I assume this is graffiti, though the name/date format and the placement almost suggests a handwritten contractor marking. But, for Little Christmas, please enjoy the well-lit house I found it in front of. It’s on the west side of North Hayford Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw.
We took our (nearly) annual roller coaster vacation to California this year, to visit a few parks in and near the southern Bay Area. One of those parks was Gilroy Gardens in Gilroy, California, the so-called Garlic Capital of the World. It’s an arrestingly scenic park, less an amusement park than a botanical garden that has some rides. One of their most popular rides are paddle boats in the shape of ducks, geese, and swans, which give you free roam in the small lake at the center of the park. It was on a bridge near the boats that my husband spotted a sidewalk stamp.
One of the posts for the guardrail has obliterated the first few letters of the contractor’s name, but I looked at a list of concrete contractors in Morgan Hill and the only one that matches is Sycamore Concrete Construction. Unfortunately I can’t find a Web site or any other information about them, except for a listing at OpenCorporates which shows the corporation being founded in 1985 and dissolved in 2022.
It seems odd that they bothered stamping a spot where it would end up being illegible, but I have to assume they did not know where the guardrail was going to be placed when they did the stamping. Maybe it was a later addition and the original fence was outside the concrete.
I took this photo when returning to the car after Silver Bells (Lansing’s annual holiday parade). The stamp is located inside the Lansing Center’s parking garage off City Market Drive.
I had previously and mistakenly believed that the Lansing Center was built in the 1950s. I think I had been confused by reading old newspapers that referenced a civic center in connection with popular midcentury mayor Ralph W. Crego. In fact, that was the Lansing Civic Center, which functioned mainly as a concert venue. It was renamed the Lansing Civic Arena in its later years to avoid confusion with the Lansing Center. The Lansing Center was only built in 1987, which is very surprising to me. That means when I came to town in 1999 it practically had a bit of new-development shine still on it. The Lansing Civic Arena was demolished in 1999. It had been at the southeast corner of Allegan and Pine Streets.
Here is a newer stamp from the city’s Operations and Maintenance Department. It’s on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Leslie and Regent. The stamp is in front of Heartdance Studio, which hosts dance and yoga classes. I still think of it as “the scuba store,” though.
That’s because when I moved to town it was ZZ Underwater World, who apparently figured that the beginning of the alphabet was too crowded in the Yellow Pages. They were the reason for the mural of dolphins on the second floor. The dolphin mural disappeared for a while around the time Heartdance moved in, but then it reappeared. Whether it was covered and then uncovered, or is on a board that got taken down and put back up again, I don’t know. However it came to be, the dolphins have been back for a long time and serve to remind me of the former occupants of the building every time I see them.
The building was constructed in 1942, making it young for this stretch of the Avenue. In the 1950s and 60s it was Bendlin’s Shoe Clinic. The proprietor, John Bendlin, also lived at this address (above the shop, I assume) with his wife. By 1978 it was home to Michigan Divers Supply. I’m not sure if ZZ Underwater World was just a renaming of this business or a new business. ZZ Underwater World closed in 2013 according to the business that bought their assets, Capital City Scuba in Old Town, but Google Street View reveals that Heartdance had already moved into this building as of June 2011.
This plain and to-the-point stamp is on the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, next to the parking lot behind Asian Gourmet. I have passed it by several times recently thinking I had already featured it, but this evening I finally checked to discover that no, I hadn’t.
The only Mike & Son I can find is Mike & Son Asphalt in Bath, but their Web site only mentions asphalt paving and there isn’t anything there to suggest they do concrete work, so I don’t know if there is a connection or not.
I found this a bit curious, curious enough to feature it, though your mileage may vary. I have noted before that Able Concrete has used a few different stamps that I have found. What’s odd here is that this cluster of new-looking cement (on the west side of Lathrop St. between Marcus and Elizabeth) has Able stamps of two different varieties despite being the same year. There is one on the sidewalk, then a different one on the driveway and the driveway apron.
I suppose it’s possible that they were done at different times in the same year and they switched stamps between them, but it sure looks like a cluster that was probably all done at once. It’s as though they wanted to use a fancier stamp for the driveway than for the sidewalk.
Another interesting choice is that the driveway apron stamp faces the street rather than the sidewalk. Other driveway apron stamps I have looked at have faced the other way.
This pair of stamps from Bearstone Construction is on the east side of North Foster Avenue between Michigan and Vine, specifically in front of the Foster Community Center.
The community center contains a small library, which is where I usually have my library holds sent to, since it’s the closest one to home and easier to park at than the main library downtown. It was originally the Foster Avenue School, as the stonework over the door still proclaims. Lansing seems to have named a lot of its early elementary schools after the street they were located on (see also the Allen Street School). I’m surprised no one wanted to be an elementary school’s namesake.
Bearstone Construction, according to its Web site, is “a family owned and operated business in the Lansing area” offering concrete, landscaping, and construction services. Their mailing address actually places them in Bath.
