We finally had a little bit of snow (now long since obliterated by the weather turning warm again) and I took a walk in it to get photos of Christmas lights. I also found some beautiful snow-frosted sidewalk stamps. I love the way snow settles into the lettering; in some cases, as in the B.F. Churchill stamp below, it even makes it more legible.
A 1944 Department of Public Works stamp on Regent Street.
This 1908 B.F. Churchill stamp on Regent was one of the stamps that first motivated this blog. The extreme purple cast is due to a defective LED street light.
In honor of the holiday, here are some of the photos I took of Christmas lights on my walk. I have really come to enjoy walking alone in snowy quiet after night falls, stopping to stand in front of Christmas displays and admire them. Driving around to admire lights is nice, and I do that too, but there is something special about the intimacy of doing it on foot. Being a pedestrian is underrated.
Snow sometimes works against me, and sometimes with me. I was walking along the north side of Elizabeth Street, and just east of Leslie I saw the snow highlighting some of the letters in a worn, old Department of Public Works stamp. I took some snow with my mitten and rubbed it into the rest of the stamp (feeling awkward as I realized a dog walker had seen me do this) and this is what it looked like. I wonder what the next people to walk this way thought of the white highlighting that I had left behind.
I think that’s probably 1939, but there is a blotch over the last digit that means I can’t be sure it isn’t an 8.
This is the same principle behind rubbing chalk or flour into gravestone inscriptions, except unlike those practices (which are very much frowned upon) this won’t cause any harm. A little while later on my walk, on Allen Street, the snow was my friend again. It caused the start of an old-looking stamp that I’ve never seen before to jump out at me. I’ve walked that block many times without noticing it. I got down on the ground and sprinkled some extra snow, rubbing it in to try to make the stamp legible. I couldn’t quite do it. Besides, where the date would have (or should have) been there was a patch of obscuring ice. I added it to my list of places to check again later.
Looking east on Elizabeth Street, standing on the corner of Elizabeth and Leslie.
I have thought about trying to do rubbings of the sidewalk as people do with gravestones. Even that practice, though not nearly as harmful as rubbing material into the inscription directly, is controversial. It is said to risk damaging an already old inscription, or at least contribute to wearing it down. It sounds absurd, I suppose, to worry about causing wear to something designed to be walked on for a hundred years. But I treasure these fading markings and don’t want to hasten their illegibility. I have picked up a habit of avoiding walking on them. Maybe I’ll try this method of using aluminum foil, which is supposed to be the most harmless way to read gravestones. If, that is, I can get past how self conscious kneeling in front of someone’s house with a sponge and a roll of Reynolds Wrap is going to make me.
Back to familiar territory: here is a Department of Public Works stamp on the west side of the 400 block of Regent Street, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. I believe it is dated 1942, like another nearby DPW stamp, though the 4 is hard to make out.
Looking south on Regent Street. It was raining a bit.
I turned down a block I don’t usually visit on my walks because there were some Christmas lights I wanted to see. I was rewarded twice, with the lights and with this very well preserved Department of Public Works stamp. This is the east side of Allen Street, just south of Elizabeth (the last block before I-496).
This is from that period after they stopped stamping the exact date but before they dropped the month too.
Looking north on Allen Street, with Elizabeth in sight.
I’ve had my eye on this Regent Street Department of Public Works stamp (on the east side, 400 block, between Elizabeth and Kalamazoo). I previously posted it as having an illegible date, Periodically, it has almost become legible, due to the right lighting or a bit of water pooling in the indentations. Recently, I had decided it was possibly a 4 after the 19, but still could not read the final number at all. Then, suddenly, as I walked the block this evening…
Plain as day, thanks to fall rains washing away the right amount of mud and leaving the right amount of silt behind.
Here’s a nice, old Department of Public Works stamp on the east side of Horton just north of Michigan, next to the Gabriels Community Credit Union on the corner. I had meant to get this one for ages and finally decided to do it tonight despite it being after dark.
I brought a flashlight with me and propped it up on some gravel alongside the sidewalk. (Flashing a light straight on the stamp usually makes it illegible. You need shadows.) I know from seeing it in daylight that the year is 1919. I had previously been complete unable to read the month, but when I came home and looked at the photo this time I realized I was pretty sure I saw September there. It’s funny how sometimes a photo can see things I don’t see with my eyes.
Looking south on Horton. That’s the Gabriels Community Credit Union on the left. You can see the flashlight I was using to illuminate the stamp on the lower left.
I walked a different route from usual which took me to the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Kalamazoo and Prospect, instead of the west side where I more often walk. And look what I found there.
So the oddly placed 1921 DPW stamp on Regent Street isn’t unique or a misfire after all. There are stamps from both before and after this one that are more conventionally placed. There is even another one from 1924. So my new hypothesis is that there was one particular foreman in the 1920s who liked it this way.
Too bad about the crack; it’s otherwise very clear. It also gives me my new latest date for DPW stamps marking the month as well as the year.
This was taken just after a heavy rain, when the silt had the effect of making the very faint letters a little more readable. I am frustrated by my inability to read the date. Even feeling it with my fingers, I can make out only the initial “19” and nothing else.
This stamp is located on the east side of Regent Street, the 400 block, between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. The style matches the 1918 Department of Public Worksimprints I found previously, and is distinct from the 1944 DPW stamp and some other 1940s DPW stamps I have seen on my walks. I hope in time to find some stamps eventually that will narrow down when they switched styles, so I can give a latest possible date for this stamp.
Update 12/10/20: the date has become visible! See my update.
Well, now, look what I found on the south side of Prospect between Magnolia and Fairview – close to the corner of Prospect and Magnolia. Remember this 1918 Department of Public Works stamp from N. Fairview? I was pretty sure it said 1918, anyway, though it was very worn. I feel even more confident in that judgment now, since I have found another 1918 DPW stamp.
This one is much clearer, but the previous one gets to retain its place as the oldest I’ve found so far, since it was dated August. Still, finding another 1918 mark so soon does give me hope that I have older ones yet to find. It’s interesting that they marked not just the month but even the day. Almost all the other dated stamps I have found have only the year.
Comparing this one with the August slab yields another interesting observation. This one has month/date/year, in that order. The other had year/month/[something illegible]. I also notice the crookedness of the year. I am led to the conclusion that the month and year stamps were separate from the name stamp, and that the two workers chose to stamp them in different orders. (I am not sure if the date is a stamp or hand written; it looks disproportionately large.)
This slab is in much better condition than the Fairview one, not cracked or unduly worn. I would expect it to last decades yet to come.
One of my goals (besides finding the earliest and latest stamps I can, and I may have peaked too early on the former) is to find a stamp from as many different decades as possible. So here is an otherwise not particularly distinguished one I saw on my walk today to represent the 1950s.
Another one from the Department of Public Works, 195…7? 2? I initially thought 7, but it looks too rounded. On the other hand, there’s definitely no bottom bar to make it a 2. It’s on the east side of Shepard between Kalamazoo and Stanley Ct. (a curiously tiny, glorified alley between Shepard and Leslie).
Update 2/27/21: Based on seeing several others like this, I am now sure it’s 1952.
