This very worn Cantu & Sons stamp is on the east side of South Hayford Avenue just south of Prospect Street. Look, you try finding something more exciting when it dumped eight inches of snow overnight. I was ready to kiss the ground in gratitude every time I got to a cleared sidewalk.
All that snow is very pretty, though.
Snow sometimes works against me, and sometimes with me. I was walking along the north side of Elizabeth Street, and just east of Leslie I saw the snow highlighting some of the letters in a worn, old Department of Public Works stamp. I took some snow with my mitten and rubbed it into the rest of the stamp (feeling awkward as I realized a dog walker had seen me do this) and this is what it looked like. I wonder what the next people to walk this way thought of the white highlighting that I had left behind.
This is the same principle behind rubbing chalk or flour into gravestone inscriptions, except unlike those practices (which are very much frowned upon) this won’t cause any harm. A little while later on my walk, on Allen Street, the snow was my friend again. It caused the start of an old-looking stamp that I’ve never seen before to jump out at me. I’ve walked that block many times without noticing it. I got down on the ground and sprinkled some extra snow, rubbing it in to try to make the stamp legible. I couldn’t quite do it. Besides, where the date would have (or should have) been there was a patch of obscuring ice. I added it to my list of places to check again later.
I have thought about trying to do rubbings of the sidewalk as people do with gravestones. Even that practice, though not nearly as harmful as rubbing material into the inscription directly, is controversial. It is said to risk damaging an already old inscription, or at least contribute to wearing it down. It sounds absurd, I suppose, to worry about causing wear to something designed to be walked on for a hundred years. But I treasure these fading markings and don’t want to hasten their illegibility. I have picked up a habit of avoiding walking on them. Maybe I’ll try this method of using aluminum foil, which is supposed to be the most harmless way to read gravestones. If, that is, I can get past how self conscious kneeling in front of someone’s house with a sponge and a roll of Reynolds Wrap is going to make me.
I was surprised and delighted to find this faint George Hagamier mark on the west side of Kipling Boulevard, alongside Capital Imaging, the commercial printer on the corner of Michigan and Kipling. I considered leaving it until I could come to it in better light, but then I remembered that sometimes streetlights make something more visible, so there would be no guarantee it would look better in daylight. The fact that I have walked this block several times without noticing it suggests that the light must have been lucky, so I decided to grab it now.
I kicked ice away to find a date and was disappointed to see that it was totally illegible. I could just make out the impression of where it would have been, but there is no hope of reading it. It is rare to find especially old stamps on or near Michigan Avenue. They are mostly 1980s through the present. I suppose it’s because the the sidewalks here are replaced a lot more often. The only other George Hagamier stamps I have found so far are from 1929 and 1930. The Capital Imaging building was built in 1926, so perhaps the stamp is from then.
I tried to find out who the original occupant of the building was, and failed. From 1946 until 1998 it was Alexanian’s, a rug dealer. (Old ads state that they have “Oriental and domestic rugs” for sale.) When Alexanian’s moved out, it then became Capital Imaging. But I don’t know who was there from 1929 until 1946.
This Henry Davis stamp is on the east side of Clifford Street, just north of the corner of Marcus. The important part of the date is unfortunately very marred. I would guess it is 1955, the same as the other two Henry Davis stamps I have featured.
This spot is across the street from Hunter Park, which interrupts the east-west street grid. Marcus and Elizabeth (and Fuller, which barely exists) end at Hunter Park and on the other side, Hickory, Bement, and Larned take their places, but offset. I’m curious how it developed that way. Sadly, I don’t know the history of Hunter Park and should try to look into that sometime.
I didn’t have a lot of choices again tonight, so I’m afraid all you’re getting is a very badly-lit C. Gossett stamp on the east side of Regent Street (400 block) between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. I think that’s 1969, but I’ll have to check back in daylight to be sure.
Reviewing some previous C. Gossett entries, I notice that they were inconsistent about whether they put the date above or below the name. That’s not the most interesting observation, but it’s what I can offer.
I walked out to the neighborhood I call Eastmost in order to collect a stamp I’d noted on some previous outing. I was foiled in this plan by a layer of snow covering the area where I believed the stamp to be. I gave up and started walking back. It was snowing, and even the relatively clear areas were being steadily covered. I decided I had better stop at the first sidewalk I came to that had a light coating and get to work finding something there.
So that’s what I did. This Isabella Corp. stamp is in front of a pawn shop (it just calls itself “SECOND HAND STORE” on the awning, though the Internet tells me it’s properly H & M Discount Second Hand Store) on the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Francis and Foster. Before the building was H & M, it was another, very similar-looking pawn shop. It was built in 1952 and its first occupant seems to have been Associates Discount Corp. I went to find out more about them and Googling their name got me pages of caselaw references – usually them suing someone but occasionally someone suing them. I learned that they were an auto finance company, so apparently the building has stayed in the loan business.
Prior to becoming Associates Discount Corp., the address belonged to Jack Royeton Inc., a Kaiser-Frazer car dealer. Once upon a time, Eastmost was the dealership district. It’s amazing to think what it that must have been like.
This plain and to-the-point stamp is on the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, next to the parking lot behind Asian Gourmet. I have passed it by several times recently thinking I had already featured it, but this evening I finally checked to discover that no, I hadn’t.
The only Mike & Son I can find is Mike & Son Asphalt in Bath, but their Web site only mentions asphalt paving and there isn’t anything there to suggest they do concrete work, so I don’t know if there is a connection or not.
It was another night of slim pickings as snow was falling, dusting even the sidewalks that had been cleared, except the scant few that had been salted. (Bless those folks.) This one is on the east side of North Fairview Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, next to the parking lot for the Arcadia Smokehouse.
This is a nicely crisp J.A. Johnson stamp. The date is less clear, but with a flashlight and a few angles I figured out that it is 1968. I haven’t learned anything about J.A. Johnson, unfortunately, despite seeing their stamps scattered around the east side. I do always mull over the unlikely possibility that J.A. was a relative of the Jim Johnson I used to play in a local pinball league with.
I walked a bit around the neighborhood west of Hunter Park, and fortunately got a stamp photographed before the heavy snow started in the second half of my walk. I haven’t surveyed this neighborhood for sidewalk stamps very much yet, so I was delighted to find a Minnis & Ewer stamp I haven’t recorded yet, on the north side of Hickory Street between Pennsylvania and Jones.
Most Minnis & Ewer stamps are very clear and crisp. This is the most faded one I’ve encountered. It’s not entirely legible, and I could recognize it mainly by shape. I could not read the month, but at least I could make out the 11 for the year.
There is a second one, even more worn, in front of the next house to the east, which might be the other half of a pair. Supporting this is that it faces in the opposite direction. I haven’t observed any obviously paired Minnis & Ewer stamps before, but it might just reflect how many of them have been lost over the years.
The whimsical name on this one caught my eye. It’s on the west side of North Fairview Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw.
When I went to search for the contractor involved, a bunch of pictures popped up, showing a drainage system such as I have in my basement. From that I learned that a Beaver System is a trade name for this kind of setup, in which a channel (or, as I have now learned it’s called, a dam) is installed at floor level to trap infiltrating water and send it to a sump pump. Ours was not a brand name Beaver installation, but the name “beaver system” seems to have genericized and gets applied to any such installation.
From what I can tell, Beaver Systems is a franchise. It doesn’t look like anyone is doing business under that name in metro Lansing, but I can find references from about ten years ago to a Beaver Systems in Holt, and other undated references to one in Grand Ledge.