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Regent St., Snowy Walks

We finally had a little bit of snow (now long since obliterated by the weather turning warm again) and I took a walk in it to get photos of Christmas lights. I also found some beautiful snow-frosted sidewalk stamps. I love the way snow settles into the lettering; in some cases, as in the B.F. Churchill stamp below, it even makes it more legible.

A 1944 Department of Public Works stamp on Regent Street.
This 1908 B.F. Churchill stamp on Regent was one of the stamps that first motivated this blog. The extreme purple cast is due to a defective LED street light.

In honor of the holiday, here are some of the photos I took of Christmas lights on my walk. I have really come to enjoy walking alone in snowy quiet after night falls, stopping to stand in front of Christmas displays and admire them. Driving around to admire lights is nice, and I do that too, but there is something special about the intimacy of doing it on foot. Being a pedestrian is underrated.

Happy holidays from Capital City Sidewalks!

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Shepard St., B.F. Churchill, 1908

This B.F. Churchill stamp is on the west side of the 200 block of Shepard Street, between Kalamazoo and Stanley Court. I have become convinced that both the Churchill stamps I have found are dated 1908 even though, as noted in my entry on the one on Regent Street, this doesn’t seem to make sense of the personal history of Churchill as I understand it. Both have a month as well as a year, something that seems more typical of the earliest stamps I have found. The “AP” of “APRIL” is very faint; I couldn’t see it in person, but with the contrast turned up a bit in this photo I can just make it out.

I’m hoping I may still find more B.F. Churchill stamps to give a greater sample of years.

Looking north on Shepard with the stamp visible in the closest block.

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B.F. Churchill Update

The wet pavement and streetlights conspired tonight to make a lot of details more visible. Most notable is that upon passing my old friend the B.F. Churchill stamp it leapt out at me that of course the date on it is 1908. I just hadn’t been willing to see it because it didn’t seem consistent with my research. How did he go from having his own cement finishing business in 1908, to being a dray line operator in 1915, and then working for Reniger Construction in the 1920s? I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised when J.P. Sleight was both a dairy farmer, a coal supplier, and a sidewalk builder.

If I am correct in my new assessment, it’s the best condition sidewalk I’ve seen among the pre-1910 stamps. It should be here a long while to come.

It was hard to get a photo that showed the play of light as I saw it. This is the best I could do.

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B.F. Churchill, Regent St., 1908(?)

Before I started this blog, years before, I had already taken note of this stamp, on Regent Street between Kalamazoo and Michigan (the 300 block). It stands out for its old fashioned style and for the nicely styled arch. When I first saw it, I thought it said 1908 and was pleased to find one so old. I talked to my mother about it, and she looked up some information on Ancestry.com as she was a member there.

I had forgotten all about that since starting the blog, and when all the staring at the sidewalk brought it back to my attention several times the last few weeks I could no longer read it. Once again I thought I saw 1908, and once again got excited. But several times running I took photos of it and decided I just could not read the contractor’s name, so I put it aside.

Tonight I took my walk just at sunset, and the way the long shadows fell suddenly made the stamp legible. Sometimes evening shade works in my favor that way. That’s when I remembered, oh yes, B.F. Churchill! Didn’t I decide that it could not, after all, say 1908?

Searching my email found the old correspondence with my mother and, yes, that’s what I deduced then. B.F. Churchill (according to my mom’s research, his name was Byron) appeared in the advertisements for the 1916 Michigan Agricultural College (today’s MSU) yearbook as “College Drayman” and Mom found him in a 1916 Lansing city directory listed as “Proprietor, East Lansing Dray Line,” residence 138 Michigan Avenue, East Lansing. (There are no numbers that low on Michigan Avenue in East Lansing anymore as they seem to start in the 200 block, so I am not sure where that would have been. Perhaps near Mary Mayo hall?) By 1928 he was married and now worked for Reniger Construction. His residence at that time was 1623 Lyons Avenue, which is a cute house in the Baker-Donora neighborhood (built in 1908) that currently looks like it needs some TLC. In 1934 he appears in the directory with an unspecified address on Whipple Court and an occupation of “cement finisher.” I was puzzled by my inability to find Whipple Court on a map but found a site giving name changes of Lansing streets which advised me that Whipple Court was changed around 1940 to Alger. The houses on Alger mostly look too young to have been there in 1934.

From mom’s research, I had previously concluded that I must be misreading the date. I come to the same conclusion again, sadly, and suspect that the zero I’m seeing there is most likely a 3. I tentatively give this one a date of May 1938. (I wouldn’t rule out 1939, either.)

I have also found his death notice in the Lansing State Journal. He lived in Bath in his later years and died in 1964 at the age of 86. He is described as “a retired cement contractor.” It says he had lived in Clinton County for 35 years, which is puzzlingly inconsistent with his appearing in the Lansing city directory on Whipple in 1934. He is buried at Mount Rest Cemetery in St. Johns.

Update 9/30/20: I’ve becoming increasingly sure that it is, after all, 1908. I’m not sure how that makes sense of his history but that is really what my eyes see in it.