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Regent St., C. Gossett, 1963

It’s final grading week and I spent last night up until the early hours grading exams and I’ll probably be doing it again tonight, so here’s a late and low-key update. This is from a driveway apron on the east side of Regent Street between Kalamazoo and Elizabeth. I’ve been able to see the date for a while, but recently the name has also suddenly become more visible. It’s hard to see in this photo, but the last several letters are SSETT indicating it is, unfortunately, just a regular old C. Gossett stamp, similar to very many others on this block.

I’ve never been able to learn anything in my research about C. Gossett or find a single reference to them, despite how many sidewalks they laid in around here in the 1960s.

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Clifford St., DPW, 1941

I found a pair of diagonal Lansing DPW stamps on either corner of a driveway apron, facing the street, on the east side of Clifford Street between Elizabeth and Fuller. Given how often I walk around this block and my particular interest in collecting diagonal stamps, I’m a little surprised I haven’t noticed them before. They are very faint – one of them was too faint to show up in a photograph.

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Prospect St., L & L, 1984

This is the next house east from my last entry, also on the south side of Prospect between Clifford and Lathrop, also on the driveway apron. It would be nice to think that perhaps they were doing all the driveways around this time and therefore I could date the eternally undateable William Haskins, but sadly I find it doubtful. The style of the Haskins stamps just doesn’t suggest 1980s to me.

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Rolling Brook Ln., East Lansing, LPW, illegible date

I continued further south after finding the C.E. Schneider stamp from my last entry and finally hit something entirely new to me, again on the west side of the street, north of Red Leaf Lane. This is on a driveway apron and the date is unfortunately mostly illegible.

If it were in Lansing I might suspect LPW was another variation on Lansing DPW/DPS (Department of Public Works/Public Service) but as this is in East Lansing that can’t be it. I really don’t know who or what LPW is. After noticing this one, I went a bit further and found several more houses with the same stamps on their driveways, arranged on either side of the seam between the two blocks making up the large driveway apron.

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S. Clemens Ave., Eastlund Concrete

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.

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Prospect St., J. DeHoney, illegible date

This is a rare stamp that I had overlooked in the past, probably because it’s on the side of Prospect Street that has no sidewalk. It’s on the apron of a driveway on the south side of Prospect, right across from where the T-intersection with Virginia is.

I can recognize the contractor’s name, J. DeHoney, based on the couple other DeHoney stamps I have found in the past, which were also on Prospect. The date is a lost cause, but based on my previous research on DeHoney, he was active in the 1950s and 60s. As noted in my previous entry, there is a classified ad in the December 14, 1951, Lansing State Journal for “CEMENT Basement floors, garage, slabs, footings and general concrete construction. Free estimates. Satisfaction assured. DeHoney and Forsberg.” At the time I wrote that entry, I did not yet recognize the name Forsberg, but now I do. DeHoney was most likely partnered with T.A. Forsberg, a big name in Lansing construction and real estate development.

The stamp is on the driveway of this 1920s house.
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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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Elizabeth and E. Erie Sts., Ghost Entrances, Albion

I was visiting family in Albion and took a walk in the neighborhood near Victory and Reiger Parks. On either side of Allen Street, on the corner of East Erie, I noticed two orphaned driveway aprons. I see these all the time in my neighborhood in Lansing, serving as a marker of where a house has been torn down.

Facing east from Allen Street, south of the corner of East Erie.

The one on the east side of Allen has crumbling concrete barriers in it, suggesting a concern that people would drive into the vacant lot, if not an actual occurrence. Across the way, its neighbor does not have barriers, but also points to a vacant lot. (Oddly, a Google street view from 2012 shows the west driveway with the concrete barriers and none on the east driveway.) The empty lots are both quite large.

Facing west from Allen, directly across from the other driveway.

The properties evidently faced Erie, based on the city records which show them to have Erie addresses. A crumbling, low brick wall edges the front of the eastern property, with a portal showing where the front entrance may have been placed.

The presumptive front of the eastern property, from East Erie Street.

According to the city records, the properties were both sold (cheaply) by Colchester Properties to Albion College in 2007. I’m not sure what the college’s interest was in them. Perhaps they wanted to prevent them from becoming (or remaining) eyesores, since they are close to campus.

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S. Francis Ave., Terry, illegible date

This stamp is on an orphaned driveway apron in front of one of the many vacant lots (now a community garden) near the south end of South Francis Avenue. It’s on the east side of the street, just south of where Harton Street would have passed through if it had not vanished from this block at some point. There is another driveway apron (also no longer attached to a driveway) one lot south of here that has the same stamp, but in worse shape.

I tried to uncover the date from under the layer of caked dirt, but it doesn’t look like it would be legible even if it were clean. It seems to end with a 1 but that’s the most that can be made from it with any confidence. I wasn’t able to find any plausible “Terry” that this could be, either.

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N. Grand Ave., F & M Construction, 2010

I spotted this new-to-me contractor stamp while I was downtown to walk in the Turkey Trot 5K on Thanksgiving morning. It’s on the west side of North Grand Avenue next to Fire Station #1, which faces Shiawassee. There is a stamp on the driveway apron as well as the sidewalk.

The driveway apron stamp.

According to the city’s Web site about fire stations, Fire Station #1 was built in 1949 and extensively remodeled in 2006, which accounts for why it looks rather new. It is nicknamed “The Big House.”

The driveway apron in context in front of the fire station.

I can’t find out much about F & M Construction. Most likely they are F & M Concrete Construction, which I can find listings for placing them on Creyts Road in Dimondale. OpenCorporates shows that “F and M Concrete Construction LLC” of Dimondale only incorporated in 2013, but I would guess it is the same business responsible for this stamp.

This one is on the sidewalk.