Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Look, at least it’s the less common variation, right? It’s on the east side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
Right now this blog is less a sidewalk stamp blog and more a hall of fame of people who actually keep their sidewalks clear. Well, maybe the groundhog won’t see her shadow tomorrow.
I found another DPS stamp. Like the others, it’s from the 1950s. It’s on the east side of Lathrop Street between Prospect and Eureka.
C.E. Schneider is a contractor I haven’t seen before, or at least haven’t taken notice of. This pair of stamps is on the north side of Prospect between Holmes and Virginia. Unfortunately, neither one is dated.
The only reference I can find to C.E. Schneider as a contractor is a brief obituary for Clyde Schneider (1920-2000) which states that he was “Owner and Operator of C.E. Schneider and Sons Cement Contractor.” It also says that he had been a resident of Mount Pleasant since 1998. Schneider is buried in DeWitt according to Find A Grave, so he might have been a DeWitt native. I would guess that C.E. Schneider and Sons was a metro Lansing business. I haven’t found out anything else about the company that would allow me to narrow down when the stamp could have been from.
I made a mistake in yesterday’s entry, saying that most of the E.F. Sheets stamps are in the Sparrow area north of Michigan. I had forgotten another cluster of them south of there, sprinkled around the Kalamazoo/Prospect/Bingham area. This one is on East Kalamazoo Street between Bingham and Jones. It’s difficult to read but a comparison makes it obvious that it is another E.F. Sheets stamp. What’s curious is the C marked above the name. I thought at first that it was some kind of odd mis-strike, but there are a few others nearby that have the same marking (and yet others that do not). I don’t know what it signifies.
The building it’s in front of is apparently Green Concepts Irrigation and Landscaping, not that one would know by looking at it, as there is no signage. In the 1930s and 40s it was Otto Kopietz’s grocery store. The building was constructed in 1926 and I’m not sure whether Kopietz was the original occupant; the earliest reference I can find to his grocery is from 1930, but no address is given. By 1932 he was definitely at this location and selling liquid malt according to an advertisement in the August 2 Lansing State Journal. While liquid malt can also be used in baking, I can’t help but wonder how many people were using it in home brewing.
Unfortunately, I am not able to determine when Kopietz closed up shop, nor what business was at this address in 1962. And yes, that is 1962. The typeface that some of the contractors used in the 1960s for dates is frustratingly curvy and often makes me think 6 and 9 are zero. I initially read this one as “1002” and stood there for a moment perplexed by it.
This is on the south side of Eureka Street between Virginia and Jones. I see these E.F. Sheets stamps here and there, especially in the neighborhood near Sparrow Hospital, north of Michigan. I find it curious that stamps often seem to be more common in some blocks than others.
Unfortunately, and surprisingly, I have not been able to turn up any information at all about E.F. Sheets. I welcome any information any reader may have.
This is one of the “second style” of Department of Public Works stamps. It’s on the west side of Horton Street, just south of the intersection of Jerome. I recognized it mainly by the size and style, since it is so worn. The date is even worse. It’s just barely possible to make it out as 1935; it probably won’t be for too many more years.
I’m usually drawn to the clearest, sharpest stamps, but there is some value in capturing these very faded ones too.
These stamps are on Rumsey Avenue just north of Michigan, alongside the Church of the Resurrection complex. There are one or two more E.R. Premoe stamps along that stretch besides these, but my hands were getting cold.
This is a plainer stamp than the other E.R. Premoe version, though the tradeoff is that it is easier to read. The date shows that the business continued on for a good while after the death of Earl R. “Lefty” Premoe.
Nothing new or exciting this time, but with fresh snow all over I didn’t have very many options. I walked into Hunter Park, around the paved loop, and back out via Elizabeth Street, stopping to take a picture of this (as usual) undated O & M stamp on one of the last few sidewalk blocks before the dead end. This is on the south side of Elizabeth. I like the deep imprint that makes the borders of the stamper visible.
