Here it is: some brand new sidewalk! The Consumers Energy utility work that has closed a lane on East Kalamazoo Street off and on for months has finally reached the stage when a lot of the torn-out sections of sidewalk are being replaced. And, while it’s not the most exciting design I’ve seen, it is all properly stamped. This is just one of many examples, in this case on the southeast corner of Kalamazoo and Regent, in front of the vacant former Lucky’s/Pure Options.
I am assuming that the responsible party is EPM Professional Grounds Services of Jackson, Michigan. The name stands for Executive Property Management, referencing the fact that they specialize in commercial properties.
The work they were getting ready for on the 1700-1800 blocks of East Kalamazoo Street – as discussed in my last entry – and as I predicted, they have started tearing out chunks of sidewalk. I’ll have to check again in daylight, but I believe that this stretch, located outside the former Lucky’s (later Pure Options, now vacant), took out a pair of Cantu & Sons 1987 stamps.
That’s no great loss, I suppose, given how common those stamps are on the east side, but it did cause me to comment to my husband about how the stamps I catalog here are “ephemeral.” Then I corrected myself, “Actually, I guess they’re not all that ephemeral,” and he laughed and agreed. We were both thinking of how old many of them are; it’s quite common to find ones from the 1920s, and not all that hard to find ones that are earlier, as I soon found out when I started making an effort to record them. Still, I suppose what I meant is that any of them could be gone at any time, and there’s no predicting when. That’s why I’m glad I have made an effort to photograph so many.
Most Lansing residents have probably heard about the upcoming construction project on East Michigan Avenue, which the city is calling “Michigan Avenue Rehabilitation.” It has already caused the usual freakout because it will involve reducing traffic lanes from five to four in order to make room for protected bike lanes on either side of the street. I’m heartily in favor of it: as a frequent pedestrian I have been startled too often by bicycles barreling past my shoulder, but I also understand why they would choose to ride on the sidewalk when the alternative is riding in the traffic lanes on Michigan Avenue. A separate bike lane keeps both bicycles and pedestrians safer.
The project will stretch from Pennsylvania Avenue to Clippert Street. In addition to the traffic lane reduction, it will include “sidewalk replacement, traffic signal modernization, and upgrades to utilities such as sewer and water main work.” I believe this will mean entirely new sidewalk, so go see all the older contractor stamps while you still can. (Alas, we’ll never know what that -oleum stamp was.) According to the diagrams the city has provided, the new sidewalk will be seven feet across on both sides of the road, which I think is wider than most of the sidewalk in that area is at present. (Also, the above diagram is not to scale, since the new bike lane will actually be narrower than the sidewalk, not larger as it appears in the picture.) Details on the sidewalk configuration and the trees that will be planted between the bike lane and the road – sadly, I assume the current street trees will end up cut down – can be seen starting on page 30 of the full design plan.
Someone with a subscription to Newspapers.com (which I don’t have) has helpfully clipped a legal notice compelling sidewalk construction from the May 15, 1961, [Lansing] State Journal. The city was having sidewalk built on a lot of streets near Cavanaugh Park in the old Everett neighborhood. I see a lot of parcels on Lowcroft Street, Ora Street, and Southgate Avenue, among others. Also, note the dubious factoid about weasels run as a space-filler above the legal notices.
As I’m not familiar with the south side at all, I was surprised to see a Livernois Street listed. Livernois is a major street in Detroit, but I didn’t know there was one in Lansing. I went to check it out in the Google street view and discovered that it is such an inconsequential street that Google has not taken photos of it. It’s a narrow, dirt road, a block long, that runs alongside Cavanaugh Park; according to Lansing’s property records, there are no addresses on it. Curiously, there are two lots on Livernois listed in the 1961 sidewalk construction notice, yet the street view (its short length can be seen from Cavanaugh) shows that there is no sidewalk on it now.
I have no sidewalk stamp for you today, so in lieu of that, I’m sharing a neat local history resource that has been recently added to the Capital Area District Library’s digital collection. It consists of scans of the ledger in which construction permits were recorded from 1923 until 1992, organized by street name. Amazingly, the book itself changed very little in that time, with each line still handwritten in 1992 much as in 1923. I was able to find the original construction permit for my house, in among a veritable flurry of building going on in the late 1920s on my street. This is probably the least sidewalk-related post I have yet made, but it does connect with the interest in local history that this blog has fostered in me, particularly the small-potatoes stuff like when a particular house was built and how a given block has changed over time.
This particular stretch is unsigned, but it’s part of the construction on East Kalamazoo Street that I’ve been cataloguing for the last several blog entries, which is peppered with plenty of MacKenzie 2022 stamps. On my previous foray into the area, I had noticed that they appeared to be preparing to lay sidewalk in front of Dagwood’s. When I returned, I was eager to see how that had developed.
The new sidewalk at the edge of Dagwood’s parking lot.
Previously, the sidewalk on this, the north, side of Kalamazoo had petered out in front of a house a little west of Detroit Street. A well-trodden path across the grass led the rest of the way east to Dagwood’s. In front of Dagwood’s, there was (and still is) a little stone wall, presumably to stop drunks from stumbling straight out the front door into the street. To pass by Dagwood’s on foot, one would have to walk up a couple of shallow steps onto the bar’s little front porch and down the other side. Then, on the other side, one would be in the Dagwood’s parking lot, which was separated from the curb with a metal guard rail. From the position of the steps, my guess is that the wall was a later addition.
I previously wrote about the fact that a curb cut had been made at the corner of Dagwood’s parking lot, meaning the corner of Kalamazoo and Howard, despite the fact that it made no sense because it pointed straight at a guard rail. I wondered at the time whether it was there in case they ever installed a sidewalk in the future.
