A little further south on Rolling Brook from my last entry, still on the west side, I found more LPW stamps. This one is on the sidewalk proper and this time the date appears to be 1966 or 1968 – thanks to the curvy font it’s hard to be sure. I have noticed that stamps from this era often use this same typeface for dates even when it’s a different contractor and even when the typeface used for the name is dissimilar. Sadly, I still have no insight as to who LPW is.
The house this stamp is in front of was built in 1967, according to East Lansing’s online property records.
Apologies for missing my usual Monday entry this week. It’s midterm grading season and I’m run ragged, which also accounts for why this post is coming at 3:30 in the morning.
Continuing with last week’s exploration of the Pinecrest neighborhood near Lake Lansing and Coolidge, I tried walking further south on the curiously dead-ended street. I discovered its name to be Rollingbrook Lane, or so I thought based on the street sign, which appears to render it as one (cramped) word. Google Maps says it is two words and so does the city’s online property database. I was hoping to find some older and possibly unusual stamps. I knew the 1980s and 2000s stamps I had been finding could not date to the development of the subdivision, since the houses had a 1960s look to them.
Once I got south of Red Leaf Lane, I found a stamp of the appropriate vintage on the west side of the street. It’s hard to read but I recognize it as a C.E. Schneider stamp. I find a lot of those from right around this same year, 1968, which is also the year of the house this is in front of. I always like when I find a stamp of the same date as the building it’s in front of, suggesting it dates to the original construction. Still, I continued walking in hope of finding a new-to-me stamp.
My wrist RSI is badly flared up right now so this will be very brief. Here is a 1968 C. Gossett stamp, like many on this block, from the east side of Regent Street’s 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Prospect. I promise this is one I haven’t done before, but it looks identical with quite a few that I have.
Sorry it’s dark. I had to take my walk after midnight because I was occupied with something all evening.
Looking north on Regent with Kalamazoo in sight. The stamp is in all that foreground darkness.
I walked a 5K today (the Mayor’s River Walk) and so I didn’t take my usual neighborhood walk. Realizing I didn’t have a stamp for the blog, I suddenly decided to pull into the next neighborhood street I came to as I drove home from Potter Park on Pennsylvania. The next one turned out to be Walsh Street, so this stamp is from the north side of Walsh between Pennsylvania and Parker. I’m not sure if the date on this one is 1966 or 1968 but I mildly favor 1968.
It’s a contractor I haven’t seen before. I took my usual approach for finding contractors when it’s in the “Initial(s) and Last Name” format that often comes up in older stamps: I checked Find a Grave for people buried in a cemetery in or near Lansing with a matching name and a plausible birth and death date. In this case I found Alton M. Brayton (1908-1986) buried in Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in DeWitt.
Facing west on Walsh Street. This is the better side of the street, as far as sidewalks; the walks on the other side are so crumbled as to be totally absent in some places. The city should be ashamed to have let the sidewalks get so bad. That’s some Lansing Township level BS.
Armed with a full name, I searched again and found the June 13, 1974, Clinton County News (bless Clinton County for having scans of many old issues online). On page 11A, a brief piece titled “Sign Ovid Street Contract” accompanies a photograph:
It was contract signing time in Ovid Monday as village officials, engineers and contractors inked the line for $230,000 street building project. Signing the contracts are [from left] Earl Canfield, village clerk; Carl McIntosh of Capitol Consultants; Alton Brayton, contractor and Dale Crossland, village clerk.
Clinton County News, June 13, 1974, p. 11A
The photo is very muddy because the paper has been scanned in black-and-white, but you can get at least a little bit of an idea what Brayton looked like.
I took another walk around Urbandale this evening and made a point of walking on the tracks of removed sidewalks. (I discovered that the 700 block of Francis has the longest ex-sidewalk I’ve found yet.) But that’s not the point of this entry. No, this one is to show a name I haven’t covered yet, Don Otis. It’s on the west side of South Fairview Avenue between Elizabeth and Harton.
I wish I could tell you more about Don Otis, but all I know is that he advertised cement work in the Lansing State Journal between 1951 and 1973.
Here’s a closer look at the date in case you want to second guess me on it.
