This one is on the front walk of a house on the north side of Jerome Street between Custer and Rumsey. Unfortunately it is not quite legible in full. The name appears to be two initials and then a surname. The surname looks like it starts with “Look-” but might actually be “Locke” as I can find evidence of a family with that name in Lansing in this time period. The line underneath that is totally illegible. I had no joy trying to find any contractor matching these details. At least the date is clear enough.
The stamp is diagonal in the bottom right corner of the sidewalk end of the front walk.
Here is a mystery from the west side of Rumsey Avenue between Jerome and Vine, in the Eastfield neighborhood. The name is illegible but the layout looks like it might be an arch. I don’t recognize the style as matching one of the usual suspects, and it’s also placed strangely, close to vertically centered, but off on the right side of the block.
Looking north on Rumsey, with the stamp bottom right.
This is an intriguing mystery, on the west side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine. I have walked past this pair of stamps at different times of day, hoping I would find some combination of light and shadow that would make one of them legible, but I have given up. They are just too worn to give up their identity. The part I can make out, or at least I think I can, is the bottom arc: it appears to be “LANSING MICHIGAN.”
The southern stamp.
The style, typeface, and inclusion of the city and state are features characteristic of early stamps. Unfortunately, I can’t make out either the name or a date. The top arc is surely a name, and the depressed area in the center could well be a date, but there’s not enough left to have even a clue what it is. There are two stamps. The southern one has the somewhat readable bottom line, but the rest is hopeless. The northern stamp is deeper but no more readable, except that the first letter of the first line might be a K.
The northern stamp.
I’m sorry to say that this one is probably totally lost, except as a reminder of how old the sidewalks are and how many little mysteries are written on them.
Looking south on North Foster from the northern stamp.
This stamp on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Prospect is small and indistinct. I suppose that’s why I have evidently overlooked it many, many times; this is a block I walk often and yet I don’t remember noticing it before.
The date seems to be 1952, but the name is a puzzle. I am pretty confident it is _ _ G L _. I also think the first letter is R, or maybe B, and the second letter looks like an E. What do you think?
Looking south on Clemens. The stamp is on the far end of the nearest full slab, facing the other way.
This stamp – alas, largely illegible – is on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
The name appears to be [something] Cox, but I don’t have any leads on that contractor. The date looks like 1950, but looks a bit like 1980 too.
Looking south on South Magnolia Avenue. The stamp is on the nearest block, below the Cantu & Sons mark. It’s hard to point a camera at a sidewalk without getting a Cantu & Sons stamp.
This stamp is on a driveway apron on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. The last name is clearly Jones, but I am not entirely confident about what precedes that. It looks like “T.Q.” or at least “something Q” or maybe “something O.”
Unfortunately, with such a common name it is usually very difficult to figure out anything about the contractor, and this is not an exception. I haven’t been able to find anything about a cement contractor named Jones operating in that time period.
The stamp is on the near end of the driveway apron, oriented to face the street.
Update 3/14/22: I saw this in better light the other day and I am now pretty sure it’s T.D. Jones. Still no luck figuring out who that is.
This tough-to-read stamp is on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. I can be fairly confident that the last name is “West,” but what comes before that is illegible. It looks like two initials.
The only lead I have is a series of classified advertisements that ran in the Lansing State Journal in March and May of 1953: “CEMENT – And concrete work… Phone Dick Connick, 97392, or Dick West, 23050.” Searching for references to Dick West in the LSJ are stymied by the existence of a UPI correspondent by that name.
This stamp is in front of Foster Garden, a community garden, on the east side of South Foster Avenue, south of Marcus. The date is clear enough; the name is illegible. It seems to end with -PA. The letter before that might be I, or might be part of something worn away.
Whenever the county doesn’t know what to do with a property that ends up in the Land Bank due to tax foreclosure, it says “um… tear the house down and build a community garden!” As a result there are a truly ridiculous number of community gardens on the east side, especially in the Urbandale neighborhood, and places where the houses are sparse.
For a couple of years in the 2000s, I want to say ’07-’08, I had a community garden plot in the Foster Garden. I would ride my bike there to tend tomatoes, herbs, and lettuce. It was exciting at first, and I even made a little sign declaring it the “[Lastname] Farm,” but eventually I got tired of having to scoop diminishing water from the provided rain barrels. I decided it was easier to stay home and tend my own garden, even though I can’t grow vegetables in it. (My yard is shaded in almost every part by trees.)
This one caught my eye between its 1926 date, its nice design, and its jaunty diagonal placement, so I had to capture it even though it is actually on the edge of someone’s driveway. That’s a first for the blog, I think, though I’ve done driveway aprons before. It’s placed in the lower right corner of a driveway on the north side of Vine just east of the corner of Clemens. It belongs to the house on that corner. I took a couple of photos, one with and one without flash, figuring I would be able to work out the contractor’s name when I got home. It was dark, and it’s often easier to look at what the camera saw than use my own eyes in that kind of light.
When I got home I was mildly dismayed to discover that it’s the same mysterious contractor I previously wrote about, and the name is no more legible this time. If anything, it’s worse. I had taken it to read “E. Schullberger” before, but could not find anyone by that name when searching old Lansing State Journals, which makes it suspect. Update 5/9/21: I now believe this to be E. Schneeberger.
Looking east on Fairview. The stamp is just left of bottom center, in the bottom right corner of the presumed original driveway. The car is parked on an additional (asphalt) paved area that appears to be a later addition.
The flash didn’t prove illuminating, but here it is with.
As sometimes happens, I had already photographed something else (something on my “to do list”) when I stumbled across this one later on my walk. I decided to bump the other one to another time. This one is on the south side of Vine Street between Fairview and Clemens.
I am quite sure this one is from the 1920s and fairly confident the date is 1926. I thought at first that the contractor’s name was totally illegible, but upon studying the photograph I think I see “E Schullberger.” Searching the Lansing State Journal for that name gets me nothing, so I could very well be wrong. I would welcome alternate suggestions to research. Update 5/9/21: I now believe this to be E. Schneeberger.
Looking west on Vine Street. That’s Clemens in the distance.
