I’m kicking off the fourth year of the blog in style, with a brand new stamp, and a beautiful one. Just look at that clear impression and the artistic vignette effect! I just stumbled across this yesterday on someone’s driveway on west side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine, which is a block I walk all the time.
Unfortunately I can’t find anything out about Louis Guinette. Searching for his name gets me no hits in the State Journal, and Find a Grave doesn’t even know of a grave anywhere in Michigan for someone named Louis Guinette.
Wet pavement and streetlights combined to give me an especially good look at this half-lost stamp. It’s from the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Fairview and Magnolia, in front of the MetroPCS store. When I first photographed it back in 2020, I had to peel away a sod layer to see to the edge of the hacked-off slab, but thanks to my efforts at that time it is still all as visible as it can get. The reason for the update – besides that it’s an especially good look at it – is that I am now quite confident in the date being 1927. The curve of the penultimate numeral does not make sense for anything other than a 2.
I’ve been traveling and didn’t have the chance to collect any stamps from the field this weekend, so here is a link to a State Journal clipping dated July 8, 1920. It begins, “Your attention is hereby called to the following resolution adopted by the city council Monday, July 6, 1920. By Ald. Eddy – Resolved by the citv council of the city of Lansing: That it is a necessary public improvement and it is hereby determined that a new artificial stone sidewalk six feet wide shall be built in front of south one-half of lot 2, block 58, on the west side of Sycamore street, owned by Lewis Widmayer.”
It then goes on with a series of “also”s, adding properties on Sycamore, Logan, and Hyland, all streets west of downtown. (Logan Street is the previous name for Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.)
This very worn Department of Public Works stamp is on the front walk of a house on the north side of Larned Street between Holmes and Jones. The last digit is a little hard to read but I think it’s 1926. Another DPW stamp across the street, similarly hard to read, I had previously decided was probably 1926, and stamps tend to come in clusters like that. The stamp is what I call the “first style” of DPW stamps, which were used from the teens through the forties.
What’s curious about this one is that it’s on a house’s front walk, not a public sidewalk. I have seen DPW stamps on driveway aprons before (presumably replaced during road or utility work) but this is the only one I have seen on a front walk. I am assuming it must have been damaged by utility work for the city to have gotten involved.
Here’s another one from Drury Lane between Ballard Street and High Street, this time from the south side of the street. It’s very worn and the mud doesn’t help either, but I am pretty sure it is an E. Schneeberger stamp. There is also a paired stamp a few steps away, but that one was even harder to see due to slush.
Here’s an even closer view of the stamp.
Another interesting thing about this stamp is that the house it is in front of is the only house that currently has an address on Drury Lane. Drury is a small, one-block street to begin with, and it has several vacant lots. The only other house that appears to face the street rather curiously has a Ballard address, as previously reported. So the occupants of this house have the unique pride of a Drury Lane address. Personally, I think it would be neat to be the only house with an address on a specific street.
The stamp is on the closest (full) sidewalk block.
I had thought I’d catalogued every 1920s stamp on the east side of Lansing, but I was wrong. I stumbled across this 1925 Lansing DPW stamp on the south side of Fernwood Avenue between Magnolia and Hayford.
My eyes are always drawn to an old Department of Public Works stamp, no matter what kind of shape it’s in. This one is on the east side of North Fairview Avenue between Saginaw and Grand River. I’m fairly sure it is 1920s, but can’t read the last digit. My gut says 1925, but I’m by no means confident about that.
The stamp may be nothing too special, but it does represent a breakthrough: I finally made myself walk across the pedestrian bridge over Saginaw. Many years ago when I was in grad school I ended up in this neighborhood for reasons I can’t recall or guess at. What I do remember is that I tried to cross on the pedestrian overpass and though I was able to walk to the top, my legs went weak and locked up and would not let me cross. I’m afraid of heights, and it feels flimsy, but mostly it’s the traffic roaring underneath that terrifies me. It doesn’t help that when I was buying my house, the real estate agent drove us underneath one of them and commented about how there was an accident when a truck hit one and knocked it down while some children were on it. (I thought I remembered him saying someone was killed, but either I misremembered or he did. Six children were injured, however.) I ended up descending the steps again in defeat and walking to a traffic light to cross. This time, though, I walked across it at last, and did it again on the way back. I was given some practice by having to walk across a larger one over a busier road in Mexico City a few years ago.
Looking south on Fairview. The stamp is on the block in front of the street tree, but facing the other way.
This one is on the west side of Parker Street just south of the corner of East Malcolm X (or is it Main Street?). It’s right around the corner from the famous Schneeberger & Koort stamp, as seen in my photo below.
I had to check my records several times before satisfying myself that I hadn’t done this one before. It’s in a part of town I walk very frequently and it’s two things I always stop and photograph: a 1920s stamp and a diagonal one. Except for a crack, it’s in really nice shape, too. Somehow, I have missed it before now. It’s on the east side of South Fairview Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
The house it’s in front of was built in 1910, so it was relatively young when the stamp was place.
This one is on the north side of Prospect Street between Eighth and Pennsylvania. The stamp is a clear example of the “second style” of Department of Public Works stamps. The date is much harder to read and it took me a second trip in better light before I made out enough of it to tell at least the decade. It is definitely a 1920s stamp and I am fairly confident it is 1926.
