The whimsical name on this one caught my eye. It’s on the west side of North Fairview Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw.
When I went to search for the contractor involved, a bunch of pictures popped up, showing a drainage system such as I have in my basement. From that I learned that a Beaver System is a trade name for this kind of setup, in which a channel (or, as I have now learned it’s called, a dam) is installed at floor level to trap infiltrating water and send it to a sump pump. Ours was not a brand name Beaver installation, but the name “beaver system” seems to have genericized and gets applied to any such installation.
From what I can tell, Beaver Systems is a franchise. It doesn’t look like anyone is doing business under that name in metro Lansing, but I can find references from about ten years ago to a Beaver Systems in Holt, and other undated references to one in Grand Ledge.
C.E. Schneider is a contractor I haven’t seen before, or at least haven’t taken notice of. This pair of stamps is on the north side of Prospect between Holmes and Virginia. Unfortunately, neither one is dated.
The eastern stamp.
The only reference I can find to C.E. Schneider as a contractor is a brief obituary for Clyde Schneider (1920-2000) which states that he was “Owner and Operator of C.E. Schneider and Sons Cement Contractor.” It also says that he had been a resident of Mount Pleasant since 1998. Schneider is buried in DeWitt according to Find A Grave, so he might have been a DeWitt native. I would guess that C.E. Schneider and Sons was a metro Lansing business. I haven’t found out anything else about the company that would allow me to narrow down when the stamp could have been from.
This is another cryptic one. It reminds me of those “BAY03” ones that pop up here and there. The style is similar enough that I wonder if there is a connection. It’s on the east side of Clifford Street between Prospect and Eureka. Is the “80” a date or part of the contractor’s name? I don’t know how to begin figuring it out. It will likely remain a mystery.
I get quite bothered by how poorly cleared the sidewalks are in Lansing. This is after a couple of days above freezing, too. Anyway, this is facing south, and the stamp is in the second closest block to the camera.
The sidewalks were less hazardous when I went out today, but slushier, so it was difficult to find an uncovered stamp. I settled for this garden variety Cantu & Sons stamp on the east side of South Hayford Avenue alongside Provident Place.
It is strange, though, that this one is undated. Undated stamps are always something of a mystery, but this one is even more so. The city code says that sidewalk work must be marked with a name and date, so undated stamps might reflect contractors who are either ignorant of or unconcerned with the law. But that can’t be the case here, since dated Cantu & Sons stamps are very common. Did they forget their date stamp that day, or just forget to use it?
Looking at Provident Place, with the stamp in question located on the nearest (full) slab, facing the other way.
This handwritten mark is on the south side of Vine Street just east of Ferguson. My research-to-payoff ratio on this one was very low. I was ultimately unable to find a plausible Taylor Bros. for this to be, though I did find a probably unrelated welding company by that name in the 1913 Pictorial Souvenir of the Police and Fire Departments, Lansing, Michigan and then lost an hour to reading through the advertisements therein (check out the ad for Sam’s Place if you want to see something wild).
The marking is in the lower right corner.
Then I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what the deal is with the garage that this is in front of. It belongs to the house that faces Ferguson. I normally don’t spend too much time writing about private homes for fear that the residents might find it and feel gawked at (though if you live in a mansion in this neighborhood I think you have to expect it), but I usually try to find out at least a little about business addresses. The size of this garage made me think that it must surely have been a business at some point in the past. It makes no sense as a garage for a residence. It’s a three-car garage made of naked concrete block, and it’s comically disproportionate. It’s 748 square feet, and the house is only 1,071 square feet. (The house is also two storeys, so the garage has a substantially bigger foundation.) It must take up nearly the whole backyard.
I mean, come on now. What’s the deal with this, huh? (Looking west on Vine.)
The city’s property records say the garage was built in 1961 (50 years after the house) and I would guess the sidewalk marking could be from then. I went to the real estate cards from the 1950s and 60s that the library has scanned in their online local history collection, hoping that it would mention something about the garage. Instead it says that there is a one car garage. The card is undated, but handwritten over the top (as they did on these old cards) is “Sold 2-8-61.” The new owner must have built the garage.
I can’t find any evidence that the garage was connected with a business. Perhaps the new owner was a car enthusiast. A three-car garage is nearly unheard of in this part of town. (I’ve already mentioned another house that has one, but that house is four times the square footage of this one.)
I did find one business that has used that address, but more recently. The November 11, 2002, Lansing State Journal has a new business listing for “Gramma Bea’s,” giving the address of the house on Ferguson. I would be surprised if that street had non-residential zoning, so it may only have been an office address. I don’t remember it at all, but apparently there was once a Gramma Bea’s Deli in East Lansing, and its owner was a past owner of the Ferguson house (and the same person who filed the new business listing). Gramma Bea’s won the annual Lansing Lugnuts chili cook off with a vegetarian chili in 2001. On June 26, 2002, the Lansing State Journal reported on its 2002 “Best of the Best” awards. Gramma Bea’s had come in third in the vegetarian food category, but the notation “(closed)” appeared by its name. I don’t know what the new business listing in November 2002 was for, but I find that in 2004 a “Gramma Bea’s Properties LLC” was incorporated in Laingsburg by the same person who had owned the restaurant.
What was I supposed to be writing about, again?
None of this really tells me about the garage or about the Taylor Bros., but I wasted my time learning all of that, so the least you can do is waste your time reading all of it.
This one caught my eye during my evening walk. (I have been walking after dark a lot lately, partly because I enjoy finding new Christmas lights to look at, and partly because it’s hard not to with the days so short.) It’s on the west side of Shepard Street between Marcus and Elizabeth. The flash photo got it really well, with a bit of help from the wet pavement; there was a misting rain. There were neighbors out on their porch. I keep wondering when I’m going to get the police called on me.
