This is an unusual Cantu & Sons variation on the south side of Prospect Street just east of the intersection of South Clemens. While I was taking the photo, a car pulled up at the stop sign. I tried to act nonchalant, like I was just checking my texts or something, since I’m always worried someone is going to start asking me what I think I’m doing taking photos of neighborhood streets. But alas, I could hear over my earbuds that the driver, an older man with white hair, was talking to me. I pulled my earbuds out and he was asking me, “Is it an old one?”
I was surprised, but I suppose it was bound to happen eventually that someone would actually know what it was I was after. I explained that it was undated but a variation I hadn’t seen before, and he told me there was a very old one “up that way,” meaning north on Clemens. From the 1920s, he thought. “Oh yeah,” I said, “I think I know the one you mean. It’s 1922 Department of Public Works.” He declared that he thought I was right. I shared with him that the oldest one I’d ever seen was from 1907. After he left I walked away amused with myself for having come across as a human gazetteer of east side sidewalk stamps. A few minutes later I realized that it would have been even more impressive if I had remembered the date right.
A typical undated O & M stamp on the east side of South Magnolia Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. I wonder why they spent a good while not dating them.
It was a chilly night, and snowed earlier, so it wasn’t my most pleasant recent walk. I did enjoy seeing a few remaining Halloween decorations.
Looking south on South Magnolia. The stamp is facing the other way from me here, on the other end of the slab.
I know what you’re thinking. “Another Cantu & Sons stamp?” Look, if I published Cantu & Sons stamps in proportion to how common they are, this would just be a Cantu blog with occasional impurities. As I’ve said before, Cantu stamps are by far the most common stamps on the east side.
This variant Cantu & Sons stamp is on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Fairview and Magnolia. The most common Cantu stamps are the 1987-88 stamps that just read “Cantu & Sons.” The next most common are the ones from prior to that, reading “Cantu & Sons Cement Cont.” This rather faint one adds “Cantu & Sons Const” to the mix. Unfortunately, it’s undated.
Looking east on Kalamazoo. The stamp is on the closest slab.
I don’t know what to make of this one I stumbled across on my walk tonight. It’s on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue between Michigan and Prospect, close to the corner of Prospect.
My first thought was that the “BWL” makes me think of the Board of Water and Light. Is that “d” looking character some sort of shorthand for “of”? It’s not one I recognize, but maybe. But why wouldn’t there also be a mark for “the” in that case?
Looking south on Magnolia. The stamp is on the closest (full) block.
This old-looking, diamond-shaped marking is on the west side of the 100 block of North Foster Avenue, between Michigan and Vine. I have taken notice of it several times and finally decided to feature it.
I don’t know for sure what the word in the middle is. There was once a George Leavens in the concrete business in Lansing; that much I know for sure, and most probably this was he. So the third word isn’t part of his name but rather the name of his company or line of work. My guess is “MAKER.”
Sadly there is no date either. George Leavens was in the concrete business by 1922. I know that from the October 23, 1922 issue of American Builder, in particular an article titled “Truck-Mounted Concrete Mixer Saves Time and Labor for Contractor.” Leavens had apparently figured out a novel method for pouring concrete from a moving truck. I notice that they reference his knowledge of gasoline engines as helping him determine the optimal horsepower for the mixer. The September 14, 1933, issue of the Ingham County News includes a legal notice of the dissolution of the Lansing Cast Stone Block Company, naming George Leavens as one of the directors.Concrete sidewalks used to sometimes be called “artificial stone” so that is probably still part of his career in the concrete business.
Looking south on Foster.
Some helpful person (probably a family member) has shared their research into Leavens’s life at FindAGrave.com. He was born in Cambridgeshire, England, in 1888 and moved to Lansing in 1906. He had a surprisingly varied career according to census records. In 1910 he was an iron foundry worker in Lansing, then in 1920 he was an auto factory worker in Dewitt (there’s the source of his knowledge of gasoline engines). In 1930 he is back in Lansing as a manager at a concrete block company (that would presumably be the Lansing Cast Stone Block Company) and then in 1940 (the year he died) he and his wife were owners of a grocery store in Lansing. An interesting thing to note is that he and his wife, Ellen, had a great disparity in age, and not in the more usual direction; he was born in 1888 and she in 1866. Yet they had three children, two daughters and a son. Their first daughter was born in 1910, which is at least plausible for a biological child for Ellen, and I don’t know when their second daughter was born, but their son was born in 1923. I was puzzling over the dates here and mentioned it to my husband. He said, “They didn’t have a son. They had a relative who got embarrassed.”
I have also found George Leavens at PoliticalGraveyard.com, or at least I assume so. He ran for township supervisor of Lansing Township as a Republican in 1939, losing out in the primary. (The Democrat had no primary opponent.) This spurred me to check whether there is even a contested primary for township supervisor in Lansing anymore. I learned that in the most recent primaries, no one ran as an Republican. One person ran in the primaries as a Democrat, receiving all but one vote. (That one vote was a write-in.) Apparently the Lansing Township supervisor elections were a little more exciting in the 1930s.
