissus, have sidewalks. Third, on a short walk as dusk started to settle in, I wasn’t able to find any interesting stamps. Most were Able or L & L stamps from the 90s and 2000s. I finally had to give up and shoot this BBRPCI stamp on the west side of Narcissus Drive, between Lilac Avenue and Daisy Lane, before I ran out of light.
Still, it was interesting to see the neighborhood, and it struck me that it seems like it is probably a great place to trick-or-treat. ELi (East Lansing Info, the East Lansing digital newspaper) has an interesting article on the history of the Flowerpot neighborhood. The article explained something that puzzled me on my visit, which is why all the streets were named for flowers except the theme-breaking “Hicks Drive.” It was originally the Hicks farm until the Hicks family began selling lots from it in the 1920s.
I happened to walk past and catch sight of workers smoothing out some brand new concrete in front of the Allen Place project, continuing my observations on the progress of Allen Place’s sidewalk. I didn’t see any sign of stamping yet, sorry to say. I’m afraid this is almost certainly going to end up a Hall of Shame candidate.
I live in Lansing but work in Mount Pleasant. I’ve digressed from metro Lansing before to post some stamps from Albion, where my parents live, but haven’t done any from Mount Pleasant. So, while taking my lunch break walk today, I decided to see what I could find.
The southern stamp.
I walked probably a mile along South Washington Street before I finally found any stamps at all. I am going to assume Mount Pleasant has no ordinance requiring sidewalk stamping. I did eventually find a pair of stamps bookending a long stretch on the east side of Washington between Gaylord and May. Eastlund Concrete gets around: they are also one of the only stamps I have been able to find near my parents’ house in Albion, as well as showing up frequently in Lansing. They’re based in Holt, south of Lansing, making Mt. Pleasant a pretty good hike for them. They evidently are also pretty consistent stampers, since it appears that stamping sidewalks is uncommon in both Albion and Mount Pleasant.
I had to stop the car and take a look at this tiny little stub of a street in the Groesbeck neighborhood because I was amazed to see that it not only had a name, it had a sidewalk, on the west side of the block. I found the only stamp on it. The name is mostly illegible, but from experience I can recognize it as an Audia Concrete stamp.
I found myself wondering why the grandiosely-named Somercroft Drive existed. It seems to exist just to serve one of the entrance drives to the adjacent Post Oak elementary school, but it seems like it could have just been a driveway, rather than a named street. That got me wondering whether it used to be longer and perhaps connected to Lake Lansing Road to the north, so when I got home I checked HistoricAerials.com. No, the street has always been this long. It was created when the neighborhood was developed in the 1960s. When it was built, there was nothing north of here but farm fields. Today there is an office park. Perhaps they were leaving open the possibility of expanding the neighborhood to the north.
Looking north at the entirety of Somercroft Drive.
The sidewalk looks like its only possible use would be for children walking to and from Post Oak school, although it is on the wrong side of the road for that and does not connect with any path that leads to the school. In fact, given that it seems like a relatively low-use sidewalk, I am impressed that it got work done as recently as 2006.
I wonder what the shortest named street in Lansing is. This one has to be in the running.
I’ve been watching this sidewalk being replaced in front of the Allen Place (née Allen Neighborhood Center) development, on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Allen and Shepard. I’m pretty sure it’s going to end up being a Hall of Shame candidate, since even more has gone in since I took this photo and there is no sign of any stamp yet, but I suppose until it’s completely finished I can’t say so definitively. Anyway, it’s still interesting to get to see a new sidewalk slab from the side. I wonder if they’re always this thick.
Now, at the end of a several day run of Hickory Street stamps, I have gotten to my reason for walking that block. Not the stamp itself – E.F. Sheets stamps are common enough and I’ve covered them before in the blog – but the house it’s in front of. To explain why the house is significant, I have to back up a bit.
