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Call St., C. Wilkinson, 1964

I picked a street I hadn’t been to before to scout for sidewalk stamps today. The lucky street was Call Street, on the old north side, chosen for being somewhat near an errand I was on. The next few days of blogging will be stamps and curiosities from the 800 block of Call.

Pardon the poor legibility; it was underwater thanks to snow melt.

This is a C. Wilkinson stamp in front of a house on the north side of Call, at the northwest corner of Call and Eighth Avenue. Yes, Lansing has an Eighth Avenue, a much smaller street than the better-known Eighth Street. There is also a longer Seventh Avenue one block west, but no other numbered avenues I know of. Eighth Street is sensibly named: it is (more or less) the eighth street from the dividing line downtown. I have no idea how Seventh and Eighth Avenues come by their names.

The stamp is located in the puddle seen in this photo. The cross street ahead is Eighth Avenue.

I have found a few C. Wilkinson stamps before, all from the 1960s. I still haven’t been successful finding anything out about C. Wilkinson. I wonder if it might be the Charles H. Wilkinson (1907-1981) who is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, but I have no basis for connecting them other than the name and date, so it’s a long shot.

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Horton St., C. Wilkinson, 1965

Another C. Wilkinson (and I’m now more confident that it is C rather than G), this time on Horton Street between Jerome and the dead end. I grabbed this one just as another example of a double stamp. There are two stamps (both with name and date) on either end of the slab, facing opposite directions. I have come to realize this probably is a way of conforming to the practice of marking the beginning and end of a newly constructed section of sidewalk when there is only a single slab being replaced.

The northern stamp.

Happy Twelfth Night! I passed a favorite lit tree on Elvin Court while taking my walk this time and saw the sad sight of two people working to take the lights down. Alas, the season is nearing its end, but I hope some people remain slow to take things down.

The southern stamp.
Looking north on Horton Street. The dead end and the former Pattengill Middle School, now Eastern High School, are visible.
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E. Kalamazoo St., C. Wilkinson, 1965

I am not sure whether to read this as “C. Wilkinson” (my initial impression) or “G. Wilkinson” but either way I haven’t been able to find anything out about the business.

This stamp is on the north side of East Kalamazoo Street between Magnolia and Hayford. Specifically, it is out in front of a community garden on the site of the former Paro Party Store (and another party store before that, and apparently a butcher’s shop when it was built in 1938), which was torn down in 2014. Despite some noise made to the contrary, everything that the Land Bank gets its hands on in this neighborhood turns into another community garden. The current occupants of this one have put up a sign dubbing it “Paro Party Garden.”

The Paro Party Garden.

Updated 1/5/21: Based on another one I have found, I am now pretty sure it is “C. Wilkinson.”