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E. Michigan Ave., Flagpole hole (?)

What’s this metal disc in front of the Stadium District building, on the south side of East Michigan Avenue between Cedar and Larch? Could it be one of the holes drilled so businesses could display flags, as mentioned in a 1949 [Lansing] State Journal?

I find it doubtful, since this entire block was redeveloped in the 2000s, but since there are no dates on any of the sidewalks here, it’s impossible to say for sure how old they are. It does look like there is a hole here and that the metal plate is designed to be removable for some purpose (otherwise they would have just slapped some filler over the hole). There are a row of them up and down the block. They are too awkwardly placed to imagine them being used for flagpoles again, if that’s what they were originally for; this one, for instance, is in front of a window.

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Forgotten Passage, Mt. Pleasant

Here is one last entry from a recent walk in Mount Pleasant. I was walking around the subdivision southwest of Central Michigan University when I saw an unexplained curb cut. There are no sidewalks here, so it looks like a driveway apron, but perhaps narrower. I’m fascinated by quasi-secret or neglected passages, so I took photos of it, but forgot to note where it was located. It was somewhere around Glen or Highland or Crescent Street, I think.

The autumn leaf cover made it hard to see much, but it appeared not to have been used in a long time, if ever. I would have thought it was just a spot where they put in a cut for possible future development that didn’t happen, except that it was just possible to make out a couple of long wooden beams like railroad ties that might have originally served as edging to a path. The path – if it is one – has no obvious place to go and just disappears in the woods.

The closest house is this aggressively modern one to the right, though they don’t have any obvious connection to each other.

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S. Foster Ave., DPW, 1938

This is a typical “second style” DPW stamp from the west side of South Foster Avenue between Michigan and Prospect. I actually took the photo not primarily because of the stamp, but rather because it is another example of those odd geometric markings that I do not know the purpose of. It is similar to, though not as large as, the ones on Jerome Street. I hope I eventually figure out what the deal is with them.

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S. Howard St., MacKenzie Co., 2022

Come with me, won’t you, as I continue my exploration of the construction zone on and around East Kalamazoo Street?

Nice. I should start rating stamp impressions. I give this one 4.5/5 Oscars.

This healthy-looking impression heralds something exciting: a new run of sidewalk where no proper sidewalk was before. In Lansing Township. I previously commented on this block, which is the west side of South Howard Street north of Kalamazoo, saying that the sidewalk on it is incomprehensibly intermittent. This spot is actually next to the parking lot of Dagwood’s, which, as noted in another entry, previously left no room for a meaningful sidewalk. The parking lot barrier went nearly to the street, and the narrow margin was filled with some crumbling asphalt, hardly anything one could call a sidewalk. The barrier is now (I assume temporarily) gone, and there is a proper sidewalk in place.

Standing at the north end of the new walk, looking south toward Kalamazoo.

The sidewalk runs along Howard only as far as the end of Dagwood’s lot. After that, there is a frustrating gap before it picks up again. The gap is actually where the (unpaved) driveway of a recently-demolished house was. I don’t know why there is no sidewalk there. Perhaps cars coming and going crumbled it so badly it disappeared. Perhaps there was never a sidewalk there, and the spot where the sidewalk picks up – in front of the now-gone house – was its original extent. This is just part of the mystifying unpredictability of sidewalks in this neighborhood.

Standing near the northwest corner of Kalamazoo and Howard, looking north. You can see that the sidewalk doesn’t quite join up with the one in front of the vacant lot.

I’m delighted they are putting in a new sidewalk here. I’m also very frustrated that are getting so close to joining it up with the existing sidewalk and not putting in those few extra blocks. Come on.

Guys, WTF is up with this?
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Prospect St., Missing Trees

Here is a minor curiosity on Prospect Street, near the northwest corner of Prospect and Fairview. The sidewalk is indented in two places, most likely where street trees once were. This property has apparently been very unlucky with street trees. There is a relatively small tree along this strip in the 2011 Google street view, but it doesn’t correspond with either of the cut-outs. Even that tree is gone by 2019. It’s a shame when there are gaps like this, but they’re going to keep growing, because sometime around a decade ago the City decided they would no longer replace street trees except where the property owner pays for the replacement. Landlords are not famous for caring about the urban canopy.

