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Regent St., Snowy Walks

We finally had a little bit of snow (now long since obliterated by the weather turning warm again) and I took a walk in it to get photos of Christmas lights. I also found some beautiful snow-frosted sidewalk stamps. I love the way snow settles into the lettering; in some cases, as in the B.F. Churchill stamp below, it even makes it more legible.

A 1944 Department of Public Works stamp on Regent Street.
This 1908 B.F. Churchill stamp on Regent was one of the stamps that first motivated this blog. The extreme purple cast is due to a defective LED street light.

In honor of the holiday, here are some of the photos I took of Christmas lights on my walk. I have really come to enjoy walking alone in snowy quiet after night falls, stopping to stand in front of Christmas displays and admire them. Driving around to admire lights is nice, and I do that too, but there is something special about the intimacy of doing it on foot. Being a pedestrian is underrated.

Happy holidays from Capital City Sidewalks!

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Bingham St., J.F. Sowa, 1908

I found another J.F. Sowa stamp! I could hardly believe it, because it turned up in an area that I walk to all the time, on the west side of Bingham Street between Prospect and Kalamazoo. This is near the old fire station, which is one of my frequent destinations. As amazing as it seems to me, I must not have walked this side of the block south of Prospect before. I most often walk to the fire station by going west along Prospect Street, then head back home by either doubling back on Prospect or by going up Bingham to Eureka and turning around there. On this occasion, as there was a pretty sunset when I set out, I decided to take Kalamazoo west, which offers a better view of the sky. That resulted in my finding this stamp that has been hiding under my nose. When I got home I had to check my spreadsheet three times to be sure I had not catalogued this one before.

This one is exciting not just because of the early date, but because J.F. Sowa is one of the early contractors about whom I have been able to find the most information. He also is possibly referenced in the famous Saga of the Bum Walks. This stamp dates just two months after the only other one I have found (which is on Prospect near Jones), but it’s slightly different: the “C” marked between the name and date is not present on the earlier stamp.

Sad to say, it’s not in the best shape, though I’m happy it seems to have been repaired instead of replaced relatively recently.

Bingham really is a treasure trove of old stamps. I have previously found two other 1908 stamps, from F.N. Rounsville and J.P. Sleight, on Bingham, plus a 1910 Minnis & Ewer.

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Prospect St., J.P. Sleight, 1908

Recently my husband showed me a picture of this stamp, which he encountered on a walk. At first I thought it was the one on Bingham, which I had already covered, but when he said it was on Prospect Street, I set out to find it. It turned out to be a new one to me, mainly because it’s west of Pennsylvania and I rarely cross Pennsylvania on my walks. I had not walked past Eighth on Prospect before, and this stamp is on the south side of Prospect between Eighth and Hosmer.

It’s interesting to notice that the spacing of the date differs between this stamp and my previous J.P. Sleight 1908 stamp. Did they stamp each digit separately, or have two noticeably different date stamps?

This is a view west on Prospect. The stamp is too distant to make out, but it’s in front of the nearest visible house.

This walk is in good condition, the best of the J.P. Sleight walks I’ve found, so I hope it will remain here even if Mayor Schor is re-elected and fixes the sidewalks as promised.

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S. Pennsylvania Ave., F.N. Rounsville, 1909(?)

This one is on the east side of South Pennsylvania Avenue just north of Prospect. I started to bypass it as I took it to be yet another very worn old V.D. Minnis stamp (I like those but don’t necessarily stop for all of them, plus they’re mostly undated), then I stopped and took another look and realized that it was something a lot rarer. Had this been the only one I had seen, it would have been illegible, but instead I recognized it as the second F.N. Rounsville stamp in my collection. The date is certainly in the aughts. In person I thought it looked like 09, but in the photo it looks like 08, which is the date on the other Rounsville stamp I found in the same neighborhood. I can’t make out a month this time.

The stamp is strangely off center. It makes me wonder if the sidewalk used to be wider here.

I’m glad I happened to see this one, because of the condition it’s in. It surely can’t last too much longer.

Looking north up Pennsylvania Avenue, from just north of the corner of Prospect Street.

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Shepard St., B.F. Churchill, 1908

This B.F. Churchill stamp is on the west side of the 200 block of Shepard Street, between Kalamazoo and Stanley Court. I have become convinced that both the Churchill stamps I have found are dated 1908 even though, as noted in my entry on the one on Regent Street, this doesn’t seem to make sense of the personal history of Churchill as I understand it. Both have a month as well as a year, something that seems more typical of the earliest stamps I have found. The “AP” of “APRIL” is very faint; I couldn’t see it in person, but with the contrast turned up a bit in this photo I can just make it out.

I’m hoping I may still find more B.F. Churchill stamps to give a greater sample of years.

Looking north on Shepard with the stamp visible in the closest block.

