This stamp is on the west side of Virginia Street just south of the Eureka intersection. Unfortunately, it’s undated, which is true of all the George Leavens stamps I have found. There is another one further south on this side of Virginia, though it’s not as clear.
Unfortunately I don’t have anything new to say about George Leavens, but I’ll take this opportunity to point to my previous post about George Leavens because I learned a lot of interesting things about him. Last time I wasn’t quite sure what the word in the middle of the stamp was, but this stamp is quite crisp in that regard, so I have confirmed my guess that it says “MAKER.” It seems like an unusual but less awkward version of the “MFGR’S” that appears in Minnis & Ewer stamps. (It took me ages to notice that the “G” in that does not stand for anything!)
Facing south on Virginia Street. This is on the corner lot with Eureka.
This is certainly the newest sidewalk I have featured here. It’s in front of an apartment building on the south side of Prospect Street between Bingham and Pennsylvania.
How do I know it’s the newest? Because yesterday I walked past it and it looked like this:
I was delighted by this discovery. It meant I could walk back again the next day and see the freshest stamp yet. Who would it be? One of the contractors I already know like old friends, or a new kid on the block? I could hardly wait to find out.
Imagine my disappointment when I returned to find a beautifully smooth and fresh new sidewalk – unstamped. Into the Hall of Shame with you!
The previous sidewalk was straight, and heaved up severely by the tree’s roots. Looks like the tree sustained a little bit of damage in the battle, but won the war: the sidewalk has ceded the territory.
This stamp (actually a pair) is on the west side of Virginia Street between Eureka and Prospect. This is the first appearance of Dave Price Construction in this blog. The sidewalk is undated, so Dave is lucky I didn’t put this in the Hall of Shame. It looks like the driveway was probably done at the same time.
OpenCorporates has a listing for Dave Price Construction, LLC, incorporated in 2008 and dissolved in 2011. They were located in Charlotte. Interestingly, the only two names that show up on any of the documents filed are a Sherri Price who signed the Articles of Incorporation and a Manuel Moreno who was the registered agent and CEO. This led me to imagine the following dialogue:
“So Dave Price… does he own the business, or was he just the founder?”
“Oh, neither.”
“Then why is it called Dave Price Construction?”
“Dave is just the guy we send out to actually do the construction. We point him at a stretch of sidewalk and say ‘Get working.'”
Looking south on Virginia Street, which is a little one-block street between Eureka and Prospect which, like its sister street Rosamond, isn’t really part of the normal street grid.
Most O & M stamps are undated and this one is not an exception. It’s on the northeast corner of Horton and Michigan, in front of the Gabriels Community Credit Union. It has a lamppost and a fire hydrant for company.
That’s the former Pagoda restaurant across the street, on the corner of the (slightly misaligned) Regent.
This worn V.D. Minnis stamp is on the west side of Shepard Street between Stanley Court and Kalamazoo. Unfortunately, like almost all V.D. Minnis stamps (here is a notable exception) it is undated.
The stamp is close to centered in the slab, unusually.
The same stamp, a little closer for detail.
Looking south on Shepard; this is just a house or two south of Stanley Court.
I had a stamp on Horton Street sitting on my back burner list for a while and decided to go out and get it today. It rained when I was first going to set out, so I decided to switch things around and do the research first, then get the photo later. I had written down “J.M. Spink” as the contractor’s name, but it turns out that I likely misread the worn stamp. Instead, I had probably seen the work of J.K. Spink, who was advertising in 1940s Lansing State Journal classifieds as a contractor and remodeling specialist.
As usual when I have a distinctive name to work with, Find A Grave was my friend. I found a Jacob Kent Spink buried in the Maple Grove Cemetery in Mason. (There is a photo of him as a young man at the memorial page there, if you want to get better acquainted.) From there I was able to search for his name in the LSJ and find his obituary, published July 21, 1952. According to that, Spink was a building contractor and World War I veteran. He was born in Toledo but grew up in Michigan, attending Mason High School and then the University of Michigan. Sadly, he was only 56 when he died. Of interest to me was noticing that he lived on the west side of the 300 block of Regent Street at the time of his death, and it was the same address that appeared in his business ads.
I did walk up to Horton Street where the stamp that originally spurred this research was located, but on a hunch I decided to pass his old house on the walk back. And this is what I found in the driveway, bumping my original planned stamp for today.
I can just make out the “K,” I think, though the J is pretty well gone. I am sure it is him, though.
Spink’s son Douglas carried on in the contracting business, as I see advertisements in the 1950s for a contractor using either his name or “Spink Builders.” I discovered that Douglas also lived on Regent Street, on the 200 block. As I didn’t find this out until after my walk I didn’t know to go check for work there too, but I will put it on my ever-sprawling list of places to visit.
More Urbandale meandering today. Near the southernmost end of South Fairview Avenue, just south of the barely-existing-street known as Harton, I found this curb walk stamped by W.P. Bowerman. It’s in front of the only house on the east side of the 700 block, and near the southern end of the sidewalk there. The west side still has sidewalk to the end, at least for now. (And that’s foreshadowing of something I plan to get to soon.)
Where the sidewalk ends, South Fairview. (The stamp is nearest to the curb.)
Tonight I’m returning to the E.M. Vannocker driveway apron from the west side of Shepard Street between Marcus and Elizabeth. The reason for this return visit is that I realized on a later walk that it is not just one stamp but a series of three. The first three houses south of Marcus all have this stamp in their driveway apron, yet I haven’t found one anywhere else yet.
I expected to find that all three houses were built at the same time, but sadly it wasn’t as neat as that. From north to south, they were built in 1924, 1923, and 1926. The ’24 and ’23 houses are similar, possibly identical, bungalows. The ’26 house is an American foursquare. Perhaps Vannocker was the builder of all of these houses, or someone the builder worked with regularly.
This is one of those curiosities that pepper this blog, quirky stamps that I can’t quite explain. It’s on the east side of Horton Avenue between Jerome and the northern dead end. It’s an old-style Department of Public Works stamp, and it appears to have a month (May) but no year.
In the early days, the DPW stamped a full date: month, day, and year. By the 1920s they switched to stamping just the month and year, and sometime between 1924 and 1927 they switched to year only. You might think that the year has just worn off, since the stamp is generally quite worn. But that is hard to believe. There isn’t any leftover impression of it at all, for one thing. Even stranger is the placement of “May,” centered below the name. In the month/year and month/day/year stamps, the month is off to the left, not centered. It really does look like they just stamped “May”!
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.
