My apologies for disappearing last week (if anyone noticed). It’s gotten warm enough to see the sidewalks again so here’s a fairly uneventful curiosity I noticed over in the Midway subdivision: two Able Concrete stamps, done the same year, but in two different styles.
The semicircular one is on the house’s driveway, and the plain one is on the front walk. I have to guess they were done on two different occasions, because the alternative is that they brought two different stamps with them just for variety’s sake. As fun as that idea is, it doesn’t seem likely.
This is on the north side of Lasalle Gardens between Kipling and Midvale.
This one is from one of my walks near my office in Mount Pleasant. It’s in front of the North Art Studio, a quite distinctive-looking building, on the South Washington Street side of the building. Both sides of the corner here at Preston and Washington has some new sidewalk. I have run into Lakeshore Construction stamps before, on other works around work. There aren’t many stamps around Mount Pleasant, so I’ll take what I can get.
As noted yesterday, I picked a block more or less randomly to stop at on my way home from work, and I ended up on Downer Street between Woodruff and Hopkins. There was disappointingly little of interest; yesterday’s mysterious driveway stamp is the best of it. The newest stamps on the block, from Eastlund Concrete, are from a section of sidewalk wrapping around the southwest corner of Downer and Hopkins.
With apologies to those who are here only for Lansing sidewalks, I have been dabbling in some Mount Pleasant sidewalk exploration because I have started taking my daily walks up at work some days. It’s been slim pickings, with very few stamps that I have found near work, mostly Eastlund Concrete. I was pleased to finally run across one for a contractor I haven’t seen before, Lakeshore Construction. The stamp is on the west side of Watson Road between Preston Street and Crescent Drive.
The stamp is a familiar style, a modular format seen in a lot of stamps from the last decade or so. I can tell that Lakeshore Construction is a contractor after my own heart. How do I know? Because their web site’s main image is a closeup of their stamp! The site describes them thusly:
Lakeshore Construction is a full service construction and concrete company specializing in stamped concrete, decorative walkways and patios, driveways, poured concrete walls and foundations. Lakeshore Construction started in 2016 servicing the Mid-Michigan area.
I found this stamp at the end of a run of newish-looking sidewalk in front of the building that includes M43 Fitness, A Cut Above hair salon, and the Urban Cup. It’s on the north side of East Grand River Avenue, essentially at the spot where Hayford would be if Hayford didn’t disappear for a couple of blocks north of Grand River before resuming.
I may have to return to this one with some foil or else materials to make a rubbing. I can almost make it out, but it’s just too shallow. I believe that it’s formatted with the date flanking the contractor’s logo on either side of vertical lines, like so: “[ 20 | illegible | 19 ]”. The illegible part looks quite brief, as though it might be initials.
The edge of the former pharmacy is just visible on the right. The stamp is at the very far end of this stretch of sidewalk.
I regret now that I didn’t get a picture that includes the M43 Fitness building (2225 E. Grand River Ave.). I didn’t think it was anything very special, but then I got home and did my research and found that its history was more interesting than I expected. In the City Pulse‘s New in Town column on February 15, 2018, it states that the building “has a history of being a watering hole: [owner Scott] Abramouski said the 1959 building had a soda fountain.” A search of the Lansing State Journal turns up the name of the business. It was called Glass Pharmacy. The last time I see its name connected with this address is in 1979. The last time I see it advertised at all, though without an address given, is in 1982. Starting in 1987, advertisements for “East Side Pharmacy (formerly Glass Pharmacy)” begin appearing. The last advertisement I can find for East Side Pharmacy is in 1995.
Did you miss me yet? I’m back with some graffiti, dated October 2019, from a vacant lot on the 100 block of Regent Street, between Michigan and Kalamazoo. Sorry it got a little cut off on the right. The bright sunlight made it hard for me to see what I was doing.
This is in front of a vacant lot which used to have one of the houses I thought of as “the Triplets,” three similar Dutch colonial houses in a row, all built in 1908. The Triplets were not actually identical. The one in the middle – the nearer home in this photo – has to be considered a fraternal triplet. In addition to having a different arrangement of windows in the front, it is actually quite different seen from the side. The two on either side of it were closer to identical, but were actually mirrored, judging from the arrangement of windows and placement of the front door. One of those triplets – my favorite one because it was pink – is gone, the victim of the infamous 2013 ice storm. A large tree limb fell on its roof, significantly damaging it. For a long time afterward it had a tarp laid over the hole, but after months went by and no work was done it became obvious that it was done for. It was demolished in 2015.
This lot is now owned by Dave Muylle, who owns quite a lot of that block of Regent. He also owns the middle triplet. Other Muylle properties in the vicinity include Regent Place, the Regent Arms, and the Cottage Lane project (a cluster of small homes around a common area between Regent and Leslie).
Here is a nice, neat one from Clark Foundation, dated this time.
Notice that the date stamp appears to be made of separate stamps lined up.
This one is on the curb cut on the southwest corner of East Michigan Avenue and South Hayford Avenue, leading across Hayford. It’s in front of another big new Gillespie building that takes up the whole block. All the sidewalk around it looks new, and has Clark Foundation stamps in several places.
Looking west on Michigan.
This corner used to have a 1925 Pulver Bros. service station, in use more recently as the Greater Lansing Ballet and Academy of Dance Arts; and before that, the Delphi stained glass supplier. Now it’s got a big, bland, hulk of a building called (I have just learned this) “Provident Place.” At least the sidewalk is nice.
