Posted on by bunnyhugger

Bingham St., J.F. Sowa, 1908

I found another J.F. Sowa stamp! I could hardly believe it, because it turned up in an area that I walk to all the time, on the west side of Bingham Street between Prospect and Kalamazoo. This is near the old fire station, which is one of my frequent destinations. As amazing as it seems to me, I must not have walked this side of the block south of Prospect before. I most often walk to the fire station by going west along Prospect Street, then head back home by either doubling back on Prospect or by going up Bingham to Eureka and turning around there. On this occasion, as there was a pretty sunset when I set out, I decided to take Kalamazoo west, which offers a better view of the sky. That resulted in my finding this stamp that has been hiding under my nose. When I got home I had to check my spreadsheet three times to be sure I had not catalogued this one before.

This one is exciting not just because of the early date, but because J.F. Sowa is one of the early contractors about whom I have been able to find the most information. He also is possibly referenced in the famous Saga of the Bum Walks. This stamp dates just two months after the only other one I have found (which is on Prospect near Jones), but it’s slightly different: the “C” marked between the name and date is not present on the earlier stamp.

Sad to say, it’s not in the best shape, though I’m happy it seems to have been repaired instead of replaced relatively recently.

Bingham really is a treasure trove of old stamps. I have previously found two other 1908 stamps, from F.N. Rounsville and J.P. Sleight, on Bingham, plus a 1910 Minnis & Ewer.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

Bingham St., McClain, 1983(?)

This stamp is on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect. There are several of them along this stretch of Bingham. As noted on my previous McClain entry (that one depicting a very different stamp), I haven’t been able to learn much about the company.

The date is quite unclear, but one of the other ones on the block has a clearer “8” that makes me confident it is 1980s. It looks like 1983 to me but I can’t be confident of the last digit.

A nice, sunny May Day on Bingham Street, looking north.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

Bingham St., DPW, 1977

This is the first 1970s DPW stamp I have found, and it’s on the east side of Bingham just south of Eureka, in a lovely patch of dappled shade. It’s in the style of the 1980s stamps I have previously collected.

The corner of Eureka and Bingham, looking northeast toward the back end of Sparrow. The stamp is at the lower right.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

Eureka St., Carlson Const., 1977

This stamp is on the west side of Bingham Street between Michigan and Prospect, in front of the parking lot for the Pilgrim Congregational church. That’s where I vote now that Bingham (Street) School is gone.

This one is interesting because of its date. 1970s stamps are the least common decade I find (that is, from the 1920s on). There are a lot of 80s stamps, a fair few 60s stamps, but only a smattering of 70s stamps around the east side.

Looking at the church, with the stamp above located to the lower right of the graffiti.

Unfortunately, this is one of those cases in which the contractor’s name is too common for me to narrow down who it is. I can’t find a history of a Carlson Construction company in metro Lansing, though there have been Carlsons in Benton Harbor, Byron Center, Otsego, and Saranac, the last being the closest.

Another stamp in this cluster. I think there are four of them in this stretch.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

Bingham St., Fessler & Bowman, 2017

This stamp is on the east side of Bingham Street between Michigan and Eureka. No doubt it dates from the construction of the parking garage that it’s in front of. This was once the site of Bingham Street School (or just “Bingham School” as it seems to have been called in later years). Lansing apparently named all its early elementary schools after the residential streets they bordered, hence Foster Avenue School and Allen Street School. Bingham Street School holds a small but memorable place in my own personal history, as it was my polling location from when I moved to town through 2012. Thus, although I had no other connection with it, I was sad when it got knocked down. It looked so much like my own elementary school that going inside always triggered nostalgia.

The southernmost stamp. I have seen this same stamp template used by several other contractors, as well as the most recent city Operations and Maintenance stamps.

Bingham (Street) School closed in 2012 and was sold to Sparrow Hospital, who wanted the land to expand their cancer center. The school was demolished in July 2013 and if you want to see sad photos of the vacant rooms shortly before demolition – and the rubble afterward – you can find them on the still-extant Facebook page for the school. The local neighborhood was dismayed over the loss of green space, and that leads to another story for another entry, eventually. As for my polling place, it moved across the street to the Pilgrim Congregational Church, and though they seem like nice folks, voting in a church has never felt quite right to me.

Looking north toward Michigan Avenue with the Sparrow garage on the right.

Fessler & Bowman is a bigger company than usually gets featured here. They were founded in 1963 by Don Fessler and George Bowman and originally did residential flatwork and basement walls, but have subsequently become a large commercial contractor. Their corporate headquarters are in Flushing, Michigan, but they also have regional offices in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

The next-to-southernmost stamp. There are a few more spread out along the block but as they all look the same I didn’t bother photographing them all.
Posted on by bunnyhugger

Bingham St., Minnis & Ewer, 1910

Good news! The wait is over and I am finally featuring the Minnis & Ewer stamp on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect that I teased back in January. You know, the one adjacent to the surprising-to-me 1927 DPW stamp. There’s nothing unusual about it, aside from being over 110 years old, but I will never pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp.

The month is illegible, though with the snow brushed out it looks like a 6 or 8.

Looking south on Bingham. The stamp is near the center of the photo, with the previously featured DPW stamp just this side of it

I took the establishing photo from further away than usual because I had to record something odd and a little funny. There is about a foot of completely uncleared sidewalk around the border between two houses, with cleared stretches on either side. I can understand there being a dispute about where the boundary is, but whoever cleared theirs second was being petty even by my standards. I want to know what history has led to this point.

Posted on by bunnyhugger

Bingham St., J.P. Sleight, 1908

Well, look at that: another J.P. Sleight slab, this one on the east side of Bingham Street between Kalamazoo and Prospect. Like the previous one I wrote about, it’s in bad shape, though not as bad. It looks like its primary issue is that, like many of the slabs in this tree-rich area, it’s been heaved up, leaving the edge susceptible to breaking.

The stamp is clear as day, much more so than many of the more recent stamps I have seen. It appears that between 1907 and 1908 Sleight gave up on stamping the month along with the year, more’s the pity.

The 300 block of Bingham Street.

Oddly enough, I have walked on this block many times since starting the sidewalk blog but this is the first time I noticed this one. Having seen at least two and possibly three 1900s stamps now (one of which has not yet been featured here), I continue to hold out hope that I’ll find one earlier than my current record of 1907.