This stamp is from the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Jerome. T L Contracting isn’t one of the more common stamps in the neighborhood, although I have covered one in the blog before. This block must have been a singleton when it was laid, since it is stamped twice, one facing either way.
It also happens to be in front of a wonderfully decorated house, so I really chose it to showcase some neighborhood holiday lights. Happy holidays to both of my readers!
A well-placed streetlight allowed me to see this, my first 2023 stamp, during my walk earlier tonight. It’s on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Fernwood and Saginaw, and it’s from reliable stampers Eastlund Concrete. But what’s this?
Loyal blog readers (hi, dear) will recall that there are many Cantu & Sons stamps in the neighborhood that bear a 1988 date that is actually a 1987 stamp with a line added to the 7 to correct it. Eastlund saw this and said, “Too neat. Hold my beer.” With no easy way to turn a 2022 stamp into ’23, they evidently just scraped out the last digit before rewriting it by hand. Eastlund, look, I love you guys. You’ve had a variety of different stamps over the years and you use them. These are endearing traits, to a sidewalk stamp blogger. So it’s with affection that I say, c’mon, this is sloppy.
This Eastlund Concrete stamp is on a driveway apron on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Kalamazoo and Marcus. There are at least two driveways on this block with the same stamp, suggesting the driveway construction wasn’t just a homeowner’s choice but was probably related to the city doing something that tore up the roadside. Unfortunately, neither is dated.
I found this stamp on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Vine and Fernwood. It’s extremely worn, but I can tell it is probably one of those mysterious BdWL stamps. I never have been able to figure out who that is. The date is illegible.
I like this one because of how rugged the sidewalk is here, with all the individual stones showing through in different colors. It probably indicates how worn the sidewalk is, that it’s lost its smooth finish, but I like how it looks anyway. I like how non-uniform in appearance the sidewalks are, from different concrete mixes, different contractors’ styles, and different amounts of wear.
This utility cover is set into the east side of North Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, near the entrance to the parking lot that runs behind the Green Door bar and other businesses on that block. There is a hole through the company name, but it is the Neenah Foundry Co. of Neenah, Wisconsin.
Neenah Foundry is still in business, though these days they are part of a larger company known as NEI (Neenah Enterprises, Inc.). I’m disappointed that their Web site doesn’t have a company history on it, which is always what I hope for. It does say that they have “almost 150 years of experience” and that their “most recognizable products include manhole covers and frames, inlet frames and grates, tree grates, and cast-iron trench grates in roads and airport runways across America and internationally.”
This is a rather plain East Jordan Iron Works manhole cover, at a property on the west side of South Clemens Avenue between Prospect and Michigan. What’s odd about it, and piqued my interest, is that it’s situated within someone’s front walk. In fact, the walk seems to widen there to accommodate it.
I pass this house all the time, on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. Its front walk is marked “KLH” and it is so neat and central that I have come to think of it as the house’s monogram.
It seems that it may be the mark of KLH Contracting, a home remodeling company in Pinckney. Unfortunately, their web site doesn’t give a company history. Open Corporates has an incorporation date of February 3, 2016.
There are lots of L & L stamps from 2002 along the South Clemens/North Aurelius transition, in the vicinity of the 496 and railroad overpasses. I think they are probably connected with the project that reduced Aurelius to two lanes to four as part of a traffic calming measure. This one is in front of Half Barn Farm, an urban farm on the southeast corner of South Clemens Avenue and Elizabeth Street.
Half Barn Farm is one of many urban farms in the Urbandale neighborhood. It replaced a demolished house in the 2010s.
I am pretty confident that this mostly-illegible stamp is from L. Ketchum, based on comparison with other L. Ketchum stamps. Since the others were from the 1960s, this one might be too, but the date is hopelessly worn.
This is on the east side of North Clemens Avenue just south of East Saginaw, next to the parking lot for Orion Family Dental Center. That squat-and-sturdy little brick building was built in 1959 at a cost of $18,000. I know this because on November 15, 1959, the [Lansing] State Journal ran an article titled “Permit Figures Show Local Building Down.” It includes a list of some of the larger permits from October, among them this building, which was built for dentist M.R. Licht.
Interestingly, it seems to have gone back and forth between being a dental office and other businesses a few times. It was still a dental office until at least 1969. By the late 1970s, through at least 1980, it was home to AIM, Inc., a real estate business. By 1983 it was a dental office again, but then in 1987 I see ads for Video Services Co. promising the “BEST TRANSFER SYSTEM IN TOWN.” In 2005 an agent for PRN Professional Resource Network Inc. was located there, and a 2007 Google Street View shows Orion in place. I suspect that at times it may have housed two businesses at once, since it appears to have a “garden level” with ground-level window wells, and the city’s property records call it a two story building. It would make more sense if the various the dental businesses had been continuous with each other while other businesses moved in and out. But I really don’t know.
This stamp on the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Michigan and Prospect is small and indistinct. I suppose that’s why I have evidently overlooked it many, many times; this is a block I walk often and yet I don’t remember noticing it before.
The date seems to be 1952, but the name is a puzzle. I am pretty confident it is _ _ G L _. I also think the first letter is R, or maybe B, and the second letter looks like an E. What do you think?