One of my major finds in the early days of the blog was a 1908 stamp from J.F. Sowa on Prospect Street. As I noted at the time, I was unable to find anything out about Sowa because of the confounding existence of another J.F. Sowa who had authored a notable book in computer science. It turns out there was another reason. I asked my mom if she could use her Ancestry.com membership to make a quick check for a J.F. Sowa in Lansing in the early 1900s. Mom went above and beyond and worked really hard on it, sending me frustrated updates from time to time. Then, at last, in an email titled “BINGO!!!” she reported finding him in the 1910 census: John Fred Sowa, born in 1862 in Prussia, immigrated in 1896, currently living on Hickory Street with his wife Minnie (formally Anna Wilhelmina, according to other sources). Here’s what made the search harder for both of us. Between the 1910 and 1920 census, he changed his surname’s spelling to Sova. This would have been more phonetic (in English) for the Polish and German pronunciation of Sowa. (I also wonder if he might have been the John Sovey mentioned in the famous article about the Bum Walks.)
Speaking of bum walks: sadly, and ironically, the sidewalk in front of Sowa’s house is in bad shape due to having subsided.
I then went to the city’s tax records look at the house it said he lived in, to see if it was still standing. Upon looking at the record, without exaggeration, I squealed with excitement. Someone with the last name Sova still owns the house! I don’t mean to sound like I am prying into the family’s business, but I am truly delighted that his family still has the house, and I wonder if they have any idea that a sidewalk in another neighborhood is still marked with their ancestor’s name. (Based on the names involved and other cursory research, I believe the current owner is a grandson of J.F.) While digging around, Mom communicated with another Ancestry user in Germany who is doing a family tree for Sowa’s wife’s family, and that person mentioned that Sowa showed up in the previous census at a different address on Hickory. He wondered if the street had been renumbered. I have another explanation. The house was only built in 1908, so wherever Sowa was living in 1900 could not have been this house. It seems that Sowa just liked Hickory Street, and evidently the Sovas still do. He must also have been doing well for himself since he seems to have moved into a brand new house.
J.F. Sowa’s house: staid but handsome in its way.
Ever since I found this out I’ve been meaning to make a pilgrimage to see the Sowa/Sova house, but it is just a bit far away for me to walk on my usual routes, so I kept putting it off. I finally stopped there, by car, on my way home from work. I was hoping so much that there would be an old Sowa stamp on this block, better yet in front of the house itself, but I didn’t find one. So I snapped a picture of the oldest stamp in front of the house, which sadly is only this one, from 1963. The house, by the way, is on the south side of Hickory between Euclid and Pennsylvania. It’s on a double lot and seems to have both a garage and a shed; I wonder how old the shed is and whether it might have been used in Sowa’s business.
Sowa/Sova died in 1934 at the age of 74, according to his stone in the Mount Hope Cemetery. It puts his birth year as 1859, which is slightly off the year given in the 1910 census, but I am pretty sure it is the same person.
This is a new contractor for the blog, and one of the newest stamps on the block of Hickory Street between Euclid and Pennsylvania. The stamp is on the north side of the street. It’s very sharp looking, with a hollow-letter style that I appreciate. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out who the contractor is. If you know, drop me a line.
I love running across really old, really worn stamps like this, even if there is an element of frustration to it when they are illegible. I almost didn’t see this one because it is so worn that only someone really looking for it (like me) would probably notice it at all. I can just make out “Stone Co.” as probably the second line. If there had been a date, I don’t see any sign of it now. The first line is totally illegible. My first thought is is of the Lansing Artificial Stone Co., but it has a very different style from the one I have found from that company, and the illegible part also doesn’t look long enough.
Alas, it will not be giving up its secrets to me. This is a block of houses that date from the late 1890s to early 1900s, so I would guess that this is one of the original pieces of sidewalk here.
Spots like this, where the sidewalk curves in to avoid an obstruction that is no longer present, are fairly common, but I notice them every time. I always wonder what was there and how long it’s been gone. I usually figure it’s a tree (because I have seen spots where the sidewalk does curve just like this for a tree), although this would be a somewhat odd placement for a street tree.
The driveway apron used to be narrower, as I can see from an old tax assessor’s photo, so apparently when it was widened the contractor added a little piece to fill in part of the semicircle.
This bit of sidewalk is on the north side of Hickory Street between Pennsylvania and Euclid. I walked this block for the first time this evening, so get ready for several days of Hickory photos.
