I found this very worn and craggy Lansing DPW stamp on Jerome Street, near the northeast corner of Jerome and Ferguson. The date is impossible to be certain about but it looks to me like something in the 1930s, possibley 1939, which is consistent with it being what I call a “second style” DPW stamp.
I noticed this very worn stamp on a driveway apron in front of a house on the west side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. It’s fairly wordy, suggesting it may give a city as well as a name, although it may just say “cement contractors” or something.
I looked around to see if there is a matching one and there is, or at least I think so, on the sidewalk nearby. Unfortunately it’s no more legible.
I was getting ready to put this post through when I decided to take one more look at the name to see if I could make it out. It was bothering me how close I was to being able to read it. I started thinking I saw “Lookwood” but decided that didn’t really sound like a name. What about Lockwood? I thought that sounded more like a plausible name. A Google search for “Lockwood concrete lansing” turned up the October 19, 1934 issue of the East Lansing Press, courtesy of Central Michigan University’s Digital Michigan Newspapers collection. There on page six I found this:
220 M.A.C. Avenue is now part of a big commercial building with condos on the upper floors. It would have been located about where CVS is today. Although I was in town when that block was redeveloped, I can’t seem to shake loose a memory of what it looked like before or what was there.
Let’s get back to basics with a worn, old pair of Department of Public Works stamps. These are on the east side of South Magnolia Avenue between Marcus and Harton, in the Urbandale neighborhood. It’s a bit hard to read, but I think the date is 1930.
This is a typical “second style” DPW stamp from the west side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. I actually took the photo not primarily because of the stamp, but rather because it is another example of those odd geometric markings that I do not know the purpose of. It is similar to, though not as large as, the ones on Jerome Street. I hope I eventually figure out what the deal is with them.
This is on the south side of Hickory Street between Jones and Holmes. I found it first over the winter, but the sidewalks were too slushy for me to have any hope of reading it. I waited to see if nicer weather would make it legible. Sadly, it did not. It was a beautiful day today and the sidewalk was as clear as it is going to get, and still the only legible part is the very clear date. There is a name there, but the only part I can read is an E at the beginning, and a suspected O at the end (perhaps part of Co.). Too bad.
I habitually watch the sidewalk when I’m walking around the neighborhood so that I can notice sidewalk stamps, but now that I’ve mined the east side so thoroughly, I’ve started to branch out and also look at any front walks I pass. Today I noticed these two stamps on the west side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect.
There are two walks leading up to this house, one being the main front walk to the porch, and the other being a smaller path leading around to the back of the house. I noticed the one on the smaller path first and thought the date was 1937, but wasn’t entirely sure, as it could also have been 1987.
Then I saw the stamp on the front walk, which is a much clearer 1937. I can’t be totally sure they are from the same contractor, since they do look a bit different, but that might just be due to uneven wear. It seems likely they were done at the same time. They don’t date to the construction of the house; that was back in 1910.
They are tantalizingly close to legible, but unfortunately I can only pick out a few letters.
This very worn Lansing DPW stamp (what I call the “second style” of DPW stamps) is on the west side of South Magnolia Avenue near the southern dead end. It’s in front of the second to last house on the west side, a house which is about seven years older than the stamp.
I’ve noticed a fair number of 1930-dated DPW stamps in the Urbandale neighborhood, so there must have been a big sidewalk replacement project around then. I figure I should capture interesting stamps on these blocks while I can, because they’ve recently started removing sidewalks from the areas near the dead ends.
Although it’s just about illegible, I am fairly sure this is a Lansing DPW stamp. I read the date as 1933, but 1938 is a possibility too. It’s on the west side of Allen Street between Michigan and Prospect.
This stamp is on the south side of Prospect Street between Jones and Bingham. It is a very worn Department of Public Works stamp and though the date is illegible in this photo, I think it is 1935, based on the times I have seen it in better light.
Did you know that Lansing has a Prospect Park? Neither did I, until last year when I started walking regularly. I was looking at a route-plotting site for interesting places to walk to from home, and saw a sliver of land labeled as “Prospect Park.” My brother used to live near the Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and a favorite carousel is there, so the name caught my attention.
It turns out that, online maps aside, it might not properly be called Prospect Park after all. It’s owned by the county Land Bank rather than being under the Parks Department, and the (rather temporary-looking) sign on the site calls it “1112 Prospect Playground.” To me, it will remain Prospect Park. It takes up a city lot, and so it is narrow and deep. The main features are at the front: an evergreen tree with a small garden around it, and a set of playground equipment. The back half is just grass until you get to a couple of small garden beds in the back corners.
Although I have a strange fondness for this little pretender, I have to tell you that it is built on a tragedy. The residents of the house that previously stood here – a young engaged couple – were killed in a double homicide, at home, in 2008. Their heirs did not, or could not, keep up with the taxes on the house and it ended up in the hands of Ingham County. It sat derelict in the Land Bank for a while until, in 2015, Sparrow partnered with the Land Bank to demolish the house and create the playground. Sparrow’s involvement in this is due to the fact that residents were unhappy when Sparrow bought Bingham School and razed it to build a parking structure, as I have written about before. They lost a place for neighborhood kids to play. Prospect Park is supposed to rectify that.
The side of the big tree facing away from the street has a cryptic memorial to the murder victims: a cross with two sets of initials. The house they lived in was built in 1890 and was staid but handsome, with oddly symmetrical front porches on either corner. A few signs of the former residence can still be seen: some old, twisted fencing at the back, a driveway apron, a bit of rope that has grown into a tree.
It’s not extremely old by Department of Public Works standards, but I thought I should get this one in while I can. It’s on the dead-end 700 block of South Francis Avenue, on the west side, probably just south of where Harton Street would be if it still existed there. Across the street from it, the other side of Francis has had its sidewalk recently removed, as with many southern blocks in Urbandale. The sidewalk extends half a block or so further south on this side due to two remaining houses.
This stamp is on a half-sized slab of sidewalk in front of what looks like a vacant lot. In fact, as I discovered checking the city property records, the property south of this point encompasses not two but three lots, plus the vacated section of Harton! (Decommissioned streets seem to hang around in property descriptions, which fascinates me for reasons I can’t articulate.) Historicaerials.com shows Harton still existing here in 1981 but clearly gone in 1994.
