“Another Regent Street stamp?” you say. Ah, but it’s the other Regent Street this time, the Regent that resumes south of I-496, in the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. This stamp is on the west side of Regent between Perkins and the southern dead end, along with a couple of others from the same company that are less legible.
I walked over the Aurelius Road overpass to take a last few photos of the railroad bridge before construction begins in earnest. The sidewalk has been officially closed for a day, but I figured not too much had probably happened yet and I could get away with one illicit trip onto the bridge. As a side trip, I went down the sidewalk that cuts from Aurelius to Clemens, into Potter-Walsh, and took these photos.
Looking north on Regent. The other two United stamps in the vicinity are near the other end of this house’s lot.
Unfortunately I can’t be enlightening about who United was. A few contractors with some variation of the name “United” show up in searches, but none located in mid-Michigan and none with a specialization in concrete.
As threatened long ago and alluded to again recently, I am starting a new recurring feature, the Hall of Shame. My original conception of it was to point out newly-laid sidewalk that was out of compliance with marking requirements, but I am going to broaden it to include anything sidewalk-related I feel like disapproving of.
Lansing is much better with sidewalks than Lansing Township. In fact, one way to tell that you have wandered out of Lansing proper is that the sidewalks have vanished from under your feet. Nevertheless, Lansing still leaves something to be desired, in that the city seems to think that only blocks (or sides of blocks) that have houses on them strictly need sidewalks. Side streets that only have driveways on them usually have no sidewalks. I assume they were just never built there. That doesn’t surprise me, even if I don’t like it. What did surprise me was discovering, now that the snow is off the neighborhood and I can see it properly, that the city has actually been removing sidewalks from depopulated blocks.
The first example I ran across was the southern end of South Hayford Avenue. I’m not sure when the sidewalk was removed but the earth underneath still looks pretty fresh, and a photo in the city’s property records seems to show the sidewalk still present in June 2020. I’m sorry I didn’t know this was going to happen so I could have catalogued all the doomed sidewalk stamps. Speaking of stamps, here is the last one on the west side of the block, a very worn Cantu & Sons.
There are two more sidewalk blocks past this one, and then it ends abruptly, presumably at the edge of the property. Beyond it is the muddy ghost of the old sidewalk.
Looking south on South Hayford.
The obvious rationale for the sidewalk’s removal is that all the houses that were south of here have been demolished. There is now an urban farm there on the right. Hayford has a heavy concentration of them, making the street look almost rural. So why do I disapprove of removing the no-longer-needed sidewalk?
Because I reject the idea that only houses need sidewalks. This is still a public street, and anyone ought to have the right to walk down it for exercise, to amuse their dog, to admire the urban farms that the city wants us to take pride in, or for any other harmless reason. Tear down the houses if you must, but there should still be a public right-of-way.
Perhaps I’m too cynical, but removing the sidewalk strikes me as a gesture of subtle hostility toward the neighborhood. It is well known that the city would rather the Urbandale neighborhood not exist because of its susceptibility to floods and concentration of people of less means. Ever since the great Lansing flood of 1975, the city’s long-term plan for Urbandale has been to phase it out of existence, but efforts have been stepped up over the last decade or so. The city states that one of the goals of the Flood Mitigation Plan is to “keep neighborhoods strong and intact,” and yet it also states that “all property that is acquired is permanently deed restricted so that it cannot be developed again in the future.”
Google Street View shows that the sidewalk used to extend to the end of this section of curb.
The city, the county, or the Garden Project own about half of the properties on the 700 block of Hayford. Most have been turned into farms or gardens, which is their favorite way of dealing with blight (although to my eyes it’s no more aesthetic to have a neighborhood full of sheds, barrels, and plastic-sheeted greenhouses than tired homes). A few are still standing, though that might mean they just haven’t gotten the funds for demolition yet, or maybe they’re waiting for the renters to move on voluntarily. Many properties eventually fall into the county’s Land Bank due to foreclosure. The city also has a program to buy properties directly, funded partly by a FEMA grant.
