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E. Michigan Ave., illegible name, 1960?

This remnant of a stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Clifford and Ferguson. Only the faintest impression remains of a date. I caught sight of it on a nighttime walk and I suspect it would only be visible by streetlight; anything brighter would probably completely wash it out. It’s on one end of a set of three slabs of similar composition, likely poured at the same time. All three are lined up on one side of a double-wide sidewalk. The slabs side-by-side with these look to be of a different vintage.

I can’t be sure the date is 1960. It might be 1980. It looks more like 1960 to me and the extremely worn state of it also inclines me to the earlier date.

The stamp isn’t visible in the photo; I’m standing roughly over it.

This is out in front of the driveway of Mercy Ambulance, which surely also has something to do with how worn it is. Mercy Ambulance is a starkly modern building for the block, barnlike, and yet I find it strangely appealing in an ugly sort of way. According to their Web site, Mercy Ambulance was founded in 1955 by Rodney Palmer. As the current President is Dennis G. Palmer, I am assuming it is still in the same family. I thought perhaps the building dated from 1955 and was built for Mercy Ambulance, but that turned out to be incorrect. The city’s records say it was built in 1940. Mercy Ambulance was originally located on Pennsylvania Avenue and, according to an old issue of the Eastside Neighborhood Organization News, moved to this building in 1971.

The stamp is on the second full block away from the camera, facing the other direction.

Prior to Mercy Ambulance moving in, the building (and its attached apartment) belonged to Mundo Faggion Plumbing and Heating. According to a January 24, 1994, obituary in the Lansing State Journal, Armando “Mundo” Faggion founded that business in 1929.

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Shepard St., Dan(?) Wagner, 1962

It’s not clear whether this stamp on the west side of Shepard Street (south of Elizabeth, before the I-496 dead end) is a contractor’s mark or graffiti. It’s done so crudely that I’d be inclined to say graffiti, except that it reminds me of this handwritten L. Miller stamp, which I have reason to believe is a contractor’s mark. The last name is definitely Wagner. The first name is rather obscure but might be Dan or Dave.

I can’t find anything about a contractor named Wagner working in the area in the right sort of time period, so if this is a contractor’s stamp it’s a mysterious one.

Looking north on Shepard Street, with Elizabeth Street in view.

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S. Francis Ave., T.A. Forsberg, 1962

This barely-visible stamp is on the east side of South Francis Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. Although it’s not much to look at, I thought I would record it because I haven’t collected many from Francis and because it’s not going to be legible much longer. It’s just possible to make it out as a T.A. Forsberg stamp from 1962, and only because I can compare it to other Forsbergs I’ve seen.

Facing south on Francis, with the stamp on the nearest sidewalk block.
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N. East St., BdWL, 1960

This is my first stamp from the north side, so it’s a shame that it’s nothing too remarkable. It’s on the east side of North East Street between Gier and Call Streets. We’ve seen plenty of BdWL stamps before, and I am no wiser about what that stands for and who it is. I was here today checking out the going-out-of-business sale of Vet’s Too; the owner is retiring.

Vet’s Too is next door to, and shares a parking lot with, Vet’s Ace Hardware, widely regarded as the best hardware store in town. I admit I sometimes call it the “scary hardware store” not because it’s bad but because it’s too good. It’s crammed floor-to-ceiling with the greatest variety of hardware I’ve ever seen, and the effect is overwhelming.

Looking north toward Vet’s, with the stamp in the second-from-front block.

Vet’s Too is a boutique of clothes, jewelry, decor, and gifts, and I had never been in it before. The wonderful glass block windows give the building a distinctive 1950s appearance, despite the unfortunately drab gray paint. It was certainly here when the BdWL stamp was placed (the online property records say it was built in 1952), but I don’t know what it was. My searches are strangely failing to come up with references to the address before 1972.

This north-facing door is the main entrance to Vet’s Too, but it looks like it might not have been the original main entrance.

By 1972 it was an X-rated theater called the Pussycat Theater. (I learned in the course of this that Pussycat Theater was a very common name for such movie houses in the 1970s, including a famous California chain.) Ads for the theater continue to appear in the Lansing State Journal until at least 1985, but I am not sure when it closed. I did find some forum chatter with someone’s recollections suggesting it closed between 1997 and 2001.

On the left is the west-facing door. The corner-cut really looks like a door should be there, but it’s just a window.

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Walsh St., A. Brayton, 1968

I walked a 5K today (the Mayor’s River Walk) and so I didn’t take my usual neighborhood walk. Realizing I didn’t have a stamp for the blog, I suddenly decided to pull into the next neighborhood street I came to as I drove home from Potter Park on Pennsylvania. The next one turned out to be Walsh Street, so this stamp is from the north side of Walsh between Pennsylvania and Parker. I’m not sure if the date on this one is 1966 or 1968 but I mildly favor 1968.

It’s a contractor I haven’t seen before. I took my usual approach for finding contractors when it’s in the “Initial(s) and Last Name” format that often comes up in older stamps: I checked Find a Grave for people buried in a cemetery in or near Lansing with a matching name and a plausible birth and death date. In this case I found Alton M. Brayton (1908-1986) buried in Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in DeWitt.