Elizabeth’s western dead end touches Hunter Park. The sidewalk on both sides just ends without any official trail leading into the park. There is a very well-worn social trail leading from the southern sidewalk toward the pool area. There’s something just a little odd to me about the way the sidewalk goes past the last house’s front porch steps only to end abruptly at the edge of the property when it’s not done being useful yet.
I encountered this stamp walking west on the south side of Vine Street between Custer and Ferguson. It was an unfamiliar one to me, so I stopped to check it out. I could make out that the second word of the name was Rite, but couldn’t figure the first word out. (It’s actually possible in the photo, I think, so maybe you can.)
Luckily, stamps usually come in pairs, presumably on either end of a run of new sidewalk, so often the second one fills in the obscurities in the first. This was one of those cases. I walked a short distance further and found this one.
Either the date or the name is upside down, and I’m going to say the name, based on the placement within the slab and the orientation relative to the eastern stamp. (Paired stamps usually face opposite to each other.)
I was quite surprised to discover that Bilt-Rite is still in business, on East Street in Lansing. According to their About Us page (and I do love a business Web site with an About page) they were founded in 1952 by Hugh Zweering and are currently run by his son and grandson. They seem to specialize in home construction and renovation now, which might be why I haven’t seen any more recent sidewalk stamps from them.
1Maybe I should have gone with “Democracy Dies in Plastic.”
Earlier today I told my husband that I was starting to doubt I would ever find a new “oldest” stamp. At least, I said, not as long as I keep walking in the same neighborhoods on the east side. I was beginning to think all the really interesting stamps had been mined out. That was 3 pm, this was 6:30 pm.
This is on the west side of Custer Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, and may be the oldest dated stamp I’ve found. The fact that the earliest stamps usually include a month makes it possible for me to say that this is older than a previous record-holder, the October 1907 J.P. Sleight stamp on Jerome Street. I can’t know whether it is older or younger than the 1907 V.D. Minnis stamp on Regent Street because the date on that one is lost to time.
Still, while I’d have loved to see an undisputed new champion, this was my most exciting find in weeks, and it’s been right under my nose, on a street I frequently walk on. Apparently I have been in the habit of walking on the other side. I actually thought it was a V.D. Minnis stamp when I was coming toward it, since the style is quite similar.
At first I wasn’t able to find much about W.H. McKrill besides that he provided a testimonial for the Aladdin Company, a Bay City manufacturer of kit homes, in an advertisement in the March 1921 issue of Illustrated World magazine. Then I made a guess that W.H. might be a William, and that got me a very useful hit. The February 24, 1955, Lansing State Journal included a human interest piece: “Oldsters Vie for Honor: ‘Bill’ McKrill Beats Lewis J. Bugbee: Has Lived in Lansing 344 Days Longer.” Evidently, William McKrill turned up in the LSJ offices to complain because they had profiled Lewis J. Bugbee with the claim that he was “believed to be Lansing’s oldest son” when McKrill was older.
According to the article, William McKrill worked in the Bement factory until it closed about 1907, and then “later… entered the construction business and helped to build the first pavement on Michigan Avenue. For this he was paid $1.35 for a 10-hour day.” This initially made me think that he must be the very same W.H. McKrill, but then I became less certain. Would he really have gone straight from working at Bement to running his own paving business (and getting such an important job as paving Michigan Avenue) the same year? I wondered if William was instead a relative of W.H. and worked in the latter’s business. William’s father’s name did not begin with W, but it could have been some other relative. But I have found some evidence that W.H.’s wife was named Ida, which would indeed make W.H. the same person as the “Bill” in the above article. I know because of their grave in Mount Hope Cemetery. (William died the same year the article was published.)
One last tidbit about William, and I do know this is the same William based on the reference to his address (which I saw listed as the address of Ida in her obituary). According to the January 17, 1931, Lansing State Journal, he was arrested after having been found intoxicated while serving as a school traffic guard at the intersection of Bingham and Michigan. He must have been in a visibly bad state because the police were called by a nearby service station attendant who advised them that the crossing guard was in “no condition to take care of school traffic.” No doubt that crossing guard post served students going to Bingham Street School (the original one, not the 1950s replacement that used to be my polling place before being demolished in 2013).