Anyway, this one grabbed my attention because it looked old, so I took a photo despite not usually doing driveway aprons. (I actually thought this was my first driveway apron stamp, but checking my spreadsheet I found that I had done one once before.) The “LANSING MICH” especially connects it with older stamps I have found. The house it is in front of was built in 1924, so I would guess this was poured then.
I had a hard time finding out anything about E.M. Vannocker. Searching Find A Grave, I found an Everett M. Vannocker who lived 1872-1938, probably the correct time frame, but he was buried in Six Lakes, Michigan (a town I previously did not know existed, though it is fairly close to Mount Pleasant, where I work). Because of that I almost ruled him out, but then I found a couple of references in the Lansing State Journal society pages of the 1930s to a Mrs. Everett Vannocker, one of which also gives the name of a daughter, Elsie. The Find A Grave record also gives Mr. Vannocker a daughter named Elsie. From this I infer that Everett M. Vannocker probably did live in Lansing at least during the 1930s, and may have been the E.M. Vannocker of this stamp.
An overview of the driveway apron. As you can see, it’s suffered some damage over the years.
I promised myself I would not stop and look at any interesting stamps tonight because it was already late and I did not have time to go chasing down old newspaper clippings like last night. Unlike last night, this time I was successful reining myself in on my late walk, though I did twice stop and start to go back to look at a stamp, only to immediately turn again, reminding myself I wasn’t going to do that.
So here’s the most boring, dirt-common stamp I could find. Well, no, I tell a lie. It isn’t a Cantu & Sons 1987 stamp. Call it one step more interesting than that, then. It’s an undated O & M stamp, on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Michigan and Vine.
This could be any one of a thousand of these, so you’ll have to take my word for it that I didn’t just repeat a past photo.
I just wonder why the city’s Operations and Maintenance division spent so long failing to date their stamps, when it’s required in the city code. It’s odd for the city itself to be such a scofflaw.
The stamp is on the far end of the closest slab shown here, though it’s hard to see because it’s so dark. But at least you can see the neighbor’s giant inflatable Christmas unicorn.
I was planning to do something easy today, but I stumbled across this on the west side of Custer Avenue between Jerome and Vine, and was so excited I had to get it immediately. I recognized the name of the Lansing Artificial Stone Company as among the earliest sidewalk contractors in Lansing. It has come up a few times in my research on other stamps.
I knew right away to stop and gawk at this one; the typeface and arched design screamed “old.” I just wish I knew how old.
I have found a few interesting, if disconnected, tidbits about the Lansing Artificial Stone Company. By 1912 they were located at 323 East Michigan Avenue. Today the Lansing Center covers that block. The 1902 Lansing Journal “Twentieth Century Edition” has a history of the early builders of Lansing which writes in very glowing tones of the company:
Within the last decade the making of artificial stone has progressed to a degree of excellence that has far surpassed previous expectations. The inventions and improvements in that line of work by the Lansing Artificial Stone Co. have been the main cause of this change, and their product is regarded everywhere as being of a superior quality as regards both beauty and durability.
The Lansing Journal Twentieth Century Edition
It goes on to say that “ninety percent of all brick buildings in Lansing are trimmed with this company’s artificial stone.”
According to the Annual Report of the Board of State Auditors for the State of Michigan for the Year Ending June 30, 1904, in 1903 Lansing Artificial Stone submitted the winning bid for installing sidewalk over a boiler room on the north side of the Capitol. They also submitted an unsuccessful bid for installing sidewalk on several downtown streets (which the City of Lansing had declared to be “a public necessity”).
Looking north on Custer Avenue. Sorry for having to take this one in the dark, but at least you can see some Christmas lights.
Lansing Artificial Stone seems to have had a wide influence. A Michigan Agricultural College student-published newspaper (I would go so far as to call it a zine), the Eagle, stated (in the first issue, dated February 10, 1892) that “The Lansing artificial stone company [sic] have established works at Rogers Park North Chicago and contracts are coming in too fast for the capacity of the works.” The Philadelphia Buildings and Architects site’s entry on R.C. Ballinger & Co. reports, “In the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders Guide for 3 October 1894 R. C. Ballinger & Co. announces that it has organized to manufacture Lansing Artificial Stone in Philadelphia, apparently a reference to an early form of permastone.” Lansing Artificial Stone seems to have become a trade name; was it licensed or franchised somehow?
I wish very much that this stamp had a date. It could potentially be the oldest one I’ve found. Then again, it seems that the company was still in business at least as late as 1915.
I didn’t forget. I’ve just been up all night writing an exam, and this was my first chance to get this posted. I took a lightly snowy walk in the early evening, enjoying some early Christmas lights (even while mildly disapproving).
There are a bunch of these Eastlund Concrete stamps on Elizabeth Street, but none of them are dated. Scofflaws, I tell you. This one is on the north side of Elizabeth Street, just on the east side of the corner of Lathrop.
Here is my first downtown stamp. It’s on the south side of West Ottawa Street between Capitol and Washington, next to the Anderson House Office Building. I actually stopped briefly during my Silver Bells Virtual 5K Walk to take the photo. I was hoping to find something more unusual downtown, but disappointingly all the ones I passed were fairly recent and familiar. This one is impressively clear and sharp, but unfortunately undated.
It’s interesting how some stamps seem more common in some areas than others. I noticed quite a few Moore Trosper (or Moore-Trosper as it is rendered here) stamps downtown, but they are very uncommon in the east side neighborhoods.
Looking west on West Ottawa Street. The stamp is somewhere near the bottom of this photo, too dark to see.