The sidewalk used to end at a driveway, which is why there is a curb cut here.
The east side of Hayford also has lost some of the end of its sidewalk. It’s a smaller amount, but more awkward, since it just cuts off after the last house’s front walk instead of continuing to the property line.
The truncated sidewalk on the east side of the street.
After taking these photos I walked to the end of Foster and found that it has even fewer remaining houses on its last block, and so an even larger amount of sidewalk has been recently removed.
Today’s stamps are kitty-corner to each other on the northwest corner of North Magnolia Avenue and Vine Street, meaning that one is really on Magnolia and the other on Vine.
This one almost looks like it says “1960,” but the other one makes the “8” clearer.
H. Plummer can be found advertising concrete work in late 1960s and early 1970s Lansing State Journal classifieds pages. It turns out his name was Henderson Plummer and he lived in Mason, that is, when he lived in Michigan. He seems to have spent at least some of his time in Texas. While trying to find more about him, in hope of turning up a history of his contracting business, I found some pictures of apparent relatives, and was surprised to discover that they were Black and thus he probably was too. I say surprised because so far whenever I have managed to turn up a picture of a contractor featured in the blog it has been a White man. So, it is nice to find some diversity in the business. (I will also be very excited if I ever find a woman, but I’m not holding my breath in the meantime.)
Henderson Plummer will complete his tour of duty in Texas, where he works on the toll-road in Houston. He will return to his extensive contractor business in Michigan where his family resides.
Reunion News, June 23, 1987, p. 7.
The reference to the contractor business gives me confidence that it is the same Henderson Plummer who had a concrete business in Mason and who poured this sidewalk.
This stamp is on the west side of North Clemens Avenue, at the intersection of Fernwood. The date is a little hard to read in the photos but I believe it is 1980.
I haven’t been able to find anything out about E. Harmon. My best lead is an obituary for Earl Harmon, Jr. of Lansing, who died in 2018 at the age of 75. It says “He was is (sic) concrete construction having started and being a partner of M & M Concrete in Charlotte.” Maybe he stamped things under his own name before forming M & M. Unfortunately, that’s all I have on this one.
Here’s an unusual BWL (Board of Water and Light, or so I assume) variation on the west side of South Clemens Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. The rounded, almost handwritten-looking font of other BWL stamps is replaced by smaller, typewriter-like letters. There also seem to be periods this time. One thing that hasn’t changed is the unique BWL custom of stamping the name in one corner and the date in the other.
I initially thought the date was 1997, but when I got down to look at it more closely it appeared to be 1987 as the bottom loop of that third number appears to come all the way up. It’s pretty hard to tell the 8 from the 9 in this font (a recurring problem with sidewalk stamps that use nearly symmetrical rounded numbers) but I am tentatively sticking with 8. If you think I’m wrong I’d be happy to hear another opinion.
Closeup of the date. I had to scrape some dirt off to get the last number.
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.
Looking north on South Hayford. On the right you can see where I set down the bag of Quality Dairy paçzki I had just bought.
This is probably the paired stamp, a bit south of the one above.
Yes, it’s the blog’s bread and butter, a Cantu & Sons stamp. It must have been a real sight to see so many sidewalks around the east side worked on at (almost) the same time in 1987-88. I wonder why the city did such a huge sidewalk replacement project then?
Note the imprint of the YakTrax I’ve been wearing over my boots ever since I took a spill on a patch of ice and cracked my head on the pavement.
Anyway, I didn’t have much choice. Even most of the sidewalks that had been cleared after last night’s snowstorm had another fine layer of snow on them. Luckily I could make out the white shadow of a stamp in order to know where to brush the pavement off with my mitten.
Looking south on Leslie.
I walked this way because this house still has long strings of lights on their fences, stretching impressively along the west side of the 400 block of Leslie, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. They flash and twinkle and on a cold winter night like this, I’m sure glad they’re still around.
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.
Oh yeah baby, look at that sexy, snow-free sidewalk. I’m lucky I didn’t turn into a Tex Avery wolf when I laid eyes on it.
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.
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.