The house this one is in front of was built in 1968, the same year as this stamp. (At least, I think so, though the last digit is a little indistinct and I’m willing to entertain the idea that it’s a 1966.) That’s an unusually “new” house for the neighborhood.
I previously showed you a 1987 Don Bates stamp from out in front of the Beverly Place Apartments (which take up most of the blocks between Holmes and Clifford on the north side of Kalamazoo, across the street from Hunter Park). The same stretch of sidewalk contains this stamp from L. Ketchum. There are also a couple more of them from the same date, so possibly part of the same project, in front of the smaller Park Terrace Apartments next door to the west. The Beverly was built in 1965, and the Park Terrace in 1961. Also during the 1960s, Hunter Park was undergoing change, first getting a swimming pool and then getting some extra land as part of the morally dubious near-destruction of Stabler Park.
My best guess is that L. Ketchum is Lyle Ketchum. In the September 24, 1947 Lansing State Journal classifieds, there is this advertisement from Lyle Ketchum of Holt: “CEMENT WORK Walls, footings, floors, drives, etc.” Then I find a reference to a “Lyle Ketchum Cement Constr.” team in the Lansing State Journal‘s “Bowling Honor Roll” column of November 28, 1971. Muddying matters is that there have been multiple Lyle Ketchums in the Michigan concrete scene: I find this obituary for Lon Lyle Ketchum of Lake Odessa, which describes him as a concrete contractor, but since he died at age 63 in 2014 he could not have been the Lyle Ketchum laying concrete in 1947. That must have been his father, Lyle Ketchum Jr., 1927-1983. The family apparently continued the business in Lake Odessa until around 2013. The timing of the corporation’s dissolution in July 2013 may have had something to do with this $16,000 fine for wage and hour violations in May 2013.
Looking northeast at the apartments, with the stamp in the lower left corner.
It was another night of slim pickings as snow was falling, dusting even the sidewalks that had been cleared, except the scant few that had been salted. (Bless those folks.) This one is on the east side of North Fairview Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, next to the parking lot for the Arcadia Smokehouse.
This is a nicely crisp J.A. Johnson stamp. The date is less clear, but with a flashlight and a few angles I figured out that it is 1968. I haven’t learned anything about J.A. Johnson, unfortunately, despite seeing their stamps scattered around the east side. I do always mull over the unlikely possibility that J.A. was a relative of the Jim Johnson I used to play in a local pinball league with.
Facing south on North Fairview. Whoops, I think I failed to get the stamp in this photo. I believe it’s just below this photo.
I had a more interesting one planned for tonight but I happened across a small, shivering dog running around Hunter Park. I spent a little while trying to gain his trust, but while he would come right up to me, he would get defensive if I tried to grab his collar. Eventually I gave up, but after leaving the park I ran across the dog again, with a guy trying to use a hamburger to entice him. The fellow Samaritan had the same results as me: the dog would come up to him but if he tried to grab him he would get snapped at. As we stood there talking about it suddenly a car pulled up and asked if we had seen a small dog. We both pointed up the street and the car took off in pursuit, so at that point I was relieved and figured I could now exit the scene. This excitement caused me to forget to take the photo I meant to and I ended up having to just grab what I could since I didn’t have time to extend my walk.
Anyway, here’s the stamp. It’s on the east side of the 400 block of Regent Street (about midway between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth). It’s a C. Gossett stamp. Those are pretty common, as I’ve mentioned, and they are usually from the 1960s as far as I’ve seen. I am not entirely sure of the year on this one. It looks like 1968, but could be 1966 or even 1960.
Looking south on Regent Street. It’s hard to see, but the stamp is in the nearest full block.
Now for a little bit of irrelevant reminiscing. The house this is in front of (the steps of which can be seen in the photo above) is one I have actually spent time in, many years ago. When I was first living in town two fellow grad students (a married couple) lived there, and my husband-a-the-time and I were friendly with them. I still think of the house (it’s actually a duplex) as “[Couple’s names’] house” even though they moved out in the 2000s and I long ago lost contact with them. For years, the very numerous tulips and daffodils planted by my old friends would come up each spring and I would think of them. I think a few might still pop up in the front yard.
