This is on the east side of Regent Street’s 300 block, between Michigan and Kalamazoo. Yeah, yeah, it’s the most dirt-standard catalogue entry. I posted three times yesterday, I figure I can coast for a couple of days. I can’t quite bring myself to give up daily posting yet.
I have walked past this stamp so many times, and periodically I start thinking I can almost read it, especially at night under the streetlight. What threw me is that the first two letters looked like “CD” but the entire stamp looked like one word, rather than initials and a surname. I could also tell that the last four letters were -LAIN and I kept thinking it was some variation of McClain or McLain, but those leads were not fruitful.
Tonight I walked past it and suddenly thought if I stopped and stared, this time I would get it. And what do you know? I did. My brain suddenly organized the shadows into “CD CHAMBERLAIN” – though the spacing is so close it still looks like one long word.
The stamp is on the west side of the 100 block of Regent Street, south of East Michigan Avenue, alongside the former Pagoda Restaurant. There are two of them, but this one is the more legible.
The first thing I did was go to Find A Grave and check for a C.D. Chamberlain. I found Claude D. Chamberlain, 1914-1998, which seemed promising. Turning to the (Lansing) State Journal, I found lots and lots and lots of references to Mrs. Claude D. Chamberlain in the Society pages in the 1950s and 60s. Mrs. Chamberlain was very active with several organizations, including the American Association of University Women, the St. Lawrence Hospital Auxiliary, and the Lansing Fine Arts Council. I also found her obituary; her name was Jean, and she died in late 2015 at the age of 98. Her name (as “Mrs. Claude”) appeared in the State Journal so much that it interfered with my trying to find anything out about Claude. I was unable to find his obituary, or anything about his life. Eventually I found a single reference to him that justifies identifying him as probably the C.D. Chamberlain of this stamp. On March 31, 1957, the name “Claude D. Chamberlain” appears in a list of “Blue Ribbon Builders” associated with some upcoming open houses.
I realized last night that I had forgotten to observe the anniversary of the blog. It launched on August 7, 2020, with a photo of an undated O & M stamp on Regent Street. On the anniversary, without intending it, I also published a photo of an undated O & M stamp on Regent Street.
I have posted here every day for over a year, and have featured a different stamp or sidewalk feature every day. I also had a rule that the photo had to be taken that day. If I saw more than one interesting stamp, tough; I didn’t let myself bank any. This was partly so that my blog and my daily walking habit would mutually reinforce each other. It worked; I also have not missed a day of taking a walk in over a year.
Still, I told myself that once a year had passed I could re-evaluate the blog. Perhaps I could start banking stamps for later, or drop to three- or four-times-a-week posting. The fact that I have begun finding it difficult to find new contractors or unusual stamps to write about on the east side (my usual walking grounds) is part of the incentive to scale back. The other part is my impending return to in-person work and hours of commuting every week.
As Aristotle knew, though, it’s hard – even painful – to break a habit this solidified. I’m also much better at being perfect than being good. Being good slips away from me quickly. For another couple of weeks I will probably continue daily updates, but will make a shift to less frequent posting once work resumes. In the meantime I have to decide what that will look like, and how to be religious about it.
This pair of stamps is in front of the building that houses The People’s Kitchen on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Charles and Detroit. I previously covered a Hanneman stamp near these. The east side of the building is occupied by The People’s Kitchen; the west side currently houses JWR Health Services.
My wrist RSI is badly flared up right now so this will be very brief. Here is a 1968 C. Gossett stamp, like many on this block, from the east side of Regent Street’s 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Prospect. I promise this is one I haven’t done before, but it looks identical with quite a few that I have.
Continuing my catalog of Regent Street, here is an undated O & M (Operations and Maintenance) stamp from the east side of Regent Street’s 400 block between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. It’s a shame O & M was in the habit of not dating stamps at some point probably in the 2000s, but at least it’s stamped at all.
This Department of Public Works stamp is on the north side of Hickory Street between Jones and Holmes. I’ll always collect a diagonal DPW stamp; they seem almost always to be from 1921. This one has a further quirk in that the year has been stamped upside-down at a rather haphazard angle.
I suspect this one is actually a pair to another diagonal one a couple of lots east on Hickory, close to the corner of Holmes.
My day was just packed, and I had to take my walk late at night, so you’ll have to make do with this 1987 Cantu & Sons stamp from the east side of Regent Street’s 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. It’s out in front of a tiny, cute 1916 bungalow that regrettably snugs right up against the parking lot of the business formerly known as Lucky’s. Unfortunately it was too dark to get a context photo.
After I did a stamp in front of Mercy Ambulance, I figured I would follow up by doing one in front of the Medical Arts Building one block east, on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Ferguson and Holmes. As with Mercy Ambulance, there is something about the starkly modern building that appeals to me. In this case, the oversized caduceus on the front face, though a controversial choice, is certainly a large part of the charm.
I hadn’t realized that this building is owned by Sparrow Hospital, though I wasn’t very surprised to learn it, either. This whole area of downtown Lansing is the land of Sparrow Hospital, and it continues to spread. A clipping from the October 25, 1963, State Journal (courtesy of fellow local history enthusiast Timothy Bowman and his very useful Flickr site) has a photograph of it with a caption saying it “is expected to be completed this week.” (The city’s property records give a construction date of 1964.) The caption goes on to say “It is the largest building of its kind in the Lansing area.” In the photograph it looks just as it does now (minus some rust stains), proving the vintage of the giant caduceus, if there were any doubt. It does not appear to have been a Sparrow property at the start. I’m not sure when Sparrow acquired it.
The stamp is from BBRPCI, who have stamped quite a lot of sidewalk on this part of Michigan Avenue. I was hoping to find a stamp contemporary to the building, but no such luck. There are a few blocks of especially coarse concrete that look different from and older than most of the surrounding sidewalk, so maybe those are remnants of the original construction.
I collected this pair of William Haskins stamps on my way to go vote at my polling place (the Pilgrim Congregational Church). Lansing had a city council and mayoral primary today. The stamps are in a pleasant little shady corridor on the south side of Prospect just east of Lathrop.
Unfortunately I have yet to find a dated William Haskins stamp, though there are a fair number of them sprinkled around this area, and I still don’t know anything about the contractor.
