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.
This one is on the north side of Prospect Street between Eighth and Pennsylvania. The stamp is a clear example of the “second style” of Department of Public Works stamps. The date is much harder to read and it took me a second trip in better light before I made out enough of it to tell at least the decade. It is definitely a 1920s stamp and I am fairly confident it is 1926.
A tired-looking building that styles itself “Kalamazoo Plaza” sits at the northwest corner of East Kalamazoo Street and South Pennsylvania Avenue, and this stamp is on the Pennsylvania side of the property. In person I do think I see the faintest impression of a name above the date, but it is hopelessly illegible.
On the Pennyslvania side of the Dollar Palace/Falcon Auto Traders building.
The building was built in 1960, so the sidewalk probably had work done at the same time. Currently, the west side of the building is the closed-for-good husk of a neighborhood dollar store, Dollar Palace. The east side identifies itself as Falcon Auto Traders, though it does not really look like it is doing much in the way of auto trading. Prior to Falcon moving in, it was a pharmacy, Lansing Community Health Mart, until at least 2011.
Looking at the Falcon Auto Traders suite of the building. The taller side to the west, not visible, is the former Dollar Palace. The stamp is on the right side of the center slab.
At one point the building (I don’t know which suite) was home to Capital City Typing Service, which renamed itself Quality Typing Service later on, and may also have been known as Capitol Area Typing Service. The Lansing State Journal business pages of June 30, 1985, reported,
Capital City Typing Service, 925 E. Kalamazoo St., is under new management. The new owner, president is Lois “Jane” Joehlin, who has worked in the secretarial field for over 30 years and has an associate degree in business management.
The eastern suite of the building seen from Kalamazoo Street.
Recently my husband showed me a picture of this stamp, which he encountered on a walk. At first I thought it was the one on Bingham, which I had already covered, but when he said it was on Prospect Street, I set out to find it. It turned out to be a new one to me, mainly because it’s west of Pennsylvania and I rarely cross Pennsylvania on my walks. I had not walked past Eighth on Prospect before, and this stamp is on the south side of Prospect between Eighth and Hosmer.
It’s interesting to notice that the spacing of the date differs between this stamp and my previous J.P. Sleight 1908 stamp. Did they stamp each digit separately, or have two noticeably different date stamps?
This is a view west on Prospect. The stamp is too distant to make out, but it’s in front of the nearest visible house.
This walk is in good condition, the best of the J.P. Sleight walks I’ve found, so I hope it will remain here even if Mayor Schor is re-elected and fixes the sidewalks as promised.
This fortunately well-lit stamp is on the south side of Prospect Street between Pennsylvania and Eighth. There are a pair of them, and they appear to be handwritten. I had noticed this one before and found it curious, as X is an uncommon initial to appear in a contractor stamp.
I assumed it was a given name such as Xavier. Instead I have discovered that this is most likely the mark of Xtreme Mason Contractors of Laingsburg. Their slogan is “Xtreme Masonry: Fortified with Hell Bricks!”1
OK, no it isn’t. Their Web site says they are a 100% women-owned business, which might be a first for the blog, and that they specialize in commercial masonry repair and historic building restoration. They were founded in 2005.
Looking east toward Pennsylvania Avenue.
1 I borrowed this joke from a Zippy the Pinhead comic from, I think, the late 1990s. I wish I could find it again. It involves a discussion of things being promoted as “extreme” and ends with Zippy declaring, “Extreme Oreos! Fortified with hell sugar!”
This “Type 2” DPW stamp is on the south side of Eureka Street just west of Pennsylvania. It’s in front of a really handsome 1906 Dutch Colonial house.
You’ll have to take my word for it about the handsome house. I am reluctant to be too obviously pointing a camera at someone’s house when I’m wandering around outside at 11 at night.
It’s another 2016 stamp today, on the north side of West Michigan Avenue just south of Capitol, in front of Lansing City Hall. There are paired stamps on either end of a short run of new sidewalk.
Looking north on West Michigan. There is the Capitol, of course, and the State Holiday Tree on the left.
City Hall is a beautiful, mid-century modern building, evocative of a prosperous time in the city. I am very fond of it, which might put me in the minority (many residents seem to consider it ugly). The city has not always been a good custodian of it and has been trying to get rid of it. One of the last acts of Virg Bernero’s mayoral administration was to broker a deal to sell it for renovation into a hotel, with the plan being to move City Hall into the former Lansing State Journal building. The Schor administration put the brakes on that, leaving City Hall to continue indefinitely in its state of deferred maintenance.
The northern stamp.
I checked the copious pavement all around City Hall in hope of finding a stamp from its glory days, but to my surprise and disappointment, the only stamps I found were these new ones from Isabella Corp.
Lansing City Hall. This photo was taken from the approximate site of the northern stamp.
Here is my first downtown stamp. It’s on the south side of West Ottawa Street between Capitol and Washington, next to the Anderson House Office Building. I actually stopped briefly during my Silver Bells Virtual 5K Walk to take the photo. I was hoping to find something more unusual downtown, but disappointingly all the ones I passed were fairly recent and familiar. This one is impressively clear and sharp, but unfortunately undated.
It’s interesting how some stamps seem more common in some areas than others. I noticed quite a few Moore Trosper (or Moore-Trosper as it is rendered here) stamps downtown, but they are very uncommon in the east side neighborhoods.
Looking west on West Ottawa Street. The stamp is somewhere near the bottom of this photo, too dark to see.