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Prospect St., J.F. Sowa, 1908

I had an exciting find tonight: another stamp from the aughts. I’m not sure how I haven’t noticed it before, since it’s quite a clear one and I often walk this street; I can only guess that it means I usually walk on the other side. It is on the north side of Prospect Street between Jones and Holmes (just east of Jones).

Trying to find out anything at all about the J.F. Sowa responsible for this stamp has been foiled by the fact that a person with the same leading initials and last name is an important personage in computer science. If I try for “J.F. Sowa” and “Lansing,” I get a lot of articles that include citations to Sowa alongside citations to other authors who happened to publish with Michigan State University Press. Adding “concrete” or “cement” to the name does not help, for reasons I will leave as an exercise to the reader. If I exclude the word “conceptual” in order to filter out results that refer to Sowa’s most cited book, Conceptual Structures, it does cut the results down to a handful, but none of what’s left is useful.

The J.F. Sowa stamp in context, looking west on Prospect Street.

The slab is in rough shape, covered in spidery cracks. Still, it’s impressive for it to have survived 112 years, and I think it is in the best condition of the pre-1910 stamps I have found. It looks to have received a neat patch at some point, which appeals to the part of me that enjoys darning socks.

Update 10/25/21: I learned a bit about J.F. Sowa with help from my mom, and wrote an update.

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B.F. Churchill, Regent St., 1908(?)

Before I started this blog, years before, I had already taken note of this stamp, on Regent Street between Kalamazoo and Michigan (the 300 block). It stands out for its old fashioned style and for the nicely styled arch. When I first saw it, I thought it said 1908 and was pleased to find one so old. I talked to my mother about it, and she looked up some information on Ancestry.com as she was a member there.

I had forgotten all about that since starting the blog, and when all the staring at the sidewalk brought it back to my attention several times the last few weeks I could no longer read it. Once again I thought I saw 1908, and once again got excited. But several times running I took photos of it and decided I just could not read the contractor’s name, so I put it aside.

Tonight I took my walk just at sunset, and the way the long shadows fell suddenly made the stamp legible. Sometimes evening shade works in my favor that way. That’s when I remembered, oh yes, B.F. Churchill! Didn’t I decide that it could not, after all, say 1908?

Searching my email found the old correspondence with my mother and, yes, that’s what I deduced then. B.F. Churchill (according to my mom’s research, his name was Byron) appeared in the advertisements for the 1916 Michigan Agricultural College (today’s MSU) yearbook as “College Drayman” and Mom found him in a 1916 Lansing city directory listed as “Proprietor, East Lansing Dray Line,” residence 138 Michigan Avenue, East Lansing. (There are no numbers that low on Michigan Avenue in East Lansing anymore as they seem to start in the 200 block, so I am not sure where that would have been. Perhaps near Mary Mayo hall?) By 1928 he was married and now worked for Reniger Construction. His residence at that time was 1623 Lyons Avenue, which is a cute house in the Baker-Donora neighborhood (built in 1908) that currently looks like it needs some TLC. In 1934 he appears in the directory with an unspecified address on Whipple Court and an occupation of “cement finisher.” I was puzzled by my inability to find Whipple Court on a map but found a site giving name changes of Lansing streets which advised me that Whipple Court was changed around 1940 to Alger. The houses on Alger mostly look too young to have been there in 1934.

From mom’s research, I had previously concluded that I must be misreading the date. I come to the same conclusion again, sadly, and suspect that the zero I’m seeing there is most likely a 3. I tentatively give this one a date of May 1938. (I wouldn’t rule out 1939, either.)

I have also found his death notice in the Lansing State Journal. He lived in Bath in his later years and died in 1964 at the age of 86. He is described as “a retired cement contractor.” It says he had lived in Clinton County for 35 years, which is puzzlingly inconsistent with his appearing in the Lansing city directory on Whipple in 1934. He is buried at Mount Rest Cemetery in St. Johns.

Update 9/30/20: I’ve becoming increasingly sure that it is, after all, 1908. I’m not sure how that makes sense of his history but that is really what my eyes see in it.

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Bingham St., J.P. Sleight, 1908

Well, look at that: another J.P. Sleight slab, this one on the east side of Bingham Street between Kalamazoo and Prospect. Like the previous one I wrote about, it’s in bad shape, though not as bad. It looks like its primary issue is that, like many of the slabs in this tree-rich area, it’s been heaved up, leaving the edge susceptible to breaking.

The stamp is clear as day, much more so than many of the more recent stamps I have seen. It appears that between 1907 and 1908 Sleight gave up on stamping the month along with the year, more’s the pity.

The 300 block of Bingham Street.

Oddly enough, I have walked on this block many times since starting the sidewalk blog but this is the first time I noticed this one. Having seen at least two and possibly three 1900s stamps now (one of which has not yet been featured here), I continue to hold out hope that I’ll find one earlier than my current record of 1907.