What do we have here, on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Vine and Fernwood? It’s kind of a mess. The date is upside down, and then the name is stamped twice, presumably because the first one didn’t come out as well as they hoped.
Barnhart, I think you need to have a word with your sons.
This mysterious stamp is on the east side of Horton Street between Jerome and the northern dead end. I can’t see anywhere that a name would have been stamped; it appears to be just a date. There is no paired stamp to explain it, either. The stamp is small and easy to overlook, almost hiding in the weeds.
Here is a pair of L & L stamps, on the west side of North Holmes Street between Jerome and Vine, in front of a parking lot. They are side by side, one facing the sidewalk and one facing the street, on what probably used to be a driveway. There is a fence in front of it now.
Nothing too special here except the charming practice I have seen a few times from other contractors, stamping both ends of the same square, facing opposite directions. It seems to be a way of indicating that they are only laying a single block. This double-stamped block is on the north side of Jerome Street between Custer and Ferguson.
This very worn Cantu & Sons stamp is located on the south side of East Kalamazoo Street between Clemens and Regent (pretty close to Clemens). It’s the only stamp I can find on the stretch of sidewalk in front of King World. The date is extremely hard to read in the photo, but in person it is just possible to make it out as 1988.
It’s in front of King World, which is an eccentric combination of a convenience/party store and a beauty and barber supply shop. When I first moved to town in the summer of 1999, this building was empty, but it was still easy to see that its most recent occupant had been a coin laundry. About a year later King World moved in.
The building dates from 1962. I can find advertisements for a Norge Village laundromat at that address in the 1970s, and most likely it was built originally as part of that chain, which was booming by 1962. Norge Village is famous among fans of old signs and the like for its lit-up, polka-dotted globe signs, popularly called “Norge Balls.”
It apparently remained a laundry through at least one changeover, as it appears in the December 30, 1989, Lansing State Journal new businesses listings as Kalamazoo St. Laundry. The last reference I can find to a laundry business there is in a sidebar of “Unsolved Fires of 1991” accompanying an article (“Fatal Fire Remains Unsolved”) on page 1B of the January 15, 1992, Lansing State Journal. The list includes “September 30 – Fire in laundry dryer at 1918 E. Kalamazoo” and honestly, that one really sounds like it solved itself.
Advertisements trying to sell the building (no mention of a laundry business) start showing up in 1996, and then again in 1998. Whether it was used for anything during that time period is not clear but seems doubtful. The sale to King World is recorded in the city’s online records in July 2000.
This pair of stamps is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Fairview and Magnolia. It’s hard to read the date in one of them, but the other is quite clear and I am going to assume they were done together.
The stamps are in front of the closed Hotwater Works building, until recently a neighborhood staple. It was, somehow, both a hot tub retailer and a jam space for local musicians. The side facing the now-vacant lot was painted with a couple of different murals over the years, the first one depicting a fairy with the command “RELAX” and the second one featuring a group of Japanese macaques bathing. I never had any reason to go in there, but in a way, I just liked it being there. It seemed like an offbeat place to anchor an offbeat neighborhood. Here is a short article about the history of the business from radio station WDBM.
Sadly, they closed up in early 2020. Surprisingly, this wasn’t a COVID loss: they were having their liquidation sale already in February. I suspect the beginning of the end actually came in 2017 when the original owner, James McFarland, died. I note from city records that the property was sold by McFarland’s estate in January 2020 to “McFarland Sisters Enter L L C.” I imagine that the hot tub business wasn’t what it once was, and the family decided the real estate was more valuable.
As for the history of the property, it was built in 1947 as Bagger Trailer Sales, and was sold to George H. Rowley in 1952 to become an auto agency. It spent a while as a B.F. Goodrich tire shop in the 1970s, and then in the 1980s and 90s was Delphi Stained Glass. Hotwater Works moved in around 1997.
I made a foray into the Potter-Walsh neighborhood today and found this stamp on the west side of Shepard Street between Malcolm X and Walsh. Yes, I know, this blog is lousy with Cantu stamps, but it’s a variation I haven’t shown before, one that seems rare in the neighborhoods I normally walk.
This variation is the only one so far that includes a city, East Lansing. The current company, Cantu Builders, is located in Lansing. They apparently had added a second son to the business by 1984. The earliest stamp variation I’ve found is from 1980 and reads “Cantu & Son”, singular.
I only found my first Kegle stamp pretty recently and yet I’ve already found another one. The style is very different, suggesting a different time period, but the first one was undated so I can’t be sure. This one is on the southeast corner of North Clemens Avenue and Vine Street, on the driveway of a house facing Clemens.
There are actually four of them: three on the driveway above the sidewalk, and one on what I call the driveway apron, between the sidewalk and the street. The date is hard or impossible to read on two of them, but fortunately it comes through as 1987 on the other two. This confirms that the company did survive the death of James F. Kegle in 1984 (something I wondered about in my previous Kegle entry).
This stamp is on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect. There are several of them along this stretch of Bingham. As noted on my previous McClain entry (that one depicting a very different stamp), I haven’t been able to learn much about the company.
The date is quite unclear, but one of the other ones on the block has a clearer “8” that makes me confident it is 1980s. It looks like 1983 to me but I can’t be confident of the last digit.
This is a Barnhart & Son (just the singular Son this time, though other stamps from 1986 have plural Sons) stamp on the west side of North Fairview Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw.
The variation in name is interesting, but what really catches my eye when I walk this block is some graffiti in the adjacent slab. It’s interesting to note that although this particular sidewalk must have been poured in the 1990s (I think that says 1996, though it’s pretty messy), Red Buddy’s birth year matches the date on several nearby Barnhart stamps.
