I was visiting family in Albion and took a walk in the neighborhood near Victory and Reiger Parks. On either side of Allen Street, on the corner of East Erie, I noticed two orphaned driveway aprons. I see these all the time in my neighborhood in Lansing, serving as a marker of where a house has been torn down.
Facing east from Allen Street, south of the corner of East Erie.
The one on the east side of Allen has crumbling concrete barriers in it, suggesting a concern that people would drive into the vacant lot, if not an actual occurrence. Across the way, its neighbor does not have barriers, but also points to a vacant lot. (Oddly, a Google street view from 2012 shows the west driveway with the concrete barriers and none on the east driveway.) The empty lots are both quite large.
Facing west from Allen, directly across from the other driveway.
The properties evidently faced Erie, based on the city records which show them to have Erie addresses. A crumbling, low brick wall edges the front of the eastern property, with a portal showing where the front entrance may have been placed.
The presumptive front of the eastern property, from East Erie Street.
According to the city records, the properties were both sold (cheaply) by Colchester Properties to Albion College in 2007. I’m not sure what the college’s interest was in them. Perhaps they wanted to prevent them from becoming (or remaining) eyesores, since they are close to campus.
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.
You can also see my boot print on the left, revealing the cleats I have to strap on to avoid wiping out on ice.
This is from the east side of Allen Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus, next to the Neogen building.
I’m surprised I hadn’t noticed this one before. It’s the only J. Carter stamp I have found besides the cluster of them on Michigan Avenue near Sparrow. It’s on the east side of Allen Street between Kalamazoo and Marcus, on the west side of the Neogen building (the former Allen Street School).
There’s a bonus McNeilly stamp in there for you too.
Looking toward Kalamazoo Street. I pass a lot of dog walkers around the neighborhood on my evening walks.
Although it’s just about illegible, I am fairly sure this is a Lansing DPW stamp. I read the date as 1933, but 1938 is a possibility too. It’s on the west side of Allen Street between Michigan and Prospect.
Looking southwest on Allen with the stamp facing the other way on the closest slab. Not pictured: the two or three houses nearby that still have Christmas lights up. (I’m not complaining.)
I’m inducting this unstamped stretch of new sidewalk into the Hall of Shame. It’s located on the east side of Allen Street north of Kalamazoo, in front of the new Allen Place development. Contractor, your name is not upon the walk.
Strange that this one is unstamped, when the new sidewalk on the Shepard Street side of the building, laid late last year and earlier this one, is very neatly marked by Leavitt & Starck.
I didn’t need foil after all, just different light. The stamp that had been illegible to me on a previous walk down Allen Street emerged on my walk this afternoon. Mostly, anyway; while I can tell the date is 1960s, I can’t read the last digit. This is on the east side of Allen Street on the block south of Elizabeth.
I found an obituary for Weldon P. Bowerman; he died in 2012 at the age of 90. According to the obituary, he owned and operated Bowerman Waterproofing for over 60 years and was a World War II veteran. Two of the commenters in the online guestbook speak admiringly of how well the basement work he did for them has held up, and how he dug out the basement walls by hand. His business seems to have been based in Potterville.
A closer look, which makes the hardest letter to read – the R – a bit more visible. Sorry I got my fuzzy glove in there too. It’s hard not to.
The 1960s were a time of transition for this neighborhood. It was the end of an era for Stabler Park, which today is an unremarkable sliver of land with a small play structure and a basketball court at the end of this block of Allen Street. (I think of it as the end of Allen Street, but Allen Street actually resumes six blocks south – just north of Potter Park – for one more lonely block.) Prior to the building of I-496, however, Stabler Park had been much larger. It was originally part of the Cameron Farm, which came to be owned by Christian E. Stabler, founder of the C.E. Stabler Coal Company. In 1930 he donated the land in honor of his son and two grandsons who had died in an accident. In the 1950s and 60s, Stabler Park hosted neighborhood carnivals, youth softball, and seasonal ice skating. In 1967, the state bought most of the park from the city to serve as right-of-way for I-496. According to the Lansing State Journal of October 31, 1967, the deed to the land had a clause which prohibited its use for anything other than a park, so the city had to pay off Stabler’s heirs to clear the title. The proceeds from the land’s sale were used to expand Hunter and Foster parks, which was given as a rationale for contradicting Stabler’s wishes. The moral of this and so many other stories like it is, never give land to a city and expect them to use it for what you intend. They will find some way to get around it.
Looking north with the stamp at the very bottom of the photo. I rather wish I’d pointed south toward Stabler Park now that I’ve written the entry, since I ended up writing so much about the park.
Corrected 2/22/21: It was the city, not the state, that paid off Stabler’s heirs.
