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Bingham St., Minnis & Ewer, 1910

Good news! The wait is over and I am finally featuring the Minnis & Ewer stamp on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect that I teased back in January. You know, the one adjacent to the surprising-to-me 1927 DPW stamp. There’s nothing unusual about it, aside from being over 110 years old, but I will never pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp.

The month is illegible, though with the snow brushed out it looks like a 6 or 8.

Looking south on Bingham. The stamp is near the center of the photo, with the previously featured DPW stamp just this side of it

I took the establishing photo from further away than usual because I had to record something odd and a little funny. There is about a foot of completely uncleared sidewalk around the border between two houses, with cleared stretches on either side. I can understand there being a dispute about where the boundary is, but whoever cleared theirs second was being petty even by my standards. I want to know what history has led to this point.

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Kipling Blvd., George Hagamier, illegible date

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.

Looking north on Kipling Avenue. The stamp is hard to see here but it is right at the bottom of the picture. Capital Imaging is on the left.

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.

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Clifford St., Henry Davis, illegible date

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.

Looking west into Hunter Park, with the Henry Davis stamp visible.

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S. Fairview Ave., Cantu & Sons, 1980s

A friend recently cursed me by introducing me to HistoricAerials.com. I say “cursed” because for the last few days I have spent hours examining the changes in local streets instead of, say, going to bed at a reasonable hour. I have spent a lot of this time looking at how the freeway and time have changed the Urbandale neighborhood. So that is why I set out to walk through it in real life tonight, without considering that the snow of last night and today would probably not be very cleared there. All this preamble is mainly just to apologize for tonight’s entry, gleaned from one of the only cleared sidewalks I traversed.

OK, yes, it’s one of these. But isn’t it pretty?

This is on the east side of South Fairview Avenue, just south of the corner of Harton. (Harton is a source of fascination for me and I have spent some time on HistoricAerials trying to figure out when and why it lost its three middle blocks. Sadly there is no sidewalk on any part of Harton, so I will not be able to feature it here.) I can’t read the date but it is obviously one of the numerous 1987-88 stamps found all over the east side. The house it’s in front of is the only one on the east side of the 700 block. The southernmost blocks of the Urbandale streets have lost many houses to demolition and look very sparse and forlorn.

Looking south on South Fairview. This is the last house on this side of the street. I appreciated that they shoveled their walk. You can just make out the cleared area where I brushed snow off the stamp, past where the fence begins.

Looking north on South Fairview, toward the intersection of Harton.

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Shepard St., W. Scott, 195(?)

This rather small stamp is on the east side of Shepard Street just south of Kalamazoo, next to the sad hulk of the former halal market. The W and Scott look strangely far apart, making me wonder if there is a missing letter and it should be Wm. Scott. Either way, I wasn’t able to find anything out about the contractor. The date isn’t visible much in the photo, but with my flashlight I determined that it is 1950-something. The last digit is completely unreadable.

Since I couldn’t find anything about W. Scott, I switched to trying to find out what business was in this building in the 1950s. I had better luck there. The building was built in 1935, but G.A. Strickland’s grocery store was at this address (401 Shepard) by 1928, according to advertising in the Lansing State Journal. Strickland’s was there at least until 1941. By 1949 it was C & S Food Market and then by 1959 it was Parr’s Market. I find the announcement of a quitting-business auction for Parr’s in November 1962.

Looking toward Kalamazoo. The stamped block is the one closest to camera.

The more recent history remains obscure. By 1989 until at least 1995 it was a Volunteers of America Thrift Store. I remember it being a halal market (apparently the Alharamain Halal Market based on city records) for as far back as I remember the neighborhood, while it was still anything at all.

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Rumsey Ave., E.R. Premoe, 198(?)

This pair of E.R. Premoe stamps is on the east side of Rumsey Avenue between Michigan and Jerome. Unfortunately I can’t quite make out the last number of the date. It is probably 1980s and I think it could be 1983. I’ll have to try it again in better light and see if that helps.

This is the northern stamp of the pair.

Luckily for me, someone who (unlike me) actually has a subscription to Newspapers.com has been assembling clippings of the Premo(e) family. (It appears that the family is split on how to spell it.) E.R. Premoe, according to his obituary, was Earl R. “Lefty” Premoe. He was from Lansing, and died in 1989. It says that he ran the E.R. Premoe Construction company 25 years. According to OpenCorporates, it was incorporated in 1965. That seems a little inconsistent with his obituary saying he ran it 25 years, but it’s possible that it existed in some form for a while before its incorporation. Most likely they just wanted to round off the figure. In 1986, the E.R. Premoe company received an award from the General Contractors of America for having lost no work days due to accident or injury.

And here’s the southern stamp. Unfortunately they both have an unclear date.

This is a favorite neighborhood for me to walk in because the residents had, and still have, a lot of Christmas lights up. Before that, there were a lot of Halloween decorations. I’m going to miss seeing lights on people’s houses at night, but I think people are going to continue being slow to take them down, so I have a while left.

The southern stamp is visible at the bottom of this photo. I mostly wanted to show that there are still nice lights for me to enjoy in this neighborhood.
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E. Michigan Ave., […]roleum, […]7

This is on the north side of Michigan between Fairview and Magnolia, out in front of the MetroPCS that looks like it used to be a rental car place (because it was, but more on that in a future entry). At some point, the sidewalk here was narrowed, leaving only half of this stamp behind. It looks like it was chopped off to make room for a garden or street tree, though all that’s here now is a weedy patch. I had to pull up a mat of encroaching plants to be able to see to the edge. I was rewarded by the discovery of part of a date which had been buried entirely.

I am pretty sure the letter that’s a bit hard to see here at the start is an r, so “-roleum Corp.” Petroleum, I guess, but I haven’t been able to figure out what petroleum business might also have installed sidewalks. The second line seems to be “-tion Div.” which I assume was Construction Division. The number definitely ends in 7, I can tell you that. Unfortunately the crucial number before that one is partly obliterated. What’s left suggests “2” to me.

The slab in context. Notice on the right how the surrounding sidewalk is wider.

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Regent St., DPW, illegible date

This was taken just after a heavy rain, when the silt had the effect of making the very faint letters a little more readable. I am frustrated by my inability to read the date. Even feeling it with my fingers, I can make out only the initial “19” and nothing else.

This stamp is located on the east side of Regent Street, the 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. The style matches the 1918 Department of Public Works imprints I found previously, and is distinct from the 1944 DPW stamp and some other 1940s DPW stamps I have seen on my walks. I hope in time to find some stamps eventually that will narrow down when they switched styles, so I can give a latest possible date for this stamp.

Update 12/10/20: the date has become visible! See my update.