Back in metro Lansing (the Township, to be precise): I found this one in front of the Riverwalk Apartments on the west side of South Clippert Street between Prospect and Michigan. I don’t recall ever walking this block before.
There have been several M & M Concretes in Michigan, including one in St. Clair and another on the opposite side of the state in Fruitport, but I would guess this one was the one that used to be in Charlotte but appears to be defunct.
This 2007 Eastlund stamp is on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Hosmer and 8th. There are many like it between Sparrow and the traffic circle at Washington Square. There was a big construction project that tore everything up in 2006, and Eastlund must have gotten the contract to put the sidewalk back. I chose this one to photograph mainly as an excuse to show you what it’s in front of: a set of ghost stairs.
These stairs are between the Classic Barber Shop (which is attached to Stober’s Bar) and Moriarty’s Pub. They lead to nothing more than a small green space. I suppose one could say that they serve as a street access for the side doors of the two adjacent buildings, but they’re really a relic of a house that once stood here.
I know about this house from perusing the Caterino Real Estate Image Collection, a wonderful resource that the Capital Area District Library has digitized. From 1963 to 1989, a local history enthusiast named David Caterino drove around taking photos of old buildings around Lansing, probably ones that he had reason to think would be demolished soon. On January 31, 1986 – thirteen and a half years before my arrival in Lansing – he took photos of a house at 808 East Michigan. The stairs can be seen in one photo, looking just as they look now. I wish Caterino had taken a wider view of the house from the street, but from what can be seen, it was a large and grand house, with unusually steep gables. An access stairway to the second story had been added in the rear, suggesting it spent its later years subdivided into apartments. In the rear view photo it is also evident how close it was building next door, currently Moriarty’s Pub.
I thought that was as much as I would be able to tell you about the house, but then I realized I could also check the Belon Real Estate Collection, a set of index cards that CADL has also digitized. The cards represent quick information for real estate agents about properties listed from the 1950s through early 1970s. There are a few listings for 808 East Michigan, listed together with 810, which then as today was a barber shop. There is a photo with them, which is very grainy from being copied but does give a better sense of how it looked from the street. The owner of both apparently lived in the apartment above the barber shop. If I’m reading things right, it failed to sell in 1961 at a listing price of $55,000, then in 1964 the same owner tried and failed again at $47,500, and then once again in 1971 at $62,000. Unfortunately, the year built is given in one card as 1946 (this can’t mean the house and must be the barber shop) and in another as N/A. I would guess it was a late 19th century house. According to the 1961 card, it was divided into five apartments: one two-bedroom and two one-bedrooms downstairs, and one two-bedroom and one one-bedroom upstairs.
I had business at the Meridian Mall today, so I thought I would do my first Meridian Township stamp, and get one in front of the mall. To that end I started look on Google Street View, which I sometimes do to scout a spot before walking there. It’s often possible to see stamps and even sometimes possible to read them. I was disappointed that it didn’t look like there were any stamps to be found near the front entrance. That got me wondering whether Meridian Township has the same rule about sidewalk stamping as the city of Lansing – that is, that sidewalks must be stamped with the name of the contractor and the date. I went to the Meridian Township code, but there it only said that sidewalks must be constructed according to the specifications of the Director of Public Works and Engineering. I dug around a little on the Meridian Township Web site until I found those specifications. Regarding stamping, they state:
At each end of the pour, or at least every 80’, the sidewalk/pathway must be imprinted with the contractor’s name and date stamp. The letters of the stamp shall be 1 1⁄2” high.
Meridian Township Department of Public Works
I’m surprised it specifies an exact height for the letters instead of “at least” an inch and a half as it says in Lansing’s code. It is also more specific about how frequent the stamps should be. Nevertheless, they seem infrequent in the vicinity of the mall.
Sidewalks themselves get short shrift around the mall, probably unsurprisingly, but irritatingly nonetheless. I set out to walk the outside edge of the mall and found that a sidewalk at the edge of the building exists only intermittently, mostly around the doors. The longest unbroken stretch of sidewalk is around the Macy’s wing. None of it is stamped. There is no sidewalk at all around the mall’s perimeter road. I only found one place where the public sidewalk even offers a pedestrian entrance to the mall, and it’s on the Marsh Road side rather than near the front entrance on Grand River. Having one lonely access path is so inadequate that it hardly seems worth having any at all. It makes me wonder if the township required them to have pedestrian access when they built the mall so they complied in the stingiest manner possible.
It’s near that access sidewalk that I found a stamp. I had spotted it on Google Street View so I knew it was there, and a couple more like it, though those were hidden by snow at the moment. The contractor is probably H & C Earthworks and Construction of Bath Township, about which I can’t find much information.
