Yes, it looks like several Minnis & Ewer stamps I’ve done before, but this one is new, I promise. It’s on the east side of South Pennsylvania Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. There are a lot of Minnis and Ewer stamps with the same date (8-10) in this vicinity.
Actually, there are a pair of them, roughly on either end of a residential lot. At the moment they are copiously decorated with mulberries that have fallen from a tree that shadows the sidewalk.
I didn’t forget you for long, fellow Minnis & Ewer fans. Check out this stamp on the east side of Jones Street between Prospect and Kalamazoo. Notice anything about it? I mean besides what a beautifully preserved stamp it is.
Exactly! It solves the mystery of the “910” date stamp found elsewhere on Jones Street. (The area near Jones and Prospect is a rich vein of Minnis & Ewer stamps.) I wrote that I had never seen a four-digit year in a Minnis & Ewer stamp, so I couldn’t figure out why “910,” and was puzzled how the “910” were perfectly clear and there wasn’t even the trace of a “1.” But in this stamp we see both a four-digit year and a fainter “1” suggesting that it had a tendency to print lighter. Of the Minnis & Ewer stamps I have found with a legible month, this is the oldest. It appears that they phased out the four-digit year stamp between July and August 1910.
Welcome back to Capital City Sidewalks, or as it will soon be known, the Internet’s premier Verner D. Minnis fan site. Today I have for you a very hard-to-read 1910 Minnis & Ewer stamp from the west side of Jones Street between Prospect and Eureka. I walked out to this spot today specifically to get this one for today’s entry, only to find that it photographed quite poorly due to a glaze of slush that fell on it this morning and was in the process of freezing over. At first I thought I should wait until I get better conditions for a picture, but I wasn’t able to find anything else of interest that wasn’t similarly buried. Besides, I thought to myself, I’m pretty sure by now my readers all know what a Minnis & Ewer stamp looks like. It’s another one with an illegible month, though I was able to make the year legible by scraping the slush out with my bare finger. On est grand par l’amour, et plus grand par les pleurs…
You’ll notice the heavy sprinkling of evergreen needles decorating the stamp. They were contributed by this impressive tree, seen here as I approached the stamp from the north.
I suppose all the needles must get tiresome, but I am always rather envious of houses that have majestic evergreens shading their front yards. All my trees are plain old Norway maples, except for the small ornamental cherry the previous owner planted behind the garden pond.
Good news! The wait is over and I am finally featuring the Minnis & Ewer stamp on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect that I teased back in January. You know, the one adjacent to the surprising-to-me 1927 DPW stamp. There’s nothing unusual about it, aside from being over 110 years old, but I will never pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp.
The month is illegible, though with the snow brushed out it looks like a 6 or 8.
I took the establishing photo from further away than usual because I had to record something odd and a little funny. There is about a foot of completely uncleared sidewalk around the border between two houses, with cleared stretches on either side. I can understand there being a dispute about where the boundary is, but whoever cleared theirs second was being petty even by my standards. I want to know what history has led to this point.
This one, on the south side of Kalamazoo Street between Pennsylvania and Bingham, has been on my list for ages. Back in October, I wrote about another Minnis & Ewer stamp nearby (with the same date, if I’m reading it right) and mentioned that on my way to it I passed this one and would feature it another time. There is also a third, undated one in the vicinity, which I featured in August. Assuming that one was also done around the same time as the other two – August 1910 – I photographed it during its 110th anniversary month.
I think this says “8-10,” anyway. It looks like the clearer 8-10 stamp around the corner on Pennsylvania. I never stop admiring the crispness of these very old Minnis & Ewer stamps.
After my recent embarrassment at having a commenter point out that the “undated” Minnis & Ewer curb walk actually has a (faint) date, I resolved to take a closer look at other Minnis & Ewer stamps. On my walk tonight I passed one I had previously blogged about on Kalamazoo. I took a closer look and I am still confident it is undated (or at least that the date is completely worn off). But a short way further on I saw another one that did have a date, worn but readable. So much for my previous claim that “all the ones I’ve seen are undated” – apparently I was not looking hard enough. I was going to use that one for tonight’s entry, but something unexpected happened. I turned the corner northward on Pennsylvania and found another Minnis & Ewer stamp, this one with a very clear date. So that one will be tonight’s entry. (I’ll probably feature the other one another time.)
That date, August 1910, makes this the oldest dated Minnis & Ewer that I have found so far. It is on the east side of South Pennsylvania Avenue between Kalamazoo and Prospect.
It seems I generalized too quickly about Minnis & Ewer leaving stamps undated. This is a beautifully preserved stamp for being 110 years old and the slab is in good shape too.