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S. Hayford Ave., curious driveway

This blog probably has the highest post-to-readership ratio out there, since I think only my husband reads it. Nevertheless, I feel like I have to start off by apologizing that this is not even slightly about sidewalks. It’s one of those tidbits I tag as “curiosities”: things around the neighborhood that make me wonder, “Now why ever was that built that way?” This one is a truly odd driveway belonging to a house on the west side of South Hayford Avenue between Marcus and Harton.

What’s odd about it is the fact that it aims straight at the front of the house. It seems a little unusual for a house in this neighborhood to have been built without a garage. Often if I check into the history of a garageless house I discover that a garage was torn down at some point, probably when it was allowed to get too derelict (as happened with the house next door to me). But even the ones without garages have their driveways sensibly located alongside the house, not running right up to the front door.

You would be forgiven for thinking it was just an abnormally wide front walk, but the placement of the driveway apron makes it clear that it is indeed intended to be the driveway. I can’t fathom what led to such a strange choice. My usual source for older photos of houses, CADL’s Belon Real Estate Collection, has nothing on this house; evidently it is one of the rare cases of a house that never changed hands during the time period the collection covers (early 1950s to early 1970s). According to the city records, the house was built in 1940.

Yep, definitely a driveway.
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E. Michigan Ave., curious curb cut

This is a minor curiosity that I noticed at the southeast corner of East Michigan and Mifflin Avenues, in front of the Muffler Man shop (which I have learned was a General Tire location from the 1950s through at least 1989). There is a length of sidewalk leading north to a curb cut, as though to allow pedestrians to cross Michigan.

What makes this curious is that there is no corresponding curb cut on the other side. The sidewalk across the road does not extend to the street. So it appears that the south side of the street was designed to allow someone to cross, but the north side was not.

I’m not sure how many people will find this as interesting as I do. What fascinates me about it is the way it reflects some series of decisions that must have made sense when they were made, and which depended on things that did not come to pass, or reflected conditions that have since altered. Alas, such historical minutiae are most likely unrecorded.

One possible influence on the situation is the fact that the south side, with the curb cut, belongs to Lansing Township, and the north side to Lansing. This doesn’t explain anything, exactly, but the correlation may be significant. It is out of character for Lansing Township to have more sidewalk than Lansing, but Lansing Township’s sidewalks (when they exist) are very erratic and inscrutable. The sidewalk starting at this corner and continuing east for a couple of blocks until it disappears is inset much further than the blocks to the west, and this again reflects the border, which divides Lansing from Lansing Township at Mifflin on this side of Michigan. This gives the buildings here an especially large lawn extension, deep enough that the late, lamented Theio’s had its outdoor seating on it. As a result, the stretch of sidewalk that leads to the curb cut is especially long and prominent, and must have been installed for a reason.

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Mifflin Ave., Ghost Stairs

No sidewalk for you today; in fact there is no sidewalk at all on this block, Mifflin Avenue between Kalamazoo and Marcus. Instead, here is a little relic that always makes me a bit sad: the stairs to a long-gone house. (I’m not sure how long gone, but it was already gone by the earliest Google street views in 2007.)

There is only one house remaining on this (west) side of the block, and that one is so obscured by tree cover that it is hard to see. There are a few more houses on the other side, but like much of the Urbandale neighborhood, this is a sparsely-occupied block, and one that is likely to continue depopulating.

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Call St., missing sidewalk

Today’s entry wraps up my brief tour of the 800 block of Call Street on the old north side. I suppose this could be a “hall of shame” but since I don’t know when it dates from or what the story is behind it, I’ll file it under “curiosities” instead. It’s on the north side of the block, close to the corner of Seventh Avenue.

Inexplicably, despite the rest of this block of Call Street having sidewalks, this section has none. It doesn’t appear to be subsided under the grass, or crumbled away. No, it appears that there has never been a sidewalk here. The sidewalk disappears (just after a 1940s DPW stamp) and then reappears before the intersection, and I cannot fathom any reason for this.

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Geometric Markings, Jerome St.

Merry Christmas, dear readers, all two or three of you! Today I thought I would share something simple but puzzling. I have noticed these marks on the sidewalk in front of the big old Tudor house on Jerome Street. No, not this one, the other big old Tudor house on Jerome Street, on the northwest corner of Jerome and Horton. There are three of these geometric marks on the sidewalk in front of that house, and I don’t know what they are.

I think I have noticed markings like this in one other place on the east side (in the Prospect Place neighborhood, if I remember correctly). They seem too utilitarian and asymmetric to be purely decorative, but then, what do they do? If anyone knows or has a guess I would be interested to hear it.