Here’s a glamour shot for you. You’ve seen the J. Carter stamp before. The McNeilly stamp hasn’t appeared here before, though others just like it from this vicinity have. But the real reason I wanted this photo is that it just looks so aesthetic when a dusting of snow puddles inside the letters of a contractor stamp. They’re such wonderful little artifacts in all seasons.
This is from the east side of Allen Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus, next to the Neogen building.
This is the sidewalk block at the southeast corner of Parker Street and East Malcolm X Street. I’ll call it Parker since the house at this property faces Parker.
It’s of interest for two reasons. First, I have seen two stamps on one block before, but never three (driveways excepted). I think they were trying to make it clear which park of the sidewalk they were marking out, fearing the intersection would make it ambiguous whether they had paved Parker or Main (as it was then called). And speaking of Main, here is the other reason this spot is interesting. Look at the street sign that is at this corner.
Did they forget to change the sign when Main changed its name to Malcolm X in 2010? Or did this little stub end of the street somehow escape the official name change? I’ve been to this spot before when cataloguing the famous Schneeberger & Koort stamp, the one that brought the wonder of the Bum Walks Controversy into my life, but I did not notice the sign at the time.
Today’s stamps are kitty-corner to each other on the northwest corner of North Magnolia Avenue and Vine Street, meaning that one is really on Magnolia and the other on Vine.
H. Plummer can be found advertising concrete work in late 1960s and early 1970s Lansing State Journal classifieds pages. It turns out his name was Henderson Plummer and he lived in Mason, that is, when he lived in Michigan. He seems to have spent at least some of his time in Texas. While trying to find more about him, in hope of turning up a history of his contracting business, I found some pictures of apparent relatives, and was surprised to discover that they were Black and thus he probably was too. I say surprised because so far whenever I have managed to turn up a picture of a contractor featured in the blog it has been a White man. So, it is nice to find some diversity in the business. (I will also be very excited if I ever find a woman, but I’m not holding my breath in the meantime.)
I haven’t found much about Plummer, but I did find this page from a Plummer family reunion newsletter in which he gets a brief mention in “Notes of Interest”:
Henderson Plummer will complete his tour of duty in Texas, where he works on the toll-road in Houston. He will return to his extensive contractor business in Michigan where his family resides.
Reunion News, June 23, 1987, p. 7.
The reference to the contractor business gives me confidence that it is the same Henderson Plummer who had a concrete business in Mason and who poured this sidewalk.
This stamp is on the west side of North Clemens Avenue, at the intersection of Fernwood. The date is a little hard to read in the photos but I believe it is 1980.
I haven’t been able to find anything out about E. Harmon. My best lead is an obituary for Earl Harmon, Jr. of Lansing, who died in 2018 at the age of 75. It says “He was is (sic) concrete construction having started and being a partner of M & M Concrete in Charlotte.” Maybe he stamped things under his own name before forming M & M. Unfortunately, that’s all I have on this one.
I went further afield than usual in search of Christmas lights and ended up walking past the freeway into the Potter-Walsh neighborhood. This is an ordinary 1980s DPW stamp on the east side of Bensch Street between Walsh and Perkins.
I chose this one mainly so I could treat you to some more lights in honor of the holiday. Happy new year from Capital City Sidewalks! I hope you find this one better than the last. And if somehow 2020 was a good year for you, I still hope 2021 is even better yet.
Here is a rare Cantu stamp that isn’t from the 1987-88 swarm, on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Prospect and Kalamazoo. This one is just Cantu and Son. Evidently only one son had thus far joined the business.
It is difficult to read the date, and the photo doesn’t do much to make it clearer, but close inspection leads me to be pretty sure it is 1980.
This stamp (and a second one a short distance away, probably the other end of a run of sidewalk replacement) is on the east side of South Clemens Avenue south of Michigan. It’s next to the parking lot behind the infamous Venue at East Town. I know the date is hard to read in this night photo, but I inspected it closely with my flashlight and it is 1980.
According to Open Corporates, the Ken Roberts Construction Co. of DeWitt incorporated in 1965 and dissolved in 1989. Its practical end probably actually came a bit earlier than that. A large classified advertisement in the June 27, 1982, Lansing State Journal heralds an upcoming auction of heavy machinery, concrete equipment, and miscellaneous items “too numerous to mention” from the Ken Roberts Construction Company. It certainly looks like a liquidation auction.
From the above advertisement I also learned that there used to be an airport outside East Lansing, since it gives the auction site as “across the street from Davis Airport.” I had to look up where the heck Davis Airport was and I learned to my surprise that it was still extent (though in a very diminished form) as late as 2000 and is now buried under the gigantic student apartment complex known as Chandler Crossings.