The curb cut at the northwest corner of Kalamazoo and Howard.
The big news here is that they have put in sidewalk in front of Dagwood’s, both on the side as noted previously, and now in the front too. The guard rail is temporarily gone, but when it returns it will have to be further from the road than it was before, meaning that Dagwood’s has apparently been obliged to give up a bit of its parking lot. The curb cut is now much larger and has a traction plate. The previous one had been installed in vain, since it’s gone now that there’s actually a sidewalk to use it with.
The new approach to Dagwood’s.
Perhaps the biggest change is that the steps in front of Dagwood’s have been removed, at least as far as passing traffic is concerned. There is still a small step up into the bar from the porch area, but the steps that passersby had to traverse are gone.
A closer look at the area in front of Dagwood’s, showing where the step used to be.
I am genuinely impressed that this stretch of Kalamazoo is getting so much sidewalk work done, and doubly so that they were clearly thinking about accessibility and safety in this case.
I found this short editorial on page 4 of the the August 7, 1914, State Journal. This was four days prior to the “Bum Walks” city council meeting report that has given me so much joy. Evidently, the subject of sidewalk construction contracts was an ongoing controversy. I will reproduce the article here, as I believe it is out of copyright.
The State Journal‘s recommendation that the city do all of its own sidewalk construction work was clearly not adopted, at least not for long, since otherwise this blog would be 100% Department of Public Works/Department of Public Service/O&M stamps. On the other hand, this has caused me to look over my records and notice that there are certain spans of time in which I do not have any non-DPW stamps recorded. All the stamps I have from 1910 and 1911 are Minnis and Ewer, then I have no stamps collected from 1912 through 1918. The 1918 and 1919 stamps are all DPW, then from 1921 until 1924 there are quite a lot of DPW stamps mixed with a small number of Wm. Meister. Another notable period is 1941 through 1945, during which time all the stamps I collected were DPW.
The May 16, 1940, State Journal has a “Notice to Property Owners of Sidewalk Construction” for a large number of properties on Lenawee, Washtenaw, and Gordon Avenue, all on the west side. I see such notices a lot in the 1910s, but not so often this far into the century. The official verbiage used is nearly the same as it was 25 years previous: “Resolved by the city council of that it Is a necessary public Improvement…” but instead of saying that “a sidewalk shall be constructed” this commands that a sidewalk shall be “repaired.” So evidently, someone had laid a lot of bum walk on Lenawee and Gordon, since it was already in such need of repair by 1940. Also of interest is that the resolution was brought by an Alderman Schneeberger; I don’t know if he was any relation to the E. Schneeberger whose name turns up in 1920s sidewalk markings.
I’ve been traveling and didn’t have the chance to collect any stamps from the field this weekend, so here is a link to a State Journal clipping dated July 8, 1920. It begins, “Your attention is hereby called to the following resolution adopted by the city council Monday, July 6, 1920. By Ald. Eddy – Resolved by the citv council of the city of Lansing: That it is a necessary public improvement and it is hereby determined that a new artificial stone sidewalk six feet wide shall be built in front of south one-half of lot 2, block 58, on the west side of Sycamore street, owned by Lewis Widmayer.”
It then goes on with a series of “also”s, adding properties on Sycamore, Logan, and Hyland, all streets west of downtown. (Logan Street is the previous name for Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.)
Here’s something I ran across in the May 6, 1920, State Journal city council reports. A report by the Chief of Police and City Attorney was presented to the Council, giving the results of an investigation into – with apologies to Dave Barry, I am not making this up – the theft of a large amount of gravel from the surface of Ormond Street, resulting in a giant hole in the street. The report very fairly notes that “The removing of this gravel and making this large hole in the street constitutes a nuisance, and the city is under obligation to remove the same.”
Based on the police report and the depositions also printed with the article, the basic facts seem to be this: Louis Neller hired a teamster named William Riley to haul gravel from a spot near Ormond Street to be used in the construction of sidewalk in the Franklin Park Subdivision. (I am not sure where that subdivision is.) It turned out the gravel was unsuitable for sidewalk construction. According to Riley, Neller then directed him to take the gravel from Ormond Street, which Riley believed Neller was authorized to do. Riley’s brother Warren, who worked with him, backed up Riley’s version of the story in his own deposition. Ed Schneeberger (who has made previous appearances in this blog, including the one that led me to uncover the Saga of the Bum Walks) was involved with the sidewalk construction and stated that Neller visited the construction site frequently, and told Schneeberger that Riley was in his employ and hauling the gravel at his direction.
And now for the spicy part. This scandal involves more than just making a giant hole in a public street, because Louis Neller was in fact Alderman Neller at the time all this took place. The city charter forbids a council member from being interested in a contract with the city. Neller claimed that he did not have a contract with the city, but instead sold gravel to Riley who sold gravel to the city. Schneeberger’s and Riley’s depositions both contradict this. Riley states that he was merely paid hourly to acquire and haul gravel, and Neller had him turn over the city’s payment for the gravel. Neller, then, was ripping off gravel from the city and then selling it back to the city, according to this account. The investigation report indicates that this would make Neller criminally liable for violating the city charter.
Neller told the Chief of Police that “he had better proceed with some care” because the investigation might find that “a member of the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners” was also involved with inappropriate gravel procurement. By this he meant Frank L. Young of Young Brothers & Daley (who had previously been an alderman, and as such made an appearance in the Saga of the Bum Walks). The investigation found this accusation to be without merit.
