Tonight’s entry finds me at the very northern end of the west side of Horton Avenue, where the road that evidently once continued on toward the Armory is blocked off by a flimsy little gate. On the very last little bit of sidewalk, there is a Department of Public Works stamp, using the style that was phased out between the 1920s and 1940s.
At first blush it appears undated. But wait, what’s this? Why does that look like… a handwritten 1980?
Well, now I’m very confused. While I have discovered that there is significant overlap in the years that the DPW used particular stamps, there is no way the oldest stamp style was still being used in the 1980s. They were two or three styles past it by then. Granting the date might be graffiti, but it still would have had to be done when the cement was wet.
Snow sometimes works against me, and sometimes with me. I was walking along the north side of Elizabeth Street, and just east of Leslie I saw the snow highlighting some of the letters in a worn, old Department of Public Works stamp. I took some snow with my mitten and rubbed it into the rest of the stamp (feeling awkward as I realized a dog walker had seen me do this) and this is what it looked like. I wonder what the next people to walk this way thought of the white highlighting that I had left behind.
I think that’s probably 1939, but there is a blotch over the last digit that means I can’t be sure it isn’t an 8.
This is the same principle behind rubbing chalk or flour into gravestone inscriptions, except unlike those practices (which are very much frowned upon) this won’t cause any harm. A little while later on my walk, on Allen Street, the snow was my friend again. It caused the start of an old-looking stamp that I’ve never seen before to jump out at me. I’ve walked that block many times without noticing it. I got down on the ground and sprinkled some extra snow, rubbing it in to try to make the stamp legible. I couldn’t quite do it. Besides, where the date would have (or should have) been there was a patch of obscuring ice. I added it to my list of places to check again later.
Looking east on Elizabeth Street, standing on the corner of Elizabeth and Leslie.
I have thought about trying to do rubbings of the sidewalk as people do with gravestones. Even that practice, though not nearly as harmful as rubbing material into the inscription directly, is controversial. It is said to risk damaging an already old inscription, or at least contribute to wearing it down. It sounds absurd, I suppose, to worry about causing wear to something designed to be walked on for a hundred years. But I treasure these fading markings and don’t want to hasten their illegibility. I have picked up a habit of avoiding walking on them. Maybe I’ll try this method of using aluminum foil, which is supposed to be the most harmless way to read gravestones. If, that is, I can get past how self conscious kneeling in front of someone’s house with a sponge and a roll of Reynolds Wrap is going to make me.
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.
It snowed today, so this is the best I could do. At least the S is very prominent!
The stamp is on the next one past the stamp with the ridges. I included the fire hydrant for context, and some late holiday lights in the upper left corner as a bonus. I went this way specifically because I knew there were still some lights on this street.
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.
Looking north on Horton Street. There are some bonus holiday lights in here for you too.
This one might not, scratch that, probably will not excite anyone as much as it did me. But I’ll try to explain. This DPW (Department of Public Works) stamp is on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect. It’s a little worn, but that is definitely 1927.
Why does that matter? It’s not even close to the earliest DPW stamp I’ve found, so that’s not it. No, it matters because I previously had not seen this style of stamp used with a date this early. Stamps I had collected from 1918 through the early 1940s had used a different style. I already knew there was some overlap, in that the earliest style (call it “Style A”, with a larger typeface reading “DEPARTMENT OF / PUBLIC WORKS”) can be found on stamps as late as 1942, and the style I think of as the 1940s-50s style (call it “Style B.,” with a smaller typeface reading “LANSING D.P.W.”) had previously turned up on stamps as early as 1936. This stamp pushes the earliest date for Style B backward almost another decade. As Popeye would say: “I kin not savvy.”
Looking north on Bingham. The stamp is on the nearest full slab. The nearest partial slab has a sneak preview of a Minnis & Ewer stamp that is definitely going to show up here at some point. It’s not an accident that I got the house with the nice holiday lights in this shot too.
The many species and subspecies of DPW stamps deserve a full taxonomy. Unfortunately I don’t have the time for that just now, but I am planning on doing it soon.
I went further afield than usual in search of Christmas lights and ended up walking past the freeway into the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. This is an ordinary 1980s DPW stamp on the east side of Bensch Street between Walsh and Perkins.
I chose this one mainly so I could treat you to some more lights in honor of the holiday. Happy new year from Capital City Sidewalks! I hope you find this one better than the last. And if somehow 2020 was a good year for you, I still hope 2021 is even better yet.
The featured stamp is in front of this very festive yard.
Back to familiar territory: here is a Department of Public Works stamp on the west side of the 400 block of Regent Street, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. I believe it is dated 1942, like another nearby DPW stamp, though the 4 is hard to make out.
Looking south on Regent Street. It was raining a bit.
I noticed this one (on the west side of Horton Street, north of Jerome) during waning light on my walk this evening and made the mistake of assuming that because it was so worn it must be old and interesting. It was totally illegible to me then, but I hoped I would be able to see something in the photo. Studying it afterward I could make out a date, 1944, but not the contractor’s name.
Then I remembered something. There are a lot of 1944 DPW stamps on Horton Street. I compared this one with a previous photograph and the numbers matched exactly. It’s not definite, but I will tentatively call this a Lansing DPW stamp. So it’s only old-ish, and not very interesting (or at least not unusual).
I turned down a block I don’t usually visit on my walks because there were some Christmas lights I wanted to see. I was rewarded twice, with the lights and with this very well preserved Department of Public Works stamp. This is the east side of Allen Street, just south of Elizabeth (the last block before I-496).
This is from that period after they stopped stamping the exact date but before they dropped the month too.
Looking north on Allen Street, with Elizabeth in sight.
I’ve had my eye on this Regent Street Department of Public Works stamp (on the east side, 400 block, between Elizabeth and Kalamazoo). I previously posted it as having an illegible date, Periodically, it has almost become legible, due to the right lighting or a bit of water pooling in the indentations. Recently, I had decided it was possibly a 4 after the 19, but still could not read the final number at all. Then, suddenly, as I walked the block this evening…
Plain as day, thanks to fall rains washing away the right amount of mud and leaving the right amount of silt behind.