I have been mulling over the idea of starting a new blog feature called the Hall of Shame, documenting sidewalks which were clearly installed relatively recently without any identifying stamp. With that in mind, I stopped to observe this patch of new-looking sidewalk on the northwest corner of North Foster Avenue and East Michigan. (Whether you consider this to be on Foster or Michigan is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation.)
Looking southeast from the corner of Foster and Michigan.
Upon looking at it more closely, I spotted something. What’s this?
When I started this sidewalk project I don’t think I realized how much time I would end up sinking into researching local business history. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I also need to tone it down a little. I’ve developed a particular fascination with the stretch of East Michigan Avenue I’ve begun thinking of as “Eastmost.” From what I can tell, it used to be the car salesdistrict. Tonight’s stamp comes from the north side of East Michigan between Kipling and Lasalle Court.
It’s another mystery stamp in the vein of this mystery stamp, but the two of them help fill in the gaps with each other. The faint area on this one matches the Y in the earlier one, and the clear A in this one matches the faint area of the other. Since the other ends in 02 and this one in 03 it’s tempting to treat that as a date. But who or what is “DAY”? And why the odd spacing (or lack thereof)?
This is close to the corner of Kipling, in front of the Avis/Budget car rental agency. The office building was built in the 1990s. The garage on the property (they don’t share a street address, but are part of the same lot according to city records) dates from 1940. I don’t know who the original occupant was, but by in the 1950s it was Hodgson & Osborn Used Cars, as pictured in this 1958 photo filed in the Capital Area District Library’s local history collection. “Note arborist in tree in center of photo,” directs the caption. It appears that the arborist is in the act of taking the tree down. They evidently didn’t replace it, as there is no street tree there now.
Sometime after Hodgson & Osborn, certainly by the 1970s, it became Spartan Auto Sales. In 1981 the address starts showing up in newspaper ads still attached to Spartan Auto Sales but also as the address for Ugly Duckling Rent-a-Car and Ugly Duckling Car Lot. I’m not sure how it was both Spartan and Ugly Duckling at the same time, but that seems to be the case.
Sometime in the late 1980s it became Thrifty and then eventually Budget/Avis. Thus it went through the same progression from a car lot, through a less respectable car lot, to a car rental agency, as the current Enterprise location.
This stamp is in front of the awfully-named Venue at East Town, the development that was dropped in from space to replace a row of early 20th century buildings on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Clemens and Fairview. This block forms a good part of my early memories of living in Lansing, not just because I spent a lot of time waiting at the bus stop there. It was formerly home to Emil’s, which until its closure was the oldest restaurant in Lansing, and hosted a fair few of my birthday dinners with my parents. Various other shops on the block came and went over the years. The one I probably spent the most time in was Capital City Comics and Books.
I would have kicked that cigarette butt out of the way had I noticed it while taking the photo, but it probably just lends authenticity.
This stamp from Clark Foundation Co. is undated, though the whole stretch of sidewalk was newly laid as part of constructing The Venue, so it must date from 2017. Interestingly, a Clark stamp further east – in front of another Gillespie development – includes a date. Clark is based in Delta Township and was founded in 1955. According to their Web site, they “specialize in residential and commercial excavating, quality poured walls and flatwork.”
The cornerstone of The Venue at East Town. The stamp is actually on the other (east) end of the building.
This stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Allen and Shepard. It’s undated, which is curious because I have seen other Eastlund stamps around town with dates, mostly in the 2000s if I’m remembering correctly. Eastlund Concrete of Holt is still in business and has been providing commercial concrete services since 1962, according to their Web site.
It’s out in front of Papa John’s Pizza, my longtime go-to pizza place (except when my parents are visiting because my dad prefers Jet’s). Papa John’s is no relation to the national chain. They had the name in this area long before the other Papa John’s came to town, so they had no legal obligation to relinquish it. When someone opened a Papa John’s franchise in Lansing back in the 2000s it had to go by the name Papiano’s. It’s long gone but our east side Papa John’s endures.
I’m trying so hard not to be bothered by the disorderly letters in that neon sign. I miss their previous neon, which was a cartoon chef’s face with big green eyebrows.
The stamp is on a half-sized slab right in front of the street tree in this next photo. (It’s right above a BBRPCI stamp oriented in the other direction.)
This V.D. Minnis stamp is on the north side of Prospect Street between Holmes and Jones. Unfortunately, as with Minnis and Ewer, stamps from Minnis are undated. I’m curious whether Minnis started out solo and then joined Ewer, or whether the two started out together and then split. Their stamps look quite old, as I noted in my previous entry on Minnis and Ewer, and now I have further reason to believe that they must be.
That further reason is the entry I have found for Verner D. Minnis at Find A Grave. Some helpful person has done a bit of genealogy on the Minnis family and has a photograph of Verner’s grave at Mount Hope Cemetery, unless there was some other Verner D. Minnis in Lansing during this time period. If the Verner of the gravestone had any children, they don’t know of them. Sadly, he died in 1919 at the age of 41 or 42, of “pneumonia and toxemia” if I am deciphering the somewhat blurry death certificate correctly.
Find A Grave invites visitors to leave memories of departed people there. Do you think I should share my scant knowledge of his sidewalk business? Let me know in the comments. (Comments are enabled! You do have to click on the specific post from the front page to see them, which is perhaps not ideal.)