Facing west on Walsh Street. This is the better side of the street, as far as sidewalks; the walks on the other side are so crumbled as to be totally absent in some places. The city should be ashamed to have let the sidewalks get so bad. That’s some Lansing Township level BS.

Armed with a full name, I searched again and found the June 13, 1974, Clinton County News (bless Clinton County for having scans of many old issues online). On page 11A, a brief piece titled “Sign Ovid Street Contract” accompanies a photograph:

It was contract signing time in Ovid Monday as village officials, engineers and contractors inked the
line for $230,000 street building project. Signing the contracts are [from left] Earl Canfield, village
clerk; Carl McIntosh of Capitol Consultants; Alton Brayton, contractor and Dale Crossland, village clerk.

Clinton County News, June 13, 1974, p. 11A

The photo is very muddy because the paper has been scanned in black-and-white, but you can get at least a little bit of an idea what Brayton looked like.

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Elizabeth St., Illegible [Actually L. Ketchum, 1961?]

This illegible stamp is on the north side of Elizabeth Street between Clemens and Fairview, just west of the alley. It doesn’t resemble any stamp that I recognize, but I can’t make out more than couple of letters. It looks to start with a K or B.

I went in closer than usual for the photo to try to make details more apparent, in case anyone else has something jump out at them.

The date is also illegible. I can say with fair confidence that one digit is a “6”, but I can’t be sure whether it’s the last digit or the penultimate one, so I can’t even narrow down a decade.

Looking east on Elizabeth Street. That’s an alley just ahead.

Update 4/28/21: Walking past it in different light, it suddenly jumped out at me that it is an L. Ketchum stamp. The date is almost certainly 1960s, like the other one I’ve found, and I think it’s 1961.

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S. Hayford Ave., DPS, 1964

This is the latest DPS (Department of Public Service) stamp I have found, and the only DPW/DPS/etc. stamp I have found from the 1960s. It’s on a stretch of sidewalk in front of Urbandale Farm, on the east side of South Hayford Avenue between Horton and the dead end. Hayford has lost the last stretch of sidewalk on the west side of the street to the Urbandale demolition project, but most of the east side’s sidewalk is still intact since there are three houses still hanging on to the south of Urbandale Farm.

The southern stamp of a pair. The last digit looks altered, as though a “4” were written overtop something else.
The northern stamp makes the decade impossible to read, but the “4” is more prominent.

Urbandale Farm was the first big urban farm project in Lansing. It sits on a site that once held the Hayford Street Pumping Station. Yes, Hayford Street. When I first ran into references to Hayford Street in the Lansing City Code, I thought it was a careless error. But this photo of the old pumping station, clearly marked “Hayford Street Pumping Station,” tells me otherwise. The photo, dated 1985, comes from the Caterino Real Estate Image Collection at the Capital Area District Library. David Caterino, from the 1960s through the 1980s, used to drive around and take photos of notable structures, often because he had reason to think they were about to be demolished. Indeed, there is a photo of its demolition on page B1 of the Lansing State Journal, May 20, 1986. The caption reads,

LANDMARK FALLS

Lansing’s Hayford Street Pumping Station, built in 1932, fell to a wrecking company crane Monday. It is to be replaced by a new station on Mifflin Street on Lansing’s east side.

Mifflin Street, you say? If that isn’t an error, then Mifflin has also ascended from being a mere Street to a lofty Avenue sometime after May 1986. At the moment, all the streets from Clemens east to Mifflin (which includes Hayford) are Avenues. I need to get old official maps to figure out whether some of the others are also former Streets and when they changed.

The fence around the Urbandale Farm. It dates from the pump station days, since it can be seen in another Caterino photo.

The Hayford station was apparently desperately overdue for replacement at the time. It all too often broke down, causing around 40 nearby houses to flood with sewage. It’s just a shame that the new one (a baleful box on a hill at the south end of Mifflin) doesn’t have the sense of style and propriety that the 1930s edifice did.

Looking north on Hayford, with Urbandale Farm on the right.

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S. Fairview Ave., Don Otis, 1968

I took another walk around Urbandale this evening and made a point of walking on the tracks of removed sidewalks. (I discovered that the 700 block of Francis has the longest ex-sidewalk I’ve found yet.) But that’s not the point of this entry. No, this one is to show a name I haven’t covered yet, Don Otis. It’s on the west side of South Fairview Avenue between Elizabeth and Harton.

I wish I could tell you more about Don Otis, but all I know is that he advertised cement work in the Lansing State Journal between 1951 and 1973.

Here’s a closer look at the date in case you want to second guess me on it.

The house this one is in front of was built in 1968, the same year as this stamp. (At least, I think so, though the last digit is a little indistinct and I’m willing to entertain the idea that it’s a 1966.) That’s an unusually “new” house for the neighborhood.

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Regent St., C. Gossett, 1963

Not much to say about this one; just continuing to plug away at eventually cataloguing the entirety of Regent Street. This presumed pair of C. Gossett stamps (I know it looks like “O” but elsewhere I have seen clear enough ones to know it’s “C”) is on the west side of the street.

This one’s almost illegible, but I assume it the partner of the other.
Looking south on Regent. The stamps are somewhere in this stretch…