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N. Magnolia Ave., [Illegible] West, 1954

This tough-to-read stamp is on the west side of North Magnolia Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. I can be fairly confident that the last name is “West,” but what comes before that is illegible. It looks like two initials.

The only lead I have is a series of classified advertisements that ran in the Lansing State Journal in March and May of 1953: “CEMENT – And concrete work… Phone Dick Connick, 97392, or Dick West, 23050.” Searching for references to Dick West in the LSJ are stymied by the existence of a UPI correspondent by that name.

Looking north (and a bit west) on North Magnolia.

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Horton Ave., J.K. Spink, 1954

Today’s entry is a direct sequel to yesterday’s, as I decided to walk to the 200 block of Regent and check whether there were any Spink stamps in front of the former house of Douglas Spink, Jacob’s son. There were not, so I continued on across Michigan to Horton Avenue and revisited the stamp that originally spurred my research into Spink. The stamp is on the front walk of a house on the east side of the street between Jerome and Vine.

The stamp is above a shallow step.

J.K. Spink died in 1952, and while it’s possible that the company carried his name for a while after that, I don’t see any ads like that in the 1950s Lansing State Journal. Instead I see ads from either Douglas Spink or just Spink Builders appearing by the time of this stamp. I wonder if Douglas just didn’t bother getting a new stamp for a while after taking over the business.

Looking southeast on Horton. It was raining, but I had to get my walk in anyway.

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Regent St., illegible name [J. Wilson], 1954

Today I took my walk at one of the magic times of day that draw out hard-to-read stamps. This stamp, on the east side of the 400 block of Regent Street (between Elizabeth and Kalamazoo), was previously so worn as to be totally illegible and almost invisible to me. But this evening the low angle of the sun made it give up its date quite clearly: 1954.

No such luck with the name, I’m afraid. It plainly starts with a J and after a space I think the next letter is an H. Past that I’m lost. I like the layout, with the smaller letters of the name forming a curve over the large, relatively ornate year.

Update 4/2/21: Now that I’ve seen another one (elsewhere on Regent), I am pretty sure this is J. Wilson.

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E. Michigan Ave., Christman, 1954 / 1955

I was surprised to notice this pair of stamps on my walk tonight because I had assumed all the stamps on this block, in front of Feldman Chevrolet (the north side of East Michigan Avenue between Lasalle Court and Detroit Street), were from the same year. These are harder to read than the others but they are presumably also Christman Co. stamps. The ones on the east end of the block are all 1960.

These are on the west end of the block and, like the others, are stamped head to head. The oddity is that these have two different dates, 1954 and 1955. Bud Kouts bought the dealership in 1954 and it continued to bear his name until the 2010s sometime.

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Jerome St., Joe White, 1954

This was taken at night with a flash, so it’s a bit washed out, but I found it interesting enough to share anyway. It can be found on the south side of Jerome Street between Clemens and Fairview. It’s very worn and craggy, and I could just make it out.

I haven’t yet run across any other Joe White slabs. Trying to find anything out about the company was rough because, well, just try Googling “Joe White.” Even in combination with “Lansing” and “concrete” I had trouble, but eventually I turned up several newspapers.com hits from the Lansing State Journal, ads from the 1950s. I don’t have a newspapers.com subscription and I haven’t yet decided whether I should get one for the sake of cataloguing sidewalk slabs, but I have the patience to pick through the OCR text and from that I have mined out this advertisement, from 1957:

“Basement Seepage Is Specialty / If you are troubled with water seepage in your basement, Joe White, 501 N. Walnut St., offers a special water-proofing service guaranteed to eliminate the seepage. Mr. White features an ‘Ever-Dry’ installation of drain tile inside the foundation and block walls which carries water seepage. He says it completely eliminates dampness and the problem of wet basements. Mr. White, who has been in the water-proofing business here for the past 14 years, has served the needs of more than 1,000 residences in the Lansing area. An average installation takes about three to four days. All work is backed by a bonded guarantee. Free estimates will be provided upon request. / Out of State Rates Are Not the Same / For Free Estimates Phone 5-5807.”

501 N. Walnut St. is several blocks north, roughly, of the Capitol building. It is still an office building, built 1907 according to the city property records. According to other ads from 1954 and 1959, Joe White Co. was located at 1208 N. Pine., which is a pleasantly old-fashioned little house, built in 1914, and not looking much like it has ever been a business location. I’m not sure how to account for the 501 Walnut address given in the 1957 ad. In 1965, the LSJ carried an ad for “Ever-Dry Co., formerly Joe White Co.” There is no longer an EverDry location in Lansing, so I don’t know what became of Joe White’